The Original Occupier?
by Joanne Boyer
Wisdom Voices
February 27, 2012
http://wisdomvoices.com/the-original-occupier/
"I can see them (the working class) dwarfed,
diseased, stunted, their little lives broken and
their hopes blasted because in the high noon of our
20th century civilization, money is still so much
more important than human life."
-Eugene V. Debs
The spring of 2012 offers the hope of a new Occupy Movement
ready to sweep the country. Occupy Wall Street captivated
the nation last fall and was the main instrument for turning
our national political conversation to the real crisis at
hand: The 99 percent vs. the 1 percent. Our country stands
on the brink of losing its democratic foundation. Oligarchy
(defined as a form of government in which the ruling power
belongs to a few persons) seems possible. Consider the
Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, the crack down on
the Occupy Movement by the local, state and federal
government, and voter suppression laws and electronic voting
machine fraud that threaten the ability of "We the People"
to cast our votes and have them counted properly.
As we await the start of what promises to be a new people's
movement to reclaim our country, we offer you a brief look
at the life and words of one of our country's original
"occupiers."
Eugene Victor Debs, born in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1855,
is a study in citizen heroism, and his life demonstrates the
important role the average person plays in mobilizing a
movement. His life paralleled another tumultuous time in our
history, when the robber barons of the 19th century
industrial revolution created a society of have and have-
nots. Debs' first job at age 14 (no child labor laws yet to
be enacted) was that of railroad worker. He quickly learned
the worker's plight first hand, which led him to become a
railroad union organizer. He led a successful strike against
the Great Northern Railroad in 1894. Two months later, he
was jailed for his role in a strike against the
Pullman Palace Car Company. In prison he honed his
understanding that labor issues were really the issues of
society and it is where he began to embrace socialism.
"I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for
one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass
a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions
of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure
barely enough for a wretched existence," Debs told a federal
court before sentencing after being convicted for violating
the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917-18, laws passed by
Congress to promote World War I by banning anti-war speech.
Less than 100 years ago, it was possible for the federal
government to arrest, put on trial and incarcerate
individuals who spoke out against President Woodrow Wilson
and the country's entry into the Great War. Debs, who had
long vocalized his support of the working class, took his
anti-war message to the people in
knowing full well he could be arrested. It was against this
backdrop when the people seemed to be governed more by fear
than hope that Debs told a picnic gathering on a hot
summer's afternoon:
"They have always taught you that it is your
patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves
slaughtered at command...And here let me state a
fact - and it cannot be repeated too often: the
working class who fight the battles, the working
class who make the sacrifices, the working class who
shed the blood, the working class who furnish the
corpses, the working class have never yet had a
voice in declaring war."
Journalists who covered that
in leading the charge for Debs' arrest and prosecution for
violation of federal law. At his trail, Debs charged the
government was persecuting him not for undermining the
draft, but because he dared to challenge the plutocrats who
ran the country and were reaping large profits from the war.
Debs contended the country was not fighting a noble war to
save democracy but rather, the country had joined European
nations in a greedy struggle over profits.
In his trial, Debs described the Espionage Act as "a
despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with the democratic
principles and with the spirit of free institutions" and
later said he believed the law to be unjust but that it was
only one small expression of a much greater injustice which
lay at the foundation of the entire social system. He told
the judge that 5 percent of Americans owned two thirds of
the nation's wealth, while nearly 65 percent who made up the
working class owned only 5 percent.
"I can see them (the working class) dwarfed,
diseased, stunted, their little lives broken and
their hopes blasted because in the high noon of our
20th century civilization, money is still so much
more important than human life."
Debs ran for president in 1920 while in a federal prison for
violating the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917-18, which
prohibited speeches against
Debs was convicted in
Supreme Court; and he was sentenced to 10 years in prison,
serving time at the federal penitentiary in
for president of the
Party ticket while behind bars. He garnered over 900,000
votes, but finished well behind the eventual winner
Republican Warren G. Harding. Harding commuted Debs'
sentence on Christmas Day 1921.
Debs' health suffered greatly while in prison, yet he took
up his speech making where he left off before his arrest. He
continued to criticize
fought for profit, not democracy. "60,000 American boys had
died only to produce 30,000 new millionaires," he declared.
Debs' was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1924 on the
basis of arguing that the Great War was fought mainly in the
interest of capitalism. He died on October 20, 1926, at the
age of 70. The Eugene V. Debs Foundation in
dedicated to "keeping alive the spirit of progressivism,
humanitarianism and social criticism epitomized by Debs." He
remains one of the greatest historical voices for the
working class and the 99 percent. From a speech nearly 100
years ago, he said:
"Political parties are responsive to the interests
of those who finance them. This is the infallible
test of their character and applied to the
Republican, Democratic and Progressive parties,
these parties stand forth as the several political
expressions of the several divisions of the
capitalist class. The funds of all these parties are
furnished by the capitalist class for the reason,
and only for the reason, that they represent the
interests of that class."
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