История злоключений Юджина Дебса, или как американское правительство боролось с «пятой колонной» в годы Первой мировой войны. For most of the 1880s, Debs continued to preach the virtues of industrial cooperation and to discourage confrontations with either employers or the government.
An Ominous Trend
Keep Consortium News going in the tradition of Bob Parry. Информация Новости Контакт Род занятий. TikTok for Good Реклама Developers Прозрачность TikTok Rewards TikTok Embeds. In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail.
June 16, 1918: Eugene V. Debs Speech Against WWI
Послевоенная разруха, голод, столетиями кочевавший по многим российским губерниям, унося десятки, сотни тысяч жизней, жёсткие санкции со стороны более развитых стран, безграмотность подавляющей части населения, сопротивление оставшихся ещё многочисленных приверженцев прежнего экономического уклада — ничто не смогло сломить волю миллионов людей в их стремлении навсегда покончить со всеми кошмарами, которые они пережили. Ничто не смогло поколебать твёрдой уверенности, отчётливого понимания того, что только напряжённым совместным трудом они смогут добиться поставленных задач. Им было не привыкать к тяжёлому и напряжённому труду.
Debs turned to politics when he was released from jail in 1895. Debs was a powerful orator and drew huge crowds across the country. In his speeches and writings he demanded an end to child labor and denounced Jim Crow and lynching.
As a presidential campaigner he traveled from New York to California on a train, called the Red Special, speaking to tens of thousands. He helped elect socialist mayors in some 70 cities, including Milwaukee, as well as numerous legislators and city council members. He propelled two socialists into Congress. In the elections of 1912 he received nearly a million votes, 6 percent of the electorate. Eighteen thousand people went to see him in Philadelphia and 22,000 in New York City.
He terrified the ruling elites, who began to institute tepid reforms to attempt to stanch the growing support for the socialists. Debs after the 1912 election was a marked man. At first they were opposed by the people and denounced by the press. But it did not fail. Revolutions have a habit of succeeding when the time comes for them.
I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions. At fourteen I went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was firing a freight engine on a railroad. I remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class.
I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.
In this country—the most favored beneath the bending skies—we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child—and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity. I believe, as all Socialists do, that all things that are jointly needed and used ought to be jointly owned—that industry, the basis of our social life, instead of being the private property of a few and operated for their enrichment, ought to be the common property of all, democratically administered in the interest of all. This order of things cannot always endure. I have registered my protest against it. I recognize the feebleness of my effort, but, fortunately, I am not alone.
То, что его ответом был социализм, может нас удивить. Возможно, социалистическое общество будет более равным, возможно, даже более справедливым, но зачем думать, что оно будет более свободным? Не будет ли стальной кулак государства активно лишать людей свободы, присваивая их собственность и помыкая ими? Дебс смотрел на это иначе и имел для своего суждения некоторые исключительно республиканские основания. Плакат 1965 года с одним из наиболее известных лозунгов Юджина В. Существует давняя республиканская традиция, в которой свобода ассоциируется с собственностью. Древние часто предполагали, что свобода зависит от наличия времени для досуга и политической деятельности, предоставляемого владением землёй и рабами для её обработки. Экономическая независимость стала материальной основой свободы и сама покоилась на гарантированном владении частной собственностью. Можно встретить современных республиканцев, которые подхватывают призыв к предоставлению земли для граждан в более широком смысле — восхваляя независимого фермера или поселенца, который кажется несколько изолированным от произвола других, покуда может обеспечить себя своим собственным трудом. Другой моделью экономической безопасности, необходимой для свободы, был ремесленник, владевший собственными инструментами и мастерской.
Но индустриальное общество всё больше угрожало как аграрной, так и ремесленной независимости. Дебс признал, что в эпоху фабрик, железных дорог и товаров массового потребления нет никакой надежды уцепиться за это уже романтизированное прошлое: будущее экономического производства неизбежно будет социальным и взаимозависимым. Прочитав во время своего заключения в Вудстоке социалистические сочинения — прежде всего Карла Каутского — Дебс всё больше убеждался в необходимости кооперативной экономики, которая бы вырвала власть из рук плутократов и передала её обычным гражданам. Он был не первым членом рабочего движения США, который имел подобные мысли или формулировал их в республиканских терминах. Они были лейбористскими республиканцами, которые считали, что рабочие фактически превращаются в рабов, подчиняясь воле работодателей. Если бы этот доминирующий контроль был устранён, гражданам пришлось бы «прививать республиканские принципы в нашу индустриальную систему», а не сохранять их только для политики, как выразился лидер профсоюзов Джордж Макнил. При такой системе трудовая жизнь будет ориентирована не на получение прибыли, а на удовлетворение человеческих потребностей. Рыцари создали множество кооперативов, принадлежащих самим рабочим, но эти эксперименты в конечном итоге зашли в тупик. Дебс пришёл к выводу, что необходимо нечто более амбициозное: подлинно коллективная собственность на средства производства и распределения. Если бы все граждане имели свою долю в экономике, где нет неподотчётных боссов, которые могут их уволить при малейшем намёке на выгоду, то у людей появилась бы экономическая безопасность, необходимая для того, чтобы их можно было считать по-настоящему свободными.
Более того, на самом рабочем месте рабочие, а не капиталисты, смогли бы управлять организацией труда и, таким образом, не подчиняться прихотям владельцев, которые не несут ответственности перед теми, кого они наняли. Дебс приходит к социалистическому республиканству. Хотя свобода, даруемая контролем над собственностью, остаётся центральной в этой республиканской истории, это уже не частная собственность. Вместо этого, «Экономическая свобода может быть результатом только коллективной собственности». Настоящая республика, по мнению Дебса, не может ограничивать демократию сугубо политической деятельностью, но должна быть основана на экономической демократии. И при этом ничего ценного не будет утрачено, поскольку «владельцы железных дорог и разных великих машин нужны нам не больше, чем нам нужен король». Именно этот идеал лёг в основу Социалистической партии Америки и её предшественницы, Социал-демократической партии Америки , которую Дебс помог создать в 1901 году. Этот поворот к электоральной политике был мотивирован не только возможностями для пропаганды, предоставляемыми избирательными кампаниями, но и осознанием того, что политическая должность необходима для существенного преобразования страны. Однако это не означало отказа от профсоюзной деятельности, которой Дебс посвятил большую часть своей жизни. Подобно тому, как он перешёл от ремесленных союзов, разделённых по типам должностей, к общеотраслевому Американскому союзу железнодорожников, Дебс пришёл к принятию ещё более обширной модели промышленного профсоюзного движения, которая стремилась объединить весь рабочий класс.
Таким образом, вместе со многими наиболее влиятельными членами рабочего движения США, Дебс внёс свой вклад в создание организации «Промышленные рабочие мира» в 1905 году. Они были нацелены на отмену наёмного труда и в конечном итоге стремились построить «новое общество внутри оболочки старого». Плакат Союза промышленных рабочих мира. Притягательность Дебса не ограничивалась его своевременной политической программой, а проистекала из его страстного и чуткого характера. Его речи становились легендой, и у трудящихся не оставалось сомнений в том, что он всегда будет сражаться на их стороне. Но он ненавидел демагогию и часто подчёркивал важность самообразования и следования голосу своей совести: Никакой я не профсоюзный лидер. Я не хочу, чтобы вы следовали за мной или кем-то ещё. Если вы ищете Моисея, который выведет вас из этой капиталистической пустыни, вы останетесь там, где находитесь. Я бы не повёл вас в землю обетованную, если бы мог, потому что, если смогу вас туда завести, кто-то другой сможет вывести. Вы должны использовать не только руки, но и голову, чтобы выбраться из вашего нынешнего состояния.
Это — социализм снизу.
Lenin influenced Debs tremendously, changing his position farther to the far left. He returned to America after Germany smuggled him via submarine to Mexico to incite America into revolution.
Following the Second American Revolution , Debs made peace with the Central Powers in 1918 calling back all troops that went to Europe and ceded territory to Mexico in the Treaty of Phoenix.
«Формат с двумя картами ведёт к ничьим» — Ceb о групповой стадии ESL One Birmingham 2024
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| The Untold Truth Of Eugene V. Debs | In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail. |
| Забастовки, тюрьмы и человечность Юджина Дебса | Май 21, 2013 0 Комментариев 24 мая в Петербурге пройдет презентация сборника статей легендарного деятеля рабочего и социалистического движения США Юджина Дебса. |
| Юджин Дебс: цитаты, афоризмы и высказывания | This day in 1919, Socialist leader Eugene V Debs is sent to prison for violating the Espionage Act in his opposition to WWI. |
| Eugene Debs: When a prisoner ran for president | BrandeisNOW | В 1904, 1908, 1912 и 1920 годы — Юджин Дебс выдвигается кандидатом от Социалистической партии Америки для участия в избирательной кампании на пост президента США. |
Eugene Debs and the Kingdom of Evil
| Юджин Дебс, «Мы пришли освобождать рабочий класс» | On August 29, 1895, Eugene Victor Debs penned a letter from his cell at the federal prison in Woodstock, Illinois, to the Terre Haute, Indiana Labor Day Committee. |
| Free Speech on Trial | For decades, many of Eugene Debs’s admirers have claimed that the socialist leader was a good, patriotic American unsullied by a foreign doctrine like Marxism. |
| Eugene V. Debs, the Five-Time Socialist Candidate for President Who Once Campaigned From Prison | I’m not sure whether Donald Trump has ever heard of Eugene Debs, the austerely incorruptible early leader of America’s Socialist Party. |
| Author: Eugene Debs | Eugene Victor Debs, by far the best known U.S. rail union leader, was born in Terre Haute, IN November 5, 1855. |
| Eugene Debs | Portside | История злоключений Юджина Дебса, или как американское правительство боролось с «пятой колонной» в годы Первой мировой войны. |
Джо Байден
Разницу в стоимости проезда он пожертвовал в фонд помощи голодающим в Советской России. На станции он сделал заявление прессе по поводу заключенных в тюрьме сторонников: «Я оставил там 2300 человек, и все они должны быть освобождены». По прибытии в Терре-Хот его приветствовала толпа из 50 тысяч человек. Однако здоровье Дебса было подорвано тюремным заключением, и, несмотря на предпринимаемые им попытки поправиться, через пять лет после освобождения он в 1926 году скончался.
Debs was imprisoned in 1918 for violation of the Espionage Act — he was critical of the U.
The morning had been dispiriting to say the least. Waking up to learn the Supreme Court said it was cool for Christians to discriminate against queer people but not cool for the president to relieve crumbs of student debt, while not shocking, somewhat hampered my enthusiasm for the day trip. He founded the American Railway Union in 1893, cofounded the American Socialist Party in 1900 and ran for president five times. For his courage in speaking against a predatory capitalist war on behalf of the working poor who fought in it, he was jailed. His 10-year sentence was eventually commuted by President Harding in 1921.
Today his house in Terre Haute is a museum. The fairly large, Victorian-style home he shared with his wife was built in 1890 and has a long history — before it became a historic landmark, it housed a fraternity from 1948-1961 at Indiana State University.
Джирарде, штат Канзас. В 1908 и 1912 гг.
Лудлоу, штат Колорадо; призывает рабочих к сопротивлению. Дебс совершает турне по стране, выступает против войны в Европе, за установление мира между народами, против подготовки США к вступлению в Первую мировую войну. Публикует много сильных антивоенных статей. В этой победе он видел приближение окончания войны, усиление социалистического движения в США.
Дебс опубликовал статью «Душа русской революции». Дебс произносит свою знаменитую антивоенную речь в г. Кантоне, штат Огайо, на съезде социалистов. Вскоре последовал арест, а позже за эту и другие речи, за выступления, осуждающие американскую капиталистическую систему, за приветствия российским большевикам Федеральный суд в г.
Follow us After turning himself in on Thursday at a county prison in Georgia, former US president Donald Trump made history by becoming the first US president to have a mugshot taken. He is accused of racketeering and conspiring to overthrow the 2020 election. While the tragedy is generating headlines throughout the world, Eugene V Debs, a late politician, is gaining attention on social networking paltforms. Eugene V.
Юджин В. Дебс — рыцарь борьбы за свободу
Особое внимание уделено сопротивлению общества участию государства в войне и действиям, направленным на слом этого сопротивления. Изучены судьбы американских социалистов и их лидера Юджина Дебса, который был арестован в 1918 г. В статье проанализирован процесс принятия закона через несколько месяцев после вступления США в войну. Просматривается история обсуждения закона начиная с 1915 г. Данные законы накладывали определенные ограничения на свободу слова и впоследствии были многократно критикованы.
Debs first rose to national prominence later the same year, thanks to his central role in the Pullman Strike. Although Debs initially advised against the walkout—which he viewed as too risky—the ARU ultimately threw its support behind a nationwide boycott, and railroad workers across the nation refused to work on trains containing Pullman cars. The strike was so effective that, between May and June, nationwide rail transport ground to a virtual halt. The economic disruption was so great that, in July, President Grover Cleveland issued an injunction against the work stoppage and called in federal troops to suppress the strike. Clashes broke out, and federal troops and police killed at least 30 railroad workers while suppressing the strike. Debs was arrested and imprisoned for his role in the action. Supreme Court Library. After his release from prison, Debs was one of the most important figures in the American labor movement at the turn of the century. He was instrumental in founding the Socialist Party of America and was an early founding member of the radical trade union Industrial Workers of the World. Labor Problems in America 1940.
Between 1900 and 1916, Debs ran for president four times: once as the candidate for the Social Democratic Party in 1900; and then as the candidate for the Socialist Party of America in 1904, 1908, and 1912. Presidential Library. Woodrow Wilson, the victor of the election, would prove to be a tenacious antagonist to American socialists in the years to come. The Speech, Arrest, and Trial On June 16, 1918, while on his way to the Ohio state Socialist convention in Canton, Debs stopped to deliver a speech outside the Stark County Workhouse, where three local leaders of the Socialist Party were imprisoned for opposing the draft. Debs spent the following two hours speaking in front of a crowd of 1,200, which included plain clothes agents of the Justice Department , who circulated through the crowd demanding to inspect the draft cards of audience members. Writings and Speeches of Eugene V. Debs 1948.
He was arrested weeks later, and many American newspapers at the time dubbed the socialist a traitor or a dictator. During his trial, Debs said he believes "in free speech, in war as well as in peace. While in prison, Debs launched his "from the jail house to the White House" campaign in 1920 after previously running for president in 1904, 1908 and 1912 as the Socialist Party of America nominee. Legal experts are expecting a trial in the Stormy Daniels case to come at a minimum of over a year away or even after the 2024 presidential campaign. Ex-president Donald Trump has been indicted for the second time this year. All rights reserved. You can unsubscribe at any time.
This article originally appeared on The Conversation. On April 4, 2023, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the indictment of former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump on 34 felony charges related to alleged crimes involving bookkeeping on a 7-year-old hush money payment to an adult film actress. Trump is unlikely to wind up in an orange jumpsuit, at least not on this indictment, and probably not before November 2024, in any case. Yet if he does, he would not be the first candidate to run for the White House from the Big House. In the election of 1920, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party presidential candidate, polled nearly a million votes without ever hitting the campaign trail. Debs was behind bars in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, serving a 10-year sentence for sedition. It was a not a bum rap. Debs had defiantly disobeyed a law he deemed unjust, the Sedition Act of 1918. The act was an anti-free speech measure passed at the behest of President Woodrow Wilson.
Джо Байден
The standard biography of Eugene Debs is Nick Salvatore’s Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1982). Their leader Eugene Debs, who actually ran for President more often than Joe Biden, summed up his view of the world in saying. Юджин Дебс умер в октябре 1926 года, до последнего уверенный в том, что социалистическая революция может быть задержана, но неизбежно произойдет. Eugene Debs made his famous anti-war speech protesting World War I which was raging in Europe. The claim is sometimes made that Eugene Debs promised to pardon himself if elected President in 1920. The socialist leader Eugene Debs was jailed for opposing World War I. It didn’t stop his presidential campaign.
Победитель
Стрелял профсоюзный лидер Юджин Дебс, чтобы отметить Четвёртое июля: то был не побег из тюрьмы, то было требованием иной свободы. A Democratic activist who writes under the pseudonym “Eugene Victor Debs” at the FrumForum has taken me to task for arguing in my forthcoming book and in a recent blog post that President Obama. Владелец сайта предпочёл скрыть описание страницы. Close to a million voters agreed with Debs sufficiently that they voted for him when he ran for president in 1920 from his jail cell at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. в 1920 году Юджин Дебс участвовал в президентской гонке, находясь в заключении в тюрьме в Атланте за антивоенную речь. Labor leader, radical, Socialist, presidential candidate: Eugene Victor Debs was a homegrown American original.
Премия Юджина В. Дебса
No one reading Eugene V. Debs: A Graphic Biography could doubt that authors Paul Buhle and Steve Max have accessibility in mind. It’s a stewing sense of unfairness last tapped to broad affect by a couple of his political heroes: socialist presidential candidates Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas, each of whom lost five times in the early. Eugene V. Debs, labor organizer and Socialist Party candidate for U.S. president five times between 1900 and 1920.
Author: Eugene Debs
He left home at 14 to work on the railroad and soon became involved in union activity. He joined the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in 1875, where he soon became prominent figure. In 1884, elected as a Democrat , he served a term in the Indiana General Assembly. Work with organized labor During its earlier years, the BLF was a relatively moderate and conservative organization, advocating for class collaboration and focusing primarily on providing mutual benefits and service for workers. For the first fourteen years of its existence 1873-1887 , it never attempted or authorized a strike. Debs largely followed the same line as the Brotherhood at large during these years. This state of affairs was to change quite suddenly in early 1888. The Burlington railroad strike of 1888 lasted for most of the year, and ended with the complete defeat of the strike as the company managed to replace the entire striking workforce, but not before at least two striking workers had been killed by strikebreakers across the course of the year.
American Democracy vs. When Debs called out the absurdity of the wartime view that patriotism means dying overseas for capitalist profits while treason consists in defending workers everywhere, he showed us the proper response to nationalist ideology: not to try to hijack it for progressive ends, but to liberate us from its obfuscations. Through the ordinary electoral process, a liberal party could fulfill working-class demands by curbing the political power of business, defending democratic rights and freedoms, and guiding capitalist growth according to an inclusive sense of the public good. Most of all, Schlesinger sought to show that Marxism was as foreign to Debs as it was to America. Among the US left, he singled out Debs for praise because, in his view, Debs was always closer to liberal democratic Americanism than Marxist totalitarianism. And as an inveterate democrat, Debs could never accept the revolutionary Marxist program of proletarian class rule, nor could he sacrifice immediate associational freedoms for the sake of historical progress, both of which threatened a totalitarian takeover of democratic institutions. Theory alone would not have brought Debs to socialism if it did not clarify his experience in the labor movement. Ultimately, Schlesinger saw Debs as a useful figure to make a broader argument about the place of the Left in progressive politics. Like Debs or so Schlesinger imagined , leftists should accept the basic justness of American democratic institutions, inhabiting a position of critical dissent that holds liberals to account without ever exercising real independent power. Debs was a democrat, but he was also a Marxist and an internationalist. He believed that working-class democracy was only possible if workers controlled the capital infrastructure they set into motion, operating it according to social principles entirely different from those of the profit-seeking capitalist market. Anyone familiar with Debs lore knows that he probably encountered Marxist theory for the first while imprisoned for his leadership of the Pullman strike. But theory alone would not have brought Debs to socialism if it did not clarify his experience in the labor movement. While it helped workers exercise some control over their employment for instance, by regulating hiring and firing , it often collaborated with management to prevent strikes and spread a culture of workplace discipline. If this was true, capital and labor needed each other: capital would be idle without labor, and labor powerless without capital. There can be no such quarrel unless it is caused by deliberate piracy on one side and unreasonable demands on the other.
Up to 30 workers were killed during the strike, thousands were blacklisted , and Debs was imprisoned for six months along with other ARU officers. Going to jail Wikipedia Commons Eugene V. Debs and other officers of the ARU were convicted of violating the federal injunction and the U. Supreme Court upheld the convictions. According to the New Yorker , Debs was sentenced to six months while the others were sentenced to three. While Debs was imprisoned in the jail in Woodstock, Illinois he began learning more about socialism from pamphlets and books that socialists sent him in the mail. In his piece " How I Became a Socialist ," Debs writes that he "began to read and think and dissect the anatomy of the system in which workingmen, however organized, could be shattered and battered and splintered at a single stroke. Berger, who brought him a copy of "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx. But Debs would later write that it was "defeated but not conquered —overwhelmed but not destroyed. Debs was released from jail, he was met by a crowd of over 100,000 people, and that he spoke to them about using their vote to overturn the capitalistic government. With this in mind, Debs stepped back into the political fray. Although Debs endorsed William Jennings Bryan during the race against William McKinley, after seeing how businessmen used their money to get McKinley elected, Debs "abandon[ed] his devotion to the two-party system. But by their second convention, the organization dissolved and became instead the Social Democratic Party of America. Kansas Heritage writes that Debs became the treasurer of the newly founded party, and in 1900, accepted its nomination to run for president of the United States. However, despite an "enthusiastic campaign," Debs only got 0. In " Eugene V. Debs: an American paradox ," J. Because Debs repeatedly ideas that some considered radical at the time, many of the policies ended up being adopted by both the Democratic and Republican parties while Debs was still alive. Although Debs never succeeded in getting any electoral votes, the New Yorker reports that in 1912, Debs received almost 1 million votes. Although Debs would never end up becoming president, due to his efforts with the Socialist Party of America, the party held "over 1,000 elective offices in 33 states and 160 cities" according to Kansas Heritage. In 1916, Debs changed his aim and decided to run for Congress in Indiana instead, advocating for American neutrality in World War I as part of his campaign. This led the United States to pass the 1917 Espionage Act, which created "criminal penalties for anyone obstructing enlistment in the armed forces," according to MTSU.
Простые люди не получают ничего и теряют всё — в первую очередь свои жизни. Они всегда учили вас верить, что это ваш патриотический долг — пойти на войну и умереть по команде. Но во всей истории мира, вы — простые люди — никогда не объявляли войну, и как ни странно, сам народ ни в одной нации никогда за все времена не объявлял войны. Рабочий класс, который ведет в се сражения, рабочий класс, который приносит величайшие жертвы, рабочий класс, который обильно проливает свою кровь и усеивает поле боя трупами, никогда еще не имел права голоса ни в объявлении войны, ни в заключении мира. Именно правящий класс неизменно делает и то, и другое. Только он объявляет войну, и только он заключают мир. Не ваше — спрашивать «почему». Но ваше — сделать и умереть. Это их девиз, и мы от лица пробуждающихся рабочих нашей нации возражаем.
Премия Юджина В. Дебса
A Democratic activist who writes under the pseudonym “Eugene Victor Debs” at the FrumForum has taken me to task for arguing in my forthcoming book and in a recent blog post that President Obama. The claim is sometimes made that Eugene Debs promised to pardon himself if elected President in 1920. In 1920, Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for the Oval Office from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was known as "prisoner 9653," according to Smithsonian Magazine. For most of the 1880s, Debs continued to preach the virtues of industrial cooperation and to discourage confrontations with either employers or the government. A graphic biography about Eugene V. Debs, folk hero and presidential candidate, reminds us of a time when support for socialism was strong in places like Kansas, Oklahoma, and Ohio.