Sunday, November 29, 2009

thought for the day


Eugene V. Debs is visited in the Federal Penitentiary by his running mate, Seymour Stedman. From the Indiana State Library's photo collection

Obama is not a socialist. I am a socialist.

5 comments:

@eloh said...

The guy in the pen looks pretty happy. Oddly strange and strangely odd.

Your driver said...

That was the great EV Debs. The pride of Indiana. President of the the American Railwaymen's Union. He was arrested and imprisoned for his union activities and ran for president on the Socialist Party Ticket. He got a million votes even though he was in the penitentiary. That was back before world war one. American radicals had one their first great fight, just forty years earlier and it looked as though they would continue on from victory over the confederacy and the abolition of slavery to victory over capitalism and the abolition of wage slavery.

Then it all got complicated.

Valerie said...

Hey Jon,

Synchronicity. Am just reading Harry Fisher's "Comrades" about his time in the Lincoln Brigade. He mentions that a group of volunteers, including Pat Reid (an anarchist) called themselves "the Debs Column". The footnote says he got a reprieve on Christmas day.

For your Christmas collection can think of only one song from the Spanish Civil War:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xCUz8uHEXI

Play it for for Victor Jara.

Hope everything goes well with retirement plans.

Valerie said...

Wasn't really listening to the words of this version only the nice dancetime music as waltzed round the flat cleaning - they seem to have eliminated the verse about hanging the generals on Christmas Eve. Right of course to disapprove.

Paul Robeson keeps to the original

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaMOWY_fRLo

I'll dedicate this one to Obama & Afghanistan

Your driver said...

Thanks Valerie. While I'm not much for the death penalty, it would certainly brighten my Christmas to see a few high ranking Americans locked away forever.

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