A century ago, Eugene Debs ran for U.S. president from prison. Here’s how that went. – MSNBC
“Eugene Debs was one of the founders and the longtime leader of the Socialist Party in the United States. He came up through the labor movement and first went to prison in 1895 for being the leader of the American railway unions in the Pullman Strike, the largest strike in the 19th century. The fact that he was put in jail for leading that strike led him to the conclusion that the two major political parties were both in the hands of what he would consider to be the corporate plutocracy. He believed that the only way forward was to convince workers to vote in their own interests — and that would be embodied in the Socialist Party platform…
“There was a time in our history when our conception about the range of political possibilities was much wider, when the Socialist Party was active and a meaningful voice in the conversation. Many of their ideas about reform were adopted and absorbed, and are now considered to be a commonplace part of the fabric of our society (the other parts being too radical, the ideas about state control of the means of production). But it forced the conversation in directions that, I think, made grappling with the problems of the day much richer for society than we have now.
“One of the drawbacks of the Red Scare — the first one that shut down the Socialists in the 1920s, not to mention the 1950s — is that it made that socialist tradition seem like an alien force in American life, rather than recognizing that there was this long, radical socialist tradition that very much emerges out of and is part of the American democratic tradition.”
Has DT crossed the line into delirium tremens? – CCSE