Eugene Debs and All Of Us

On Saturday night, I witnessed a ballroom full of stout Midwesterners—railroad men and laborers, college professors and students, retirees and young parents—stand and say, in unison, “While there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” There, in the salt-of-the-earth town of Terre Haute, Indiana, I saw the line of solidarity that runs from America’s deep past into its future. It’s still running. Have no fear.

Ever since the enlightenment, people disillusioned with religion are always bemoaning the fact that there does not seem to be anything quite adequate to replace its cultural role. Well, why not Debs? Why not replace it with the collective veneration of Eugene V. Debs, the famed American union leader, socialist, and rabble rouser? It could work. The man was a prolific writer, and turned a phrase at least as well as the guys who wrote the Bible. Debs was born and raised in Terre Haute, and his home there is now a museum. (He is the town’s second-biggest claim to fame, after the fact that it was where Larry Bird played his college ball.) For the past 60 years, the Debs Foundation has put on an annual banquet to honor some individual of the left who carries on the great man’s legacy. This year, the honoree was Bernie Sanders. The stakes felt a little higher. The moment felt more urgent. If ever there was a time to bring back all-American prairie socialism, it is now.

Debs, who lived from 1855 to 1926, rose Straight Outta Terre Haute to organize railroad workers, lead the huge but unsuccessful Pullman Strike of 1894, and run for president four times on the Socialist Party ticket—the last time, while he was in prison for antiwar activism. He is a good intellectual anchor if you want to reflect on how warped, unrealistic, and stupid today’s image of unshakable “red” and “blue” states is. Another good way to understand this is to go to a picket line in Indiana. That is what I did on Saturday morning. At the enormous Horseshoe Casino just outside Indianapolis, 200 dealers and other workers have been on strike for more than a week. They are trying to join the Teamsters, and Caesars, the company that owns the