The great socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs once said, “I have been accused of obstructing the war. I admit it. Gentlemen, I abhor war. I would oppose war if I stood alone. I have sympathy with the suffering, struggling people everywhere. It does not make any difference under which flag they were born or where they live.” He was speaking to his jury at an espionage trial in 1918. The name Eugene Debs may not ring bells today, but in the first quarter of the 20th century, his trial rocked the nation. An ardent socialist, Debs made plain his opposition to the war, and more importantly, his opposition to the class character of the war: that it was a war waged by working people for the wealthy, a powerful and steering order. Debs drew waves of applause from those who came to hear him. He also spoke plainly about war and the wagers of war. He said, “They tell us that we live in a great free republic, that our institutions are democratic, that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder, and that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars. The subject class has always fought the battles.”
Debs, charged with violating the Espionage Act, was convicted of obstructing the draft for giving this speech, and a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court would affirm his conviction a year later. The imprisoned labor leader, convicted of exercising his alleged First Amendment rights of speaking out against an unpopular war, would write his derring Walls and Bars in 1927. He was nominated by the Socialist Party to run for president in 1920. Debs received over 1 million votes while behind bars.
Nor was Debs alone in his opposition to the war, as papers of the time attest. The Minneapolis Journal would glare, “Draft Opposition Fast Spreading in the State.” Over 300,000 men evaded the draft for the war to end all wars, as World War One was called. Working people demonstrated against the war all across the nation and were attacked by cops and soldiers under orders of their brass. Tens of thousands of men claimed conscientious objector status. What is clear is that anti-war sentiment didn’t just sprout up during the unpopular Vietnam War in the 60s and 70s. Being anti-war is part of the historical fabric of America.
We have mentioned the Vietnam War. Who can question the outspoken contributions that the heavyweight boxing champ, Muhammad Ali, or Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made to challenging and ending that fevered carnage in the Far East? Ali’s famous phrase, “No Vietnamese ever called me NI$$r,” shone a garish light on the plight of Blacks in the country who were asked to defend a democracy abroad that was sorely lacking at home. Dr. King’s speeches against the war earned him the enmity of his liberal fair-weather friends and caused the corporate press to attack him relentlessly for treason. Yet, who, some 30 years later, can remember the catcalls of his critics when compared to the excellence and ethics of his dissent against the rapid militarism of the war?
Dr. King’s proclamation that America was the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is found in the mouths of tens of thousands of anti-war protesters in America who weren’t even alive when he said it, and is repeated in 100 different languages around the world to legitimize a global anti-war movement of millions who oppose the American way of war. To paraphrase the former Rapp Brown, now Imam Jamil Al-Amin, “Dissent is as American as cherry pie.” From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noel Hanrahan for Prison Radio.
