The Right to Protest for Right

A biographical recount of the imprisonment of Eugene Victor Debs for his Canton, Ohio speech in which he spoke out publicly against America's entry into World War I and the amnesty campaign that fought for and eventually won his freedom. The book is written by Ernest Freeberg, a Professor of History at the University of Tennessee.

Freeberg does a terrific job detailing the major events in chronological order. I don't think anything fundamentally new is uncovered however Freeberg has managed to put together all the facts into a tight narrative and interpretation that is easy to read and engaging. There are lengthy examinations about the birth of civil liberty associations like the ACLU, the progressive reformers, the Wobblies, anarchists, and more. Also detailed by Freeberg are the Debs' Presidential campaigns including the one he ran while in prison. Finally, there are some great photos of Debs which Freeberg has managed to find through all of his exhaustive research through various library archives.

It is fitting that in 2008, with the never-ending War on Terror and the Patriot Act, America faces a similar circumstance as it did in 1918. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right". Debs story reminds us all of the fragility of democracy, how the natural tendency of authoritarian institutions whether they be governmental or corporations is to suppress public dissent and maintain a prostrate civil society.

I highly recommend this book not just because Debs was a socialist and spoke out against capitalism, but because his story is an American one and fundamentally its a human story. It's a story about a man who lost his freedom because he spoke for peace. It's a story about what "freedom" actually means. I leave you with a quote from Debs, "Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth" (p. 77). ( )

A look at the evolution of free speech rights in the WWI era through the lens of the imprisonment of Socialist leader Eugene Debs. Debs was convicted for a speech in Canton, Ohio, that allegedly had the "bad tendency" of discouraging men from participating in the military draft. The book is also a reminder that democracies have a long history of punishing dissent during times of national crisis, real or imagined. One criticism: I wished that there had been more elaboration of the world view of Debs and his vision of a Socialist America. ( )