Labor leader Gene debs died 85 years ago this month, but he remains an important source of inspiration and tactics for activists who are stuggling against powerful anti-labor forces.
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Piece Description
Labor leader Gene debs died 85 years ago this month, but he remains an important source of inspiration and tactics for activists who are stuggling against powerful anti-labor forces.
Broadcast History
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Transcript
Working people could find no greater inspiration in their current struggle against powerful anti-labor forces than the extraordinary life of labor leader Eugene V. Debs, who died 85 years ago this month.
Few American leaders have been more loved and influential, yet more hated than Gene Debs, whose proposed cures for the economic ills that infect American society remain as valid, vital and essential as ever.
Union organizer and strike leader, spellbinding orator, founder of the Socialist Party of America, five times a candidate for president – Debs was all that and more.
He realized, back in the late 1800s, that ordinary people were s the mercy of the corporate entities that had come to control the economic and political life of the country. They retrain control, of course, but the struggle waged by Debs and his allies can provide valuable guidance as well as inspiration to those who...
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Intro and Outro
INTRO:Commentator Dick Meister recalls one of the greatest American labor leaders.
OUTRO:Dick Meister is a long-time labor and political journalist.
