Around 70 people joined in the fifth annual Debs in our Voices event hosted by the Eugene V Debs Foundation and held at the Vigo County History Center located at 929 Wabash. Many read via zoom from locations all across the country. 

This year the event featured excerpts from Debs’ speeches throughout his entire career as an activist. Museum director Allison Duerk MC’d the event and, the entire collection of readings can be found on the Debs foundation website, and span from 1877 until Debs imprisonment in 1919. 

An excerpt from Debs’ lecture at the Fargo Opera house read, “I am for law and order myself, but I want it to be the right kind of law, and I want it enforced against all people alike. The has been in this country that our judicial nets have been so adjusted as to catch the minnow and let the whales slip through.”

City Councilman Todd Nation read a section from Debs’ Anti-War Speech in Canton, Ohio stating, “In due time the hour will strike and this great cause triumphant – the greatest in history – will proclaim the emancipation of the working class and the brotherhood of all mankind.”

An extended quote from Debs’ speech Prison Labor: Its Effects on Industry and Trade read, “Isaiah saw in prophetic cision a time when nations should war no more – when swords should be transformed into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. The fulfilment of the prophecy awaits an era when Love and Lobor, in holy alliance, shall solve the economic problem.

Here, on this occasion, is the great metropolis with its thousand spires pointing heavenward, where opulence riots in luxury which challenges hyperbole, and poverty rots in sweatshops which only a Shakespeare or a Victor Hugo could describe…where wealth and want and woe bear irrefutable testimony of deplorable conditions.”  

The Debs Foundation and Museum are located in Terre Haute at 451 N 8th Street and are open to the public for free tours. Information about dates, times, and what to expect can be found on the foundation’s website.