By Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row
The great dissenters
"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..."
--Eugene Victor Debs, Socialist, to the jury at his
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 World War I, 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 stirring orator, Debs
drew waves of applause from those who came to hear him. He also
spoke plainly about war and the wagers of war:
"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." (Howard Zinn, "A People's History of the United
States," p. 358)
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 go on to write his stirring
"Walls and Bars: Prisons and Prison Life in the 'Land of the
Free'" (1927).
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 blare, "Draft
Opposition Fast Spreading in State." Over 300,000 men evaded
the draft for the "War to End All War" (as it 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
1960s and 1970s.
Being anti-war is part of the historical fabric of
America.
Although it may surprise us in this age to speak of him
thus, Abraham Lincoln was famous before his presidency for his
outspoken opposition to the Mexican-American War (1846-1848),
when, as a member of Congress, the Illinois delegate challenged
President James Polk to specify exactly where American blood
was shed "on the American soil"--the pretext for the Mexican
War. As a Whig, Lincoln was outspoken on his party's
position:
"The declaration that we have always opposed the war is true
or false, according as one may understand the term 'oppose the
war.' If to say 'the war was unnecessarily and
unconstitutionally commenced by the President' be opposing the
war, then the Whigs have very generally opposed it." (Zinn, p.
151)
Historians who now review the basis for the Mexican-American
War generally agree that the White House used a lie to justify
it.
We have mentioned the Vietnam War. Who can question the
outspoken contributions that the heavyweight boxing champ,
Muhammad Ali, or the Rev. 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 a n----r,"
shone a garish light on the plight of Blacks in this 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 rampant 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 protestors in America who
weren't alive when he said it, and is repeated in a hundred
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 Rap Brown (now Imam Jamil Al-Amin),
"Dissent is as American as cherry pie."
Reprinted from the May 15, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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