Strike!

In the spirit of Eugene V. Debs

by

Fifth Estate # 378, Summer 2008

Eugene V. Debs

Eugene V. Debs,

an American Beowulf, who was like both a

sacred covenant rainbow

for all the blue proletariat

and a

powerful electromagnetic storm

and struck fiercely against the

industrial money monsters who

were mute,

blind, stark and cold

to all colors of tears and as

brutal, bloodthirsty and beastly

as the Anglo-Saxon monster Grendel!

Strike like a prairie grass fire by the light of the Morning Star at dawn, or

Strike like a heat wave by the light of the scorching sun at noon, or

Strike like a hurricane by the reflective light of the full moon at midnight,

But strike, as passionately as you love to make love.

Strike

Strike

Photo caption: Labor leader Eugene V. Debs giving his famous 1918 anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, for which he spent two and a half years in federal prison.

–photo: courtesy Debs Museum. P.O. Box 843, Terre Haute IN 47808 www.eugenevdebs.com

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