WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:55 — 43.8MB)
On March 30 this year, WFHB partnered with several local businesses, the Ryder Magazine and Film series, the Burroughs Century, the Debs Foundation, and Indiana University, to bring Paul Buhle to Bloomington to talk about his new graphic biography of Eugene V. Debs (drawn by Noah Van Sciver and published by Verso) and the necessity of utopian thinking.
What better way than this kind of community collaboration to demonstrate to you the value proposition of WFHB–not only do we support the community’s learning, we share that with the greater listening public–an audience that can be found across the globe. WFHB is volunteer powered and listener funded. Which means we exist at your pleasure. Take the time to support us with your attention and your money. The easiest way to do this is to click here: Donate!
Dynamic and beloved American radical, labor leader, and socialist Eugene Victor Debs led the Socialist Party to federal and state office across the United States by the 1920s. Imprisoned for speaking out against World War I, Debs ran for president from prison on the Socialist Party ticket, receiving over 1 million votes. Debs’s life is a story of labor battles in industrializing America, of a fighting socialist politics grown directly out of the Midwest heartland, and of a distinctly American vision of socialism.
Today Interchange brings you selections from our March 30th event so you can partake in a chapter of the nation’s history that is at once specific to Indiana, Terre Haute to be precise, but so much larger than the Hoosier State.
As much as this was a Debs event, it was also a Paul Buhle event.
Paul Buhle is one of the foremost historians of American radicalism and the American Left having authored or edited over 30 books, including works such as Images of American Radicalism, Marxism in the United States, the Encyclopedia of the American Left, and Radical Hollywood. He is also the editor of over a dozen comic art books that are wide-ranging yet consistent in Socialist and Radical perspective: There are books on Jesus, The Beats, Bohemians, The Wobblies, Rosa Luxemburg, Che Guevara, the Irish martyr James Connolly, Johnny Appleseed, Gene Debs, and most recently Herbert Marcuse. Buhle founded the SDS Journal Radical America and the archive Oral History of the American Left.
Our program features an in-studio interview with Buhle; we’ll hear Debs’ words brought to life by four local writers; and ends with Buhle talking to an audience about the socialist utopianism of Debs finding form in the counterculture of the 1960s and breathing life into a new generation willing to march against capitalism and climate disruption.
SEGMENT ONE
Alex Lichtenstein, editor of the American Historical Review and professor in the History Department at Indiana University interviews Paul Buhle in the WFHB studios about the role of comics in conveying complex historical events and lives to young readers.
SEGMENT TWO
Michael Glab reads “What’s the Matter with Chicago?”
Joan Hawkins reads “The Rights of Working Women”
SEGMENT THREE
Tony Brewer reads selections from “An Ideal Labor Press”
Eric Rensberger reads the “Statement to the Court Upon Being Convicted of Violating the Sedition Act”
SEGMENT FOUR
Paul Buhle on the necessity of utopian ideals to bring us a working socialism.
Our THANKS to: Paul Buhle, Alex Lichtenstein, Joan Hawkins, Tony Brewer, Eric Rensberger, Michael Glab, Charles Cannon, Peter LoPilato, Bella Bravo, Hugh Farrell, Wes Martin, The Ryder Magazine and Film Series, The Grant Street Inn, Bloomingfoods, the I Fell Gallery, the Debs Foundation in Terre Haute, Verso Books, PM Press, several departments at Indiana University including Indiana Studies and Labor Studies, and The Burroughs Century.
RELATED
All of the essays heard in the program can be found at the Eugene V. Debs Internet Archive
The Eugene V. Debs Foundation
Comics Code History: The Seal of Approval
The Graphically Radical Paul Buhle (Interchange)
Red Rosa: Eagle of the Revolution (Interchange)
MUSIC
“The Ballad of Eugene Debs” by Joe Glazer
“Chicago” performed by Crosby, Still, Nash & Young
“Rebel Girl” performed by Son Volt (written by Joe Hill)
“Christ for President” performed by Wilco (lyrics by Woody Guthrie)
“The 99” by Son Volt
PHOTO
Eugene Debs became Convict No. 9653 at the U.S. Penitentiary, Atlanta, where he was sentenced to 10 years for sedition. (National Archives at Atlanta, RG 129)
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Segment Producer: Alex Lichtenstein
Field Recording: Wes Martin
Executive Producer: Wes Martin
