Reid Kane

Debs the Democrat AFTER RISING UP THE RANKS of the labor movement in the 1870s and 80s, Debs was courted by the Democratic Party of Indiana to run for state legislature in 1884, and handily won the election. Yet his career as a Democratic Party politician was short-lived. As Ray Ginger, in his biography of Debs, The Bending Cross, recounts, When Debs was sworn into the state House of Representatives on January 8, 1885, he had already drafted a bill which would require railroad companies to compensate their employees for injuries suffered on duty. [Read More]

Presented at the 2016 Annual Gathering of the Institute for Social Ecology, held at the ISE compound in Marshfield, VT between August 19–21. PLATYPUS AS A PROJECT SEEKS to relate to the contemporary left by focusing on the Left in history. We do this because we think one’s understanding of history is in fact one’s theory of the present, of how the present came to be and what might become of it. [Read More]