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Opinion
Rebuilding the World: The Inspiring Success of the Klamath Dam Removals
The 2024 removal of four dams on the Klamath River is an amazing example of how, when you address a human-based problem, nature can come back.
Nov 23, 2025
Since 2002, I’ve been reporting on the generations-long battle led by Klamath River tribes to take down four dams damaging the northern California river and its salmon. Recently Natasha Benjamin and I got to interview Amy Bowers Cordalis, the former general counsel for the Yurok Tribe, the largest of California’s tribes, about her new book The Water Remembers: My Indigenous Family's Fight to Save a River and a Way of Life. We did this on our Rising Tide, the Ocean Podcast.
David Helvarg (DH): Amy, usually our opening question is about one's first connection with the ocean. But since all rivers connect to the sea, let’s ask what your first memory of wild water was?
Amy Bowers Cordalis (ABC): Oh, I love that question. My first memory of wild waters is not even a visual memory, it’s an embedded experience. My family is from the village of Requa at the north side of the mouth of the Klamath River, and our ancestral home is an old Yurok traditional redwood plank house. And that’s where I spent most holidays and that’s where we’d go and stay, that was home base during fishing season.
I grew up just running around the village area and grandma’s house, and it sits overlooking the Klamath estuary, the mouth of the Klamath River, and the ocean. And so, my first connection with wild water was just being in that place surrounded by different forms of water; there’s the ocean and there’s always these extremely powerful waves at the mouth of the Klamath. And then you go inland, in the mouth, and that’s a really powerful exchange of different kinds of water, of salt water and fresh water merging. And then you’re in the estuary and it’s just like deep and wide, but then it’s right in the middle of the redwoods. And so often there is fog and mist surrounding you.
I was on a Yurok Fisheries tribal boat looking at the dead fish, and I just felt like my great grandma who had passed away, 20 years before, came to me and was like, "You got to stop this. We can’t have this anymore."
DH: It’s amazing when you stand on the bluff at the mouth of the Klamath and you look north and south and it’s forested as far as you can see, and you think you’re in the most populous state in the nation? It’s just hard to grasp how much of it is still wild. Of course there’s been decline over time. Before we get into that, let’s ask a bit more of your history.
ABC: Well, I grew up fishing. I grew up hearing the family stories about all these fights just to be on the river, right? Just to sort of survive colonization. And I write about those in the book and so I just felt like I had to get all this out in a narrative format so that people could know this history, but also share this experience with me.
I heard about the family’s Supreme Court case, the fish wars, and how the family fought back against federal marshals armed with machine guns and how we, even, like my dad, who’s one of the kindest humans I know, he drove around with a machine gun in his trunk because they weren’t safe. I grew up hearing these fish stories, like about catching lots of salmon in one night and how much fun and all the hard work it was. And the role of salmon and the value of salmon in feeding our families and continuing our way of life. And, so I just had a deep, deep love for the river, for our culture, for our salmon. And then in 2002, tragedy hit. And you know, people have heard about the Klamath River fish kill. It was the largest fish kill in American history.
Over 70,000 adult Chinook salmon died in the Klamath River on the lower part of the river within the Yurok Reservation. I was in college then, and I was home that summer when the fish kill happened working for the tribal fisheries (department). And my job that summer was to go and count salmon harvested by Yurok tribal members. And so, I spent the whole summer up and down the river talking to the people. And then when the fish started dying, it was so deeply moving and profound. It was like we were under attack again. It was hard for all the Yurok families who depended on salmon for their livelihood, but also we as Yurok people have a duty to protect Yurok country and to protect our salmon. And so, I just felt compelled to try and do something to help.
I was on a Yurok Fisheries tribal boat looking at the dead fish, and I just felt like my great grandma who had passed away, 20 years before, came to me and was like, "You got to stop this. We can’t have this anymore." And then my next thought was, you gotta go to law school. So, I went to law school and the whole goal was to get a legal education and be in a position to try to help my tribe… I went out to Colorado for law school and was able to work at the Native American Rights Fund for a period of time. They are the largest and oldest legal defense fund for tribes.
And then eventually I was called home. I’ll never forget a call I got from the then-Yurok chairman saying, "Amy, it’s time." And he asked me to be general counsel, and I had two little kids. My second son was about a year old, and I thought, "Oh, the timing’s not right, I got young babies, how am I gonna do all this?" And also, things on the river were really, really bad. That was 2016. The river was just getting sicker and sicker and the dam removal agreements were not certain. Things were just awful. And I just thought, well, this is what you’ve been training for. This is what you were called to do. So, I moved home and started that job and made arrangements so that I could work remotely a couple days and also take the baby to work.
DH: So, for those who haven’t yet read your book let’s go back a little. During the Gold Rush there was what California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 apologized for, which was a (federal, state, and vigilante) genocide against California’s Native Americans. You fast forward and "cultural fire"—Indigenous fire setting for forest management and protection—was outlawed as arson. And then the fish wars of the 1970s and 80s (that Amy’s father was involved in) were about reasserting tribal rights or treaty rights to fish salmon on the rivers.
Fast forward and I wrote about the 2002 fish kill which was more like a fish assassination when Gail Norton, the secretary of Interior under George W. Bush, opened the floodgates for alfalfa and potato farmers in eastern Oregon against the science advice that had been put forward by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And that resulted in this disaster, the salmon kill (downriver), but also inspired the growth of the tribal movement and some environmental groups, who did what?
ABC: Everything we could to save our culture and ourselves. We have a myth that says if the salmon die, so to do the Yurok people, because there’d be no reason for Yurok to be here because we are so deeply connected to them, you know, the salmon and the river, and our sole purpose on Earth is to steward them.
So, we fought with that kind of veracity and that kind of determination, and failure was not an option. After the fish kill a whole new generation of Indigenous peoples from the Klamath were launched into the fight. And you know what was interesting about that time was more and more non-Indians, NGOs, other folks were also compelled by the fish kill. And the fish kill was tragic, it was awful. And I write about how the fish kill started (on) the last day of a world renewal ceremony that the tribe hadn’t done in 100 years. And the whole point of that ceremony is to bring about world renewal and restore balance between humans and the natural world.
And so, there’s one way of looking at this, where it was like that ceremony really did its job. You know, the medicine was really strong and although we would never wish for the salmon to die in that way, their deaths launched the undammed, the Klamath movement, and showed the humans like, "Hey, look, you keep up this regime of out-of-balanced management of the system, it’s gonna collapse."
Natasha Benjamin (NB): So, can you describe to us just what happens to a river when you put up dams and why all these fish died?
ABC: There were a few contributing factors to the fish kill and so the order by then Vice President (Dick) Cheney to divert an extreme amount of water from the upper part of the basin in southeastern Oregon to support agriculture (and try and win Oregon in the 2004 presidential election), what that did was cause water flows at the bottom of the river, 250-300 river miles lower by my village, to be the lowest (water levels) in history. So, nothing about this was natural.
And this year, the salmon were bigger and beautiful and stronger than I’ve seen in years. I mean, they were just fierce.
Also, a contributing factor was the dams. The Klamath dams were built right in the middle of the Klamath River without fish ladders. So first off, you know, they’re blocking salmon habitat and salmon are on a mission. They will die trying to get to their spawning grounds. And so that’s what they would do at Iron Gate Dam is they would just hit their heads on the dam until they died. And if you ever went to Iron Gate, there was evidence of this. There were salmon carcasses all over. I mean, it was eerie. It was like a salmon graveyard.
But also, what was happening with the Klamath dams was that all of the agricultural runoff was coming down into the reservoirs behind the four dams. It (the upper Klamath) was former wetlands. They converted 200,000 acres of wetlands into agricultural lands. And so, what happens is that when you put chemicals on the land, it goes into the surface water and (into) the Klamath, and then that would pool behind the reservoirs and the water would get really polluted and it would get really hot. You’d have toxic blue-green algae blooms every year, and then that water would go down the entire Klamath River and poison it, from top to bottom. Then on top of that, the other thing that dams do is they block the natural sediment that would go down a river. And so, on a healthy river bed, you have lots of little, teeny rocks that help clean the river bar.
So you block that, and then you have just hard rock at the bottom of the riverbed. And what was happening under these bad conditions, is you would have these little worms (parasites) that would attach to those boulders at the bottom of the river and that would (then attach to fish and) spread fish disease. And that was causing the death of baby fish each year.
Also, behind the dams are these amazing cold water springs that cool the entire water system down the whole river. But it (the cold water) can’t get past the dams. It’s blocked under that hot, green, toxic (reservoir) water. So, all of those conditions were killing the river. By about 2010, over 90% of the Klamath salmon runs had been slaughtered. Like we were down to single digit percentages. So we had to do something, or there’d be no future.
DH: So, you moved from confrontation to collaboration to actually take the dams down. Maybe you could talk about what it took to get people to understand that taking out the dams was good for everybody on the river.
ABC: It definitely started with the grassroots Indigenous peoples of the Klamath. And they are diehards, they are hardcore, and they are brilliant. They organized protests all over the world and, you know, had signs that said things like "Warren Buffet kills salmon," because he was the owner of it (PacifiCorp, the owner of the dams) for a time. What they did was raise awareness about the issue, and they demanded attention. They demanded that the stakeholders be accountable for how their company’s business practices were essentially killing their way of life.
We have this common life force that is is bringing us together and in a lot of ways making us more accountable for our actions.
And then what happened is there’s also a bit of good medicine here too. In 2007, PacifiCorp’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) license to operate the dams was set to expire. And so, in 2006, a relicensing proceeding started, which gave the tribes and our allies an opportunity to advocate for dam removal, and that really launched the whole movement. But the grassroots effort really set the stage and educated people in a way you couldn’t ignore. By the time that relicensing hearing started, everybody knew about the issue.
And then what was really cool in the FERC proceeding is that the tribe put forth its ancient, federally reserved fishing and water rights and said that these rights demand that these dams come out. And then we coupled those with energy law, the Federal Power Act, and environmental laws to basically make the case that the Klamath dams were so harmful to salmon, to the river’s overall health and Indigenous lifeways, that it was against the public interest to keep them in.
And then there’s this really powerful section of the Federal Power Act, Section Eight, that says if you’re on a river where there are salmon you have to have some kind of fish passage in order to get a new license. And so, what that meant in the context of the Klamath is that if PacifiCorp wanted to renew their license to operate the dams, they had to put in some kind of fish ladders. Then there was an economic analysis completed and it turns out that it was cheaper to remove the dams than it was to keep them in. And then we had our turning point.
(With the eventual dam removal ending in 2024) there was like earth and rock and rebar and all kinds of things, and we repurposed it or returned it to where it came from. And now we are restoring over 20,000 acres within the former reservoir footprint. We have planted over 19 billion native seeds through the whole area. And there will be restoration projects going on for at least 10 more years.
And one thing I’m really excited about is that we’re also seeing more collaboration between all the Indigenous peoples (four tribes) on the basin. My nonprofit Ridges to Riffles is facilitating an inter-Indigenous group that is advising all of this restoration work. So, we’re renewing the world and rebuilding it and decolonizing it. And that’s not just good for us, but that of course also creates ecosystems for all the little critters. And so, you go there now and it’s remarkable. And there are fish that, oh the fish. I mean the fish. We have a salmon phenomenon happening. It is a straight up phenomenon. Amazing. This year the fish have gone past upper Klamath past the (now removed) dams. They haven’t been there in 100 years, but they went past the dams, past Keno Dam, past upper Klamath Lake, and are now in the Williamson and the Sprague rivers (in Oregon). We always said we’re gonna open up 400 miles of spawning habitat, and we’re about there with all that.
NB: Within a year of taking down the dams?
ABC: So last year we took out the dams, and there was every kind of scientific study, I mean 20 years of studies about what was going to happen, and they never anticipated that this many salmon would come back this fast and that they would go back into those spawning grounds, you know, where they hadn’t been in 100 years.
And this year, the salmon were bigger and beautiful and stronger than I’ve seen in years. I mean, they were just fierce. They just fought and they were gorgeous. And so, I kind of knew like, these guys are gonna do something, and they just surpassed everybody’s expectation.
You know we have this common life force that is is bringing us together and in a lot of ways making us more accountable for our actions. Because what happens at the top of the river so greatly impacts what happens at the bottom.
NB: This is an amazing example of when you address a human-based problem, nature can come back.
ABC: Absolutely. The concept is to remove the dams so that the river’s natural ecosystem functions can start performing again. And when we did that, I mean it was almost instantly the water was cleaner, you don’t have those reservoirs and those stagnant bathtubs, like everything is just being flushed out. And the river almost immediately was stronger and healthier.
NB: The Klamath is the antidote to the current political and climate crisis.
ABC: And what’s interesting too is that Klamath dam removal was also profitable. You know, it pumped $515 million into the economy. And some of the world’s largest construction corporations were responsible for the physical removal of the dams. And they used the same engineering techniques and business practices as they use for regular construction projects or building infrastructure. So, there’s a scalable business model that supports nature-based solutions… You know, there is a movement of people who are using nature-based solutions to solve the climate crisis and they’re accepting that humans are a part of the natural world and that we can actually work to rebuild the world!
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DC Police Collaboration With Occupying Feds Perpetuates Family Separation
Increased criminalization and deportations exacerbate family separation by creating the conditions used to justify state intervention and forcible removal.
Nov 22, 2025
Washington, DC is already the most policed city in the US, through resourcing policing more than any other major US city to the dozens of local and federal law enforcement agencies that residents encounter in our daily lives. These conditions and increased criminalization contribute to the stopping, arrests, sentencing, incarceration, and deportation of disproportionately Black and brown youth and adults. These circumstances contribute to forcible family separation. As a former foster youth I’ve seen how this exacerbates harms rather than pathways to safety for too many families.
Since August, additional presence of federal law enforcement and the National Guard have blanketed the city. Though Mayor Muriel Bowser claims that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) is not cooperating with immigration enforcement, numerous local accounts show MPD and federal agencies working alongside each other on. Local legal service and mutual aid organizations have declared MPD’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a violation of the Sanctuary Values Amendment Act (which DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson revealed Mayor Bowser secretly tried to repeal), calling the decision by DC Police Chief Pamela Smith a “betrayal of the city’s residents.”
The current conditions that DC residents are living under have rippling effects that will be felt long after the current occupation, including exacerbating family separation through deportation, incarceration of youth and adults, and forced removal under the guise of care.
Like the presence of federal agencies, Child Protective Services (CPS) are framed as protectors. But what DC families have felt is not protected, but increasingly unsafe conditions. What DC families have experienced is not security or sanctuary, but the very real consequences from a manufactured crisis that justifies the conditions for family separation in the state’s eye.
As DC residents, we must ask: What does true family safety look like for us?
Since the “surge” of the presence of federal agencies, community documentation and data project Courtwatch DC has reported a sharp increase in people detained who appear during arraignment court proceedings, which have gone as late as 1:00 am the following day. When a parent or guardian is arrested or incarcerated, even if for only one night, CPS often intervenes by displacing their children into the foster system, a pipeline that predominantly impacts youth of color. The increased criminalization of DC residents puts families at risk of separation due to parental incarceration.
ICE agencies are employing historic tactics of family separation as CPS continues a legacy of using immigration policies to separate families. When parents or guardians are detained and disappeared by ICE, children may be left with no caregivers and become vulnerable to CPS intervention. The justification of forcible removal of children while parents are indefinitely detained is a state-created problem, unnecessarily perpetuating family separation.
Residents have additionally reported that parents of immigrant students are afraid to send their children to school for fear of kidnapping by ICE. Making the choice to keep immigrant children away from school may be a double-edged sword, where the absence that is meant to protect them may be met by punitive attendance policies, putting both students and their parents at risk of intervention from CPS and law enforcement.
With or without youth programs, young people should be able to exist safely outside, in public, in their own city. Punitive tactics that directly target DC youth exacerbate the impacts of local law enforcement cooperation with federal agencies. Criminalizing existing as a young person in public, Mayor Bowser has continued to implement and threaten to implement youth curfew zones which target areas Black youth choose to spend time together in public.
When youth are criminalized and subsequently arrested, this may be considered a form of child endangerment or neglect—a justification for forcible removal of children from family care. While the city’s Black and brown youth are funneled into foster, jail, and prison pipelines, their Black and brown parents are blamed for the removal of their own children, justifying the expansion of state intervention and family separation.
One’s home, from the living room, neighborhood, to the city, should feel safe—like a sanctuary. When families are separated, missingness is a constant reminder that we live in unsafe conditions. As DC residents, we must ask: What does true family safety look like for us? Residents have been clear that they recognize that the federal “surge” is not about crime or safety, but about control, extraction, and repression of the most vulnerable. As DC residents, we must make this demand: If DC’s lawmakers care about the security and wellness of families, they must end the cooperation of MPD with federal agencies.
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'Just Cause' Is a Worthy Cause
Activists in Ithaca, New York are mobilizing for the first city-wide ban on arbitrary firings in the US. Other cities should take note.
Nov 22, 2025
Activists in Ithaca, New York are trying something unique: They’re mobilizing support for an ordinance that would prohibit employers in that small city from firing their employees without just cause. If they succeed, they’ll have enacted the first such city-wide ban on arbitrary firings in the country.
Success in this effort will be a big deal, because in the United States, employment—unless otherwise restricted by law, collective bargaining agreement, or individual employment contract—is considered to be “at will.” This means that in the vast majority of cases, employers are entitled to fire workers at their whim, without warning or explanation.
A 2021 report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) tells us that about half of US workers have been affected by unfair or arbitrary firings at some point in their lives, with devastating consequences for them and their families. Not surprisingly, then, a nationwide survey cited in the report found wide public support for just cause protections, including from 71% of voters in battleground states, with both Democratic and Republican majorities weighing in favorably.
Existing Restrictions on Employers' Right to Fire
Even without new federal, state, or local legislation, employers today face some limits to the at-will doctrine: federal and state laws, like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, that bar various sorts of discrimination in the workplace; anti-retaliation statutes, like those included in the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and many other whistleblower-protection statutes; and section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, that prohibits firing for union or other "concerted" activity. All these laws fall short of robustly protecting workers from retaliatory or discriminatory firings, however, largely because the burden is on the employee to prove the employer's illegal motivation—no simple feat—when under the general at-will rule the employer can fire the worker for no reason at all.
In addition to these limited statutory constraints on the at-will doctrine, over the past 50 or so years a number of state common law exceptions to the rule have developed. The most prevalent is the "public policy" exception, under which, in theory at least, employers can't fire workers for reasons that are contrary to public policy. Courts generally interpret the exception narrowly, applying it only to employees who exercise a clear legal right, perform a clear legal duty, or refuse to violate the law, or when the employer engaged in an “outrageous violation of a well-established public policy.”
Well-crafted state and local laws and ordinances, with accessible and effective enforcement mechanisms, have the potential to empower workers in new and game-changing ways, especially as federal protections erode before our eyes.
A second exception is the "implied contract of continuing employment" (at least theoretically available in 41 states and the District of Columbia). It's derived from employee handbooks, policies, and the like, that suggest protection from discharge except if the employee performs poorly, violates company policies, or has to be laid off because of the employer's economic necessity. Employers can generally get around this claim by expressly stating in their materials that the employee is working on an at-will basis, and that its various policies can be revised at any time, at the discretion of the employer.
Lastly, 11 states have read into the common law an "implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing," imposed on employers and employees, to act fairly. While theoretically this should prohibit firings without cause altogether, in actuality courts rarely find it applies, and then only in the most abusive cases. In other words, none of these common law carve outs from at-will employment have been particularly helpful to workers.
The Ithaca Ordinance
Which brings us to Ithaca’s legislative proposal. As the core provision of its current draft version (embedded at the Ithaca Just Cause website), the ordinance would prohibit discharge of an employee who has completed their (maximum 90-day) probationary period, for any reason other than just cause or a bona fide economic reason. In considering whether the just cause standard has been satisfied, the fact finder is to consider, among other things, whether the employer trained the worker on its performance requirements and bases for discipline, and whether the employer’s policy, rule, practice, or performance standard, including its use of progressive discipline, was reasonable and applied consistently.
Also, except in cases of egregious misconduct, the employer has to specifically notify the worker of what rules they violated or requirements they fell short of, and must utilize progressive discipline prior to firing. Similar notice of reasons is required before discharging a worker on account of bona fide economic necessity. Significantly, if an employee termination is to be upheld, the burden is on the employer to satisfy these requirements by a preponderance of the evidence.
The proposed legislation also adds a "Worker Rights" section to the City of Ithaca Municipal Code, and establishes a commission that would adjudicate complaints of violation. Complaints of violation can also be filed in court.
Retaliation against workers who exercise any of the rights granted by the legislation is expressly prohibited, and use of electronic surveillance as a tool for determining employee performance is restricted. Remedies for employees vary depending on the violation, and include back pay and damages, rescission of discipline and reinstatement, penalties, severance pay, injunctive relief, and attorneys’ fees.
Other Just Cause Efforts
The proposed ordinance echoes the recommendations laid out in these NELP and Roosevelt Institute reports. Published in 2021, both make the case for why this kind of municipal ordinance, or more potently, a comparable state law (or, as an even more radical aspiration, federal legislation, as promoted by Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders) is justified and overdue for all workers—with NELP focusing particularly on the disproportionate impact of at-will employment on people of color and immigrant workers, who face higher rates of wage theft, discrimination, and retaliation for asserting their rights than the employee population at large.
It should come as no surprise, but it's still shameful, that this country lags far behind many other nations—Australia, Brazil, Japan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and most of the European Union, to name a few—in providing just-cause protections against arbitrary and unfair firings. Which is why what the Ithaca coalition is doing is really worth noticing. But it's not the first city to take this on: Philadelphia led the (notably small) pack when, in 2019, its city council enacted a just cause termination ordinance for the city's approximately 1,000 parking lot attendants. New York City was next, enacting a comparable ordinance protecting its fast food workers in 2021. Also in New York City, a diverse coalition of unions, advocacy organizations, and high road employers are pressing for passage of a Secure Jobs Act covering all employees who work in the city. With its newly elected democratic socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani, it just might succeed.
The US territories of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have just cause laws. In Illinois, a Secure Jobs Act, pressed by Raise the Floor Alliance and a broad array of allies, was introduced in the state legislature in 2021, but has yet to be enacted. In what might come as a surprise, Montana is the only state in the US to have enacted just cause legislation, and it's been on the books for decades. While not nearly as progressive as the Ithaca, New York City, and Illinois models, it is unique in prohibiting, state-wide, firings without good cause.
Will Just Cause Laws Hamper Unionization Efforts?
Some may be concerned that just cause legislation could undercut unions' ability to successfully organize, since that's a key benefit they can provide in collective bargaining agreements. But there are a number of arguments that cut the other way—including that if firing without good cause is made illegal and is readily enforceable, it creates a more effective impediment to employers' efforts to get rid of pro-union activists than the weak and slow remedies the National Labor Relations Act has to offer. And, just cause for all workers would provide a floor, not a ceiling, for union negotiations for even better protections against improper firings at unionized workplaces.
Parting Thoughts
Worker rights advocates should watch Ithaca Just Cause's initiative with keen interest. It also should give food for thought—and inspiration—for those of us who live in other cities and states. It’s clear that just cause protections are popular with workers across party lines. Well-crafted state and local laws and ordinances, with accessible and effective enforcement mechanisms, have the potential to empower workers in new and game-changing ways, especially as federal protections erode before our eyes. For those of us in locales where this might be possible, maybe it's time to give it a try.
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Eugene V. Debs, Defender of American Liberty
Released from jail on this day 130 years ago, the great socialist and labor leader delivered a speech we would do well to remember in these perilous times.
Nov 22, 2025
On November 22, 1895, Eugene V. Debs was released from Woodstock Jail, where he had been imprisoned for six months for his leadership of the 1894 Pullman strike. Later that day, before a large crowd of supporters at Battery D in Chicago, he spoke on the topic of “Liberty.”
Debs was a great orator, and “Liberty” is a brilliant speech, powerfully evoking both “the spirit of liberty” heralded by the Declaration of Independence, and the promise of a freedom yet to be redeemed by American workers in thrall to plutocratic government. As Nick Salvatore noted in his classic biography, Eugene V. Debs, Citizen and Socialist, this speech marked an important moment in the evolution of Debs from a radically republican labor activist to the country’s leading socialist.
Debs notes his own situation, “stripped of my constitutional rights as a freeman and shorn of the most sacred prerogatives of American citizenship.” He proceeds to defend the American Railway Union as a necessary and legitimate organization of workers, and the strike as a legitimate means of pursuing justice, which” threw down no gauntlet to courts or armies—it simply resisted the invasion of the rights of workingmen by corporations.”
An adamant defense of worker rights, the speech’s overriding theme is unmistakably the political theme of “liberty” and indeed democracy. This is clear from Debs’s opening words:
Manifestly the spirit of ’76 still survives. The fires of liberty and noble aspirations are not yet extinguished. I greet you tonight as lovers of liberty and as despisers of despotism. I comprehend the significance of this demonstration and appreciate the honor that makes it possible for me to be your guest on such an occasion. The vindication and glorification of American principles of government, as proclaimed to the world in the Declaration of Independence, is the high purpose of this convocation.
The entire first half of the speech centers on the theme of “personal liberty; or giving it its full height, depth, and breadth, American liberty, something that Americans have been accustomed to eulogize since the foundation of the Republic.” Paying tribute to the republic’s founding—"For the first time in the records of all the ages, the inalienable rights of man, ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’ were proclaimed July 4, 1776”—Debs proceeds to wax poetically, for eight long paragraphs, about the enduring resonance of that 1776 proclamation, the indivisibility of liberty, and the “more than satanic crime of stealing the jewel of liberty from the crown of manhood and reducing the victim of the burglary to slavery or to prison.” It is for this crime that he morally indicts the railroad magnates and their federal government allies for breaking the strike and imprisoning its leaders.
Debs insists that it is the labor movement that most embodies “the spirit of ’76”:
To the unified hosts of American working men fate has committed the charge of rescuing American liberties from the grasp of the vandal horde that have placed them in peril, by seizing the ballot and wielding it to regain the priceless heritage and to preserve and transmit it without scar or blemish to the generations yet to come.
The ballot, Debs notes approvingly, “has been called a weapon that executes a free man’s will as lighting does the will of God.” Debs rhapsodizes in almost religious tones about the power of democratic elections:
There is nothing in our government it cannot remove or amend. It can make and unmake presidents and congresses and courts. It can abolish unjust laws and consign to eternal odium and oblivion unjust judges, strip from them their robes and gowns and send them forth unclean as lepers to bear the burden of merited obloquy as Cain with the mark of a murderer. It can sweep away trusts, syndicates, corporations, monopolies, and every other abnormal development of the money power designed to abridge the liberties of workingmen and enslave them by the degradation incident to poverty and enforced idleness, as cyclones scatter the leaves of the forest. The ballot can do all this and more. It can give our civilization its crowning glory—the cooperative commonwealth.
Debs appreciated the rhetorical and the inspirational power of the dissenting American political tradition that hearkened back to the Revolution and its “spirit of ’76,” a tradition that included his heroes Jefferson, Paine, Garrison, Phillips, Lincoln, and Anthony. And he firmly believed that civil liberties and regular democratic elections represented forms of genuine if precarious social progress whose defense and expansion offered real opportunities for the furtherance of social and economic justice. He was, in short, a democrat.
He ended his speech with the hope that “American lovers of liberty are setting in operation forces to rescue their constitutional liberties from the grasp of monopoly and its mercenary hirelings.” That hope was not in vain, even if the Pullman strike was suppressed and Debs twice found himself in prison for refusing to be silenced, in 1895 and then in 1918 when imprisoned for his famous “Canton address,” critiquing WWI. The labor movement he helped to lead played a crucial role in advancing many of the policies—from the 8-hour workday to occupational safety and health regulation to “social security” broadly understood—that most Americans today simply take for granted. Debs was indeed one of the 20th century’s true crusaders for civil liberties and democratic inclusion. And his distinctive vision of a democratic socialism established an enduring legacy whose most recent heir is New York City’s mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, who indeed quoted Debs in his victory speech.
At a time when the Trump administration is attacking liberty on a daily basis, targeting everyone on the left as a “radical lunatic” and “enemy from within,” and seeking to destroy the very possibility of political dissent and opposition, Debs’s paean to “Liberty” on November 22, 1895—and his commitment to its active promotion—has never been more relevant.
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