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Monday March 6, 1916
From the International Socialist Review: Comrade Debs on the Fantines of Our Day

From this month's edition of the Review, Comrade Debs urges class solidarity and human compassion for the "girls, women who have walked the path of thorns and briers with bare and bleeding feet; who know the ways of agony and tears, and who move in melancholy procession as capitalist society's sacrificial offering to nameless and dishonored graves."

FANTINE IN OUR DAY

By EUGENE V. DEBS
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THE reader of "Les Miserables" can never forget the ill-starred Fantine, the mournful heroine of Hugo's immortal classic. The very name of Fantine, the gay, guileless, trusting girl, the innocent, betrayed, self-immolating young mother, the despoiled, bedraggled, hunted and holy martyr to motherhood, to the infinite love of her child, touches to tears and haunts the memory like a melancholy dream.

Jean Valjean, noblest of heroes, was possible only because of Fantine, sublimest of martyrs.

Fantine—child of poverty and starvation—the ruined girl, the abandoned mother, the hounded prostitute, remained to the very hour of her tragic death chaste as a virgin, spotless as a saint in the holy sanctuary of her own pure and undefiled soul. It was of such as Fantine that Heine wrote: "I have seen women on whose cheeks red vice was painted and in whose hearts dwelt heavenly purity."

I have come to believe that the American Electorate is clearly splitting its parties, and we as the party of the 99% have an auspicious opportunity to affect generations to come.

The 2016 Democratic Primary, whatever its outcome, is spawning a party in places such as this. We no longer need newspapers for our information. We no longer tune into the mainstream media. We are not listening to them.

This is a celebration of smiley7, who has long been a friend of mine. We're blog brothers. He's a seriously good guy, as many of you know. Some scoff at the closeness such communion can bring, but not I.

I’m with Pierre.

“There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe.”

If there's ONE topic that has been treated with a complete lack of respect in this presidential campaign, it's that of war. We have one party who thinks that the solution to political problems is to rain fire from the heavens like an avenging god, and another who thinks the same thing but likes to pretend that it doesn't really count if the body bags aren't on TV.