8/15 Who is Jimmy Higgins? with actor/writer Harlan Baker

Harlan Baker as Jimmy Higgins

Who is Jimmy Higgins?
with actor and writer Harlan Baker
Author of “Jimmy Higgins: A Life in the Labor Movement”

The name “Jimmy Higgins” has for generations stood for the name of the rank-and-file union and socialist activist. Portland ME writer and actor Harlan Baker’s one-man play personifies Jimmy Higgins, and takes us on an engaging and inspiring tour through the history of the American labor movement, from recounts his days as a newspaper boy in Sandusky Ohio during the first World War, his meeting with Socialist leader and Presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs and other radicals opposed to American participation in the First World War, his experiences in the Lafollette campaign for president in 1924 and his experience covering the union organizing drives of tenant farmers and auto workers in the 1930s.

In our interview with Harlan Baker, we will explore his inspiration for a play about Jimmy Higgins, and learn a little bit about the play, and the labor history that is behind it.

We will end up the hour with a recording, by Harlan, of an excerpt from a speech that Eugene Debs gave to the court, during his 1918 free-speech trial under the infamous 1917 Espionage Act – the same act under which anti-Viet Nam War activist Daniel Ellsberg was tried, at a much later date.

Who is Jimmy Higgins? The story of a life in the labor movement
Wednesday, 8/15/12 7:00 pm USA Eastern Time
Occupy Boston Radio – OBR.FM
with rebroadcasts the following Monday 10:00 am
and Wednesday 7:00 am