Universal Health Care: Theme of Chicago’s Debs Thomas Harrington Dinner

Chicago’s 50th Annual Debs - Thomas - Harrington Dinner features Rose Ann DeMoro, Executive Director of the California Nurses Association / National Nurses Organizing Committee and AFL-CIO Executive Committee member. With Rose Ann DeMoro, the April 25th dinner will have someone well qualified to speak, and speak well and forcefully, on the nation’s need for a national and universal health care program. [Update April 22 update here]

This year, Chicago DSA is honoring:

• Les Orear, President Emeritus (and founder) of the Illinois Labor History Society
• Dr. Mardge Cohen, Medical Director of Women’s Equity in Access to Care and Treatment and long-time Chicago-area advocate of universal health care; and
• Laurie Burgess, stellar labor lawyer and partner in the firm Jacobs, Burns, Orlove, Stanton, and Hernandez.

This year’s Dinner will be a bit earlier than usual, Friday evening, April 25. And it will be at a new location: the Crowne Plaza - Chicago Metro at Madison and Halsted in Chicago. For more information call 773.384.0327 or go to http://www.chicagodsa.org/d2008

To order tickets or to place an ad in the Dinner Program Book, go to http://www.chicagodsa.org/d2008/flyer50.pdf

The Dinner began as the Debs Day Dinner in 1958 under the auspices of the old Socialist Party of America (then known as the SP-SDF). For the first 13 years, the event was not an awards dinner, but generally featured one or more speakers. Norman Thomas, Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, Charles Chiakulas were among those who addressed the Dinners.

The Debs Day Dinner was a part of an older tradition of celebrating Eugene V. Debs’ birthday (rather like the Democratic Party once widely celebrated the birthday of Andrew Jackson). Even as the Socialist Party of America lost its hegemony on the left, Debs Day dinners typically drew a broad cross-section of the left. As a birthday celebration of Debs, the Dinner was held in November rather than May as is done today.

In 1969, the Dinner became the Thomas - Debs Dinner in honor of Norman Thomas. It became an awards dinner in 1971. In 1973, the newly formed Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) took over the Dinner’s sponsorship. In 1983, DSOC and the New American Movement merged to form the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). DSA has sponsored the Dinner since then.