2011 Bughouse Square Debates

Former CDL debate coach Kenzo Shibata (Lakeview H.S.) is in the main debate at this year’s Bughouse Square Debates at the Newberry Library. The 2011 Bughouse Square Debates are July 30, 1pm, at the Newberry, 60 W. Walton St. The topic: “Collective bargaining and the public sector: Is collective bargaining compatible with public service?”

Kenzo’s inviting all CDL coaches and debaters to come out and watch the debate!

The Bughouse Square Debates are a kind of public forum, public square, open-air debate program, with a rich Chicago history. From the Newberry Library website: “Bughouse Square (from “bughouse,” slang for mental health facility), the popular name for Washington Square Park, was the city’s boisterous and radical free-speech space from the 1910s through the 1930s. Orators mounted soapboxes and spoke to responsive, vocal crowds, and bohemians, poets, atheists, and religionists of all persuasions entertained bystanders. The square’s core contributors, however, came from the ranks of the Wobblies, men and women of the Industrial Workers of the World whose radical views, wit, and humor made them champion soap boxers and perennial crowd favorites. World War II and a post-war crackdown against socialists and communists, however, led to Bughouse Square’s decline and, by the mid 1960s, it ceased to exist. The Newberry Library revived the Bughouse Square Debates in 1986.”