From Volume 5, Issue Number 23 of EIR Online, Published June 6, 2006

Latest From The Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement

Countdown to the Texas State Convention: On the Hustings with Kesha Rogers

by Stephanie Nelson

LaRouche Youth Movement

HOUSTON, June 1 (EIRNS)—The night I heard that Kesha Rogers, a fellow member of the LaRouche Youth Movement, was going to run for chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, Lyndon LaRouche was on his way to Mexico. During his historic visit there, in March of this year, he remarked that he is passing the torch on to us, the young adult generation of the world today. The first LYM member to run for a statewide office, Kesha is proving hers are capable hands to take up that torch.

Now, Texas is a big state, but unfortunately, the Democratic Party is not thinking very big. They have lost a lot of power in this state during the preceding couple of decades. It is therefore appropriate that Kesha would adopt as her campaign slogan and mission, to get Texas "Out of the Bushes, into the Future!" Her ideas have the potential to revive the Democratic Party here, as we focus on former, current, and future membership of the Party. - Focus on Labor -

One main focus has been on labor unions: to bring them back into the Party as a strong pillar of constituent support. Kesha has addressed the Transit Workers, the Steelworkers, and the Electrical workers, among others, in Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, and other cities, on LaRouche's emergency legislation to retool the auto industry for an FDR-style development program. She has challenged them to help us get the legislation pushed through, to save their jobs and the country's productive capacity. At these meetings, we found friendly receptions, both to Kesha's message of rebuilding the nation's infrastructure and to our singing of political canons. But very few union members are delegates to the state convention, or are politically involved at all. Kesha's challenge to them—that if they are not making the decisions, then who is?—motivated them to agree to take more responsibility as citizens and working people.

We hit all of the Democratic district and club meetings that we could, many of which Kesha was invited to address. Of course, we were virtually the only young people at these meetings, plus we engaged everyone in actual policy discussion, and that excited them. With this crowd, Kesha addressed the need for infrastructure, focussing on water and nuclear power as two areas important to Texas, and the nation, and that Democrats should be a driver for their development globally. - The Party Must Change -

Aside from some tired, old slanders about Lyndon LaRouche, people are generally wide open to LaRouche's ideas about how to rebuild the nation's economy by retooling the auto industry, using FDR's anti-depression measures. They are freaked out that the Democrats keep losing elections, and yet there is no change in thinking or strategy coming from the Party power structure. Those honest enough, recognized that Kesha represents the kind of change that is necessary.

Candidates for other positions have engaged in lengthy dialogue with the LYM at these events, to talk about how we organize, and what response we are getting from the population, and we instructed them on what ideas they have to fight for to make their candidacies relevant to the voters. The other focus has been on the LYM specialty: organizing students and young people to see they will only have a future if they join the fight.

The campaign has taken us to organize at universities in towns we have never been to before, including El Centro College in Dallas, the Technical University in Brownsville, University of Texas at Austin and San Antonio, to name a few. The students are provoked by the fact that someone their own age has decided not to complain, but to run for office. Many said they want to help us. At the Brownsville Technical College in southern Texas, countless students signed up and contributed. LYM members addressed the entire student government, and were invited back for a forum since they want to endorse LaRouche's call for emergency legislation to retool the auto industry.

It is Kesha's campaign that is bringing out the seriousness in young people, because we do not treat them as a focus group, but as future leaders of a nation. I cannot predict what will happen at the state convention in one week (June 9). But I can say that this campaign, along with all the other LYM organizing across the country, is the quality of transformation into national leadership that the LYM has always had potential for.

This article is reprinted from The New Federalist, June 5, 2006.

See also, InDepth: "LaRouche Youth Bring Ideas to Mexican Presidential Campaign," by Gretchen Small.

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