Youth's Victories
Put LaRouche Campaign
at a Turning-Point

"We Interrupt This Probe—for a Landslide," headlined one of the Philadelphia newspapers on Nov. 5. Attorney-General John Ashcroft's targetting of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, and his near-successful attempt to knock out Philadelphia's Mayor John Street with a "corruption investigation," had been turned—by a sudden, all-out mobilization of the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM)—into an overwhelming 60-40% re-election for Street; another powerful reason for Ashcroft to resign; and another victory for Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche's 2004 campaign strategy. Democratic leaders from Street's own campaign, to the State Legislature, were amazed at the response from Philadelphia voters and party activists when the LYM turned the election into an principled fight over an urgent national and international issue in its final days.

While blanketting the city of 1 million people with 350,000 leaflets in one week and transforming a close "local" election into a stunning national defeat for Ashcroft and the neo-cons, more than 100 LaRouche Youth Movement activists attended a pre-Election Day weekend "cadre school" with candidate LaRouche, which is featured below. Around presentations and discussions with LaRouche and with his wife and Schiller Institute Chairman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, LYM leaders held additional classes and pedagogicals on astronomy, mathematics, art, and history. They expressed the fundamental commitment to truth of this youth movement, which is giving it the power out of all proportion to its numbers, to win such battles over political principle and to transform the 2004 Presidential campaign. "We will have thousands of youth leading this campaign," LaRouche declared on Nov. 3. "Give me 10,000 youth like this, and I'll be elected President."

'LaRouche's To Win or Lose'

Current voter opinion surveys show that President George W. Bush, despite his falling respect among Americans, still easily outpolls any one of the nine-pack of "officially approved" Democratic candidates; but when none of those nine are named, suddenly "a Democratic candidate" is in a dead-heat with Bush for the Presidency. Three fundamental matters on which LaRouche—unlike the media-approved candidates who occupy their debates with pandering and promising what they could never deliver—is making ongoing, crucial changes in American political prospects now, make the Presidential election "his to win or lose," depending on how rapidly his campaign recruits young activists and support. (He continues to rank second of all Democratic candidates in total number of listed campaign contributors.)

First, after a year-long focussed campaign to force the resignation of Bush's malicious "Svengali of Sept. 11," Vice President Dick Cheney, LaRouche is seen by all—including Cheney himself—to be the critical catalyst shaping the exposés and Congressional actions closing in on the Vice President. After LaRouche's Oct. 22 webcast, "Preparing for the Post-Cheney Era," neo-conservatives enemies of LaRouche, in particular, have publicly placed him in the center of the drive against Cheney. LaRouche's influence vs. Cheney is impacting other nations' policies, from the Arab world to Russia—where a decisive break with the Cheney faction's "oligarch" allies has finally begun.

Second, LaRouche has spent much of this campaign travelling the world, because of the demand for elaboration and discussion of his ideas to reverse the global economic depression. Cheney's faction has tried drive all other nations to "obey" the United States by force, making America an international target of hatred; the other Democratic candidates are simply unknown or irrelevant abroad. LaRouche's New Bretton Woods monetary reorganization policy, and his Eurasian Land-Bridge and "Super TVA" infrastructure-building concepts are being discussed, debated, and partly adopted all over the world, making him the only President of the United States who can put together an economic recovery from the Depression. His forcing Cheney out of office will put the economic collapse center stage for solution; the coming fall of the U.S. real estate bubble will further drive down incomes and expose the rotted-out real economy to be rebuilt.

The LaRouche Youth Movement itself, above all, by its victories and rate of growth, makes the Presidency "LaRouche's to win or lose." California Democratic leaders know, as former Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Mervyn Dymally and others have said publicly, that the LYM won its fight against the California Recall. Where the LaRouche Youth mobilization was concentrated—in particular, in Los Angeles County—apparent overwhelming support for the Recall was turned into its defeat on Oct. 7. As a result of this, the LYM was asked by Pennsylvania Democratic leaders and activists to mobilize in the Philadelphia fight—and delivered the stunning defeat to Ashcroft which is now the talk of the Party in that region. The same phenomenon is now appearing in Washington, D.C.; after LaRouche's Oct. 22 statement that he would reopen D.C. General Hospital on his first day in the White House, organizing by LaRouche Youth and other Democratic leaders has forced Mayor Tony Williams into a suddenly-announced "plan" to build a new hospital on the site.

These victories are in another world from the "promises" of other candidates who have been completely ineffective, or missing, in these same battles. The pace of recruitment of LaRouche's Youth Movement is, in fact, the potential determinant of the 2004 campaign's outcome.