CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION
LaRouche Youth Bring Reality,
Provide Leadership to Party
by Harley Schlanger
Representatives of Lyndon LaRouche brought reality to the California Democratic Party state convention in San Jose March 28-30, by challenging those attending to take up the historic task of acting to reverse the greatest financial collapse and economic depression in history, as the only topic worth discussing. Members of the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM)—some of whom were delegates, others elected to official party positions—have been engaged in ongoing organizing efforts within the party in California since the inception of the LYM, in 2000.
Their presence in San Jose, both as official participants in convention proceedings from the podium, in the caucuses, and informally, in the hallways and at the Franklin Roosevelt Legacy Democratic Club table, was crucial in provoking many well-meaning, but ignorant and impotent Democrats, to reflect on the best tradition of the party, that of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and its leading advocate today, Lyndon LaRouche.
Leading Democrats involved in the Presidential campaign pointed to this kind of "kick in the ass" from the LYM as essential to take back the White House and expand Democratic majorities in the Congress in the November general election.
This intervention was necessary, as many of those who participate in "politics" in California remain strangely out of touch with the life-and-death issues facing most Americans. With the U.S. physical economy in free fall, with the Federal Reserve Bank pumping hundreds of billions of dollars a month into the disintegrating banking system, in a doomed effort to "stabilize" it, and with the so-called subprime crisis threatening hundreds of thousands of Californians with foreclosure, discussion of the economy by party leaders was subordinated to rapturous paeans to "diversity," and self-congratulatory pats-on-the-collective-back over the continuing environmentalist lunacy, which has sidetracked the state's Democrats, reducing them to being a junior partner to the state's fascist greenie governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In the face of this demoralizing approach, typified by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—who is blamed, correctly, by many rank-and-file Democrats, for the failure of the Congress to counter or reverse the policies of the Cheney-Bush Administration—the spirit of the LYM intervention can be seen in the following report submitted by LYM member Ian Overton.
He wrote:
Looming large on the mind of every attendee was the dark specter of the illegal bailout of Bear Stearns, a fresh confirmation of LaRouche's warning that the Anglo-Dutch Liberal 'free-trade' model of globalization is dead, and, unless emergency measures are taken to protect the population, they will be the ones sacrificed to bail out this corpse.
He continued:
Yet, strangely enough, the economic crisis was not an official topic of deliberation, during the entire weekend. Thank God that the LYM was there, organizing from 8 AM to midnight, to force the issue of a return to FDR-style 'American System' economic policies, while mocking the official party 'green' leadership for passionately declaring their love of icebergs, while the Titanic sinks.
FDR Versus Hitler
The LYM deployment addressed the economy by pointing to the 1932 nomination and election of FDR as the relevant precedent for Democrats today. The Bear Stearns bailout was on everyone's mind, as Overton reports, but few had any conception of what it actually means. By counterposing LaRouche's analysis—that the bailout is not an effort to "save the banking system," since it has already crashed—to impotent populist whining about how "you can't beat Wall Street," LYM organizers catalyzed discussion about why only an FDR-style bank reorganization, as in 1933, can revive the economy.
This forced a deeper discussion of the nature of this election year, that what is at stake is the survival of the United States as a constitutional republic. LYM organizers lifted Democrats out of the narrow confines of the Clinton-Obama theatrics, to take up the existential threat to our republic posed by City of London financial interests today: that the same networks that backed Hitler and the Europeanwide fascist movement in the 1920s and '30s, are engaged in rigging the 2008 election. Their strategy is to use Barack Obama to knock out Hillary Clinton, knowing that Obama is unelectable, given the scandals they intend to unleash against him.
In this way, they believe they can prevent the re-emergence of an FDR-style, American System economic alternative to the fascist global order they are intent on imposing.
The danger of fascism was highlighted by the near-continuous showing at the FDR Legacy Club booth of the LYM DVD, "Firewall: In Defense of the Nation-State." Congressmen, state legislators, and rank-and-file delegates stopped by to watch the documentary, and engage in lively dialogues with organizers.
The "FDR versus Hitler" polemic was put on the floor of the convention Saturday morning by LYM member Quincy O'Neal, who is also a member of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party Central Committee, and vice-chair of the California Democratic Party African-American Caucus. Quincy was an official speaker on a panel on immigration, representing the Caucus.
O'Neal stirred the delegates when he charged that the debate on immigration touches only the symptoms of the problem, and not the cause, which he identified as "British free-trade policies," which "have destroyed economies and labor forces all over the world, forcing [immigrants] to abandon their countries and their families." These "globalization policies," he continued, "have also wrecked our own, once-productive economy, outsourcing high skilled, productive, high-paying jobs, which were the lifeblood of our African-American community."
O'Neal then offered an alternative, based on the "great Westphalian principle of the advantage of the other," as embodied in FDR's "Good Neighbor" policy. Today, that would mean collaboration between the U.S. and Mexico in great projects, such as the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA), along with the PLHINO and PLIGHON water and irrigation projects in Mexico.
O'Neal's presentation was well received, and was followed by LYM members, who participated from the floor. Among them was Cody Jones, who denounced Al Gore, who is not-so-covertly angling for the Democratic Party nomination for President. Jones blasted Gore's phony environmentalism as part of British imperial doctrine, as an integral aspect of "globalization."
Bill Clinton Warns of 'Financial Meltdown'
The featured speaker on March 30 was former President Bill Clinton, who took up the economic collapse in his speech. He asked, "Why do we have all this energy" in the party? "Because we are facing a financial meltdown." He detailed how the "foreclosure" crisis is threatening what he called "a calamity," adding that the Bush "stimulus package" is inadequate, and that the collapse of speculative financial instruments, such as bundled mortgages, "will swamp" the effects of Bush's program.
The Democratic Party must act to stop foreclosures, he said, as his wife Hillary has emphasized in her campaign. "I support Hillary because she has the best economic program."
The only other speaker who addressed the economic crisis on this level was Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, who spoke of the need to again make California a center of skilled labor. Garamendi ended his speech with a quote from FDR, to emphasize his theme that we are judged as a nation by how we treat those who are less fortunate.
In these remarks, Garamendi reflected an older tradition in California, one of pride in how the state developed as an integrated agricultural-industrial economy, served by extensive public, government-backed infrastructure projects. These projects included massive irrigation and water management capabilities; high-tech ports, connected to markets by integrated transportation projects; world-class health-care capabilities, backed by top-notch, affordable public universities.
LaRouche has pointed out that this pride has been lost, as the advance of British-sponsored post-industrial, "free trade" economic policy has taken its toll. Replacing this pride is an obsession with celebrity, which is directly related to the delusion that credit is wealth, and that having access to money is a sign of "good economics."
The poster boy for this delusion is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the son of a Nazi, who has embraced fascist economics, and is promoting the kind of brutal austerity against Californians in the lower 80% of family-income brackets that would make Hitler proud.
It is this obsession with celebrity, and the unwillingness to effectively take on its product, Schwarzenegger, which has left the Party powerless to defeat his fascist budgets. It has also enabled Nancy Pelosi—a California Democrat, run by one of Arnie's controllers, the fascist Felix Rohatyn, a nominal Democrat who is allied with another Arnie controller, the GOP Nazi George Shultz—to smother any effort nationally to reverse the war and depression policies of the Cheney-Bush Administration.
The LYM intervention in San Jose thus put the Democratic Party on notice: In this crucial election year, there is only one issue, and that is FDR versus Hitler. Many delegates and party leaders engaged in in-depth dialogues with LYM members on this topic. Will they have the courage to act, as FDR did, in the face of deadly opposition from Wall Street fascists in 1932, for the good of humanity, against the London-controlled fascists of today, such as Felix Rohatyn and Al Gore?