CALIFORNIA DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION
LYM's `New Politics' Puts
Impeachment Back on the Table
by Oyang Teng, LaRouche Youth Movement
A LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM)-led revolt for the impeachment of Dick Cheney eclipsed even the glittery packaging of the Presidential campaigns at the California State Democratic Convention in San Diego April 27-29, leading to the passage of a state party resolution specifying impeachment as an imminent option to deal with the criminality of the Cheney-Bush Administration. In addition, the election of two LYM members, Quincy O'Neal and Wynneal Inocentes, to state-level positions within the Democratic Party signaled a call-to-arms for the youth of the nation to launch a resurgence of the "New Politics," to revive the principle of leadership in statecraft.
That resurgence was felt most dramatically in the contentious fight over impeachment, an impetus that was shaped at the convention—which was attended by over 3,000 people—by the 60-member contingent of the LYM, which, over the last four years, has become virtually synonymous with the words "Impeach Cheney." The drumbeat for impeachment supplied by vocal members of the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) and the allied Kucinich campaign supporters was fed by the singing and organizing of the LYM, and bolstered by the Saturday announcement that a LaRouche Democrat-sponsored resolution supporting the Kucinich impeachment bill (House Resolution 333) had passed the Executive Board of the Louisiana State Democratic Party (see below).
By the time a 30-member LYM chorus delivered a three-part anti-Cheney canon, set to the music of Beethoven's "Im Arm der Liebe," at the start of the second Resolutions Committee hearing on Saturday, to raucous applause from the packed room, the dam had broken on the impeachment issue. After initially rejecting any declaration on impeachment the day before, in spite of four resolutions on the issue that had been submitted, including one by the LYM that had previously been passed by the Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee, the Committee unanimously approved a compromise resolution with an impeachment clause inserted.
The choral intervention, which had been requested by members of the PDA, simply fueled an environment that had been punctuated by the kind of uniquely political ironies supplied by the LYM, that a party mired in the sophistry of petty electoral politics badly needs: For example, two masked LYM members posing as Al Gore and Dick Cheney, prancing about the convention halls and caucus meetings hand-in-hand, professing their devotion to each other, especially on changing the subject away from impeachment. The duo also took their lovefest to a screening of Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," where they were asking people on their way out, "Are you a believer?" (Gore's stand-in was as close as the real Fat Albert got to the convention, given that he was reportedly denied an invitation by state party leaders to address the event.)
Breaking Through the 'Approved Issues'
Another element supplied by the LYM was a factor of optimism, necessary to change the terms of discussion in the Democratic Party from the "50-and-over club"-mentality, oriented to fundraising from the super-rich, back to a true mass-based organization, reflecting its Franklin Roosevelt heritage, in a renewed commitment to scientific and technological development. LYM organizers sported color display boards on nuclear power and maglev projects to counterpose to Gore's genocidal anti-technology policies, and were pulling delegates directly into discussions on development projects to green the desert and desalinate seawater. In another crucial intervention that broke the controlled discussion around "approved issues," a LYM organizer addressed the Resolutions Committee on a resolution the LYM had submitted on the fraud of the man-made global warming hysteria, warning of the threat to developing countries of caps on industrial activity, and arguing that young people should be inspired to see science and technology as a solution to, rather than the cause of problems.
With the exception of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who emphasized his bill to impeach Cheney as the only effective anti-war plan, and his references to FDR and explicit support for a WPA jobs plan, the Democratic Presidential candidates who appeared at the convention went through a packaged list of "issues," all of which were received with polite applause, but not great enthusiasm. They all had the same basic list, in the same order: end the war/bring the troops home; action against "global warming"; and improved health care. The solution to all these problems was to elect them. For example, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), after calling the war a dark stain on the nation, and warning that the Senate would probably not overturn Bush's veto, said that she, as President, would end the war the day she is sworn in—in 2009! To this, one woman in the audience shouted, "How many more will die by January 2009?"
The agitation in the population for action now, not in 2008 or beyond, was shown on Sunday, when the modified impeachment resolution approved by the Resolutions Committee was passed by the general assembly. As LaRouche put it during his May 1 webcast address, "The impeachment of Cheney is more popular than ice cream." Unfortunately, this simple truth still seems lost on the Presidential front-runners.
The New Politics
The election of O'Neal, 29, as vice-chairman of the state African American Caucus, and Inocentes, 26, as corresponding secretary of the state Filipino-American Caucus, reflected the continuation of the process unleashed during last year's Nov. 7 landslide victory for the Democratic Party, which was driven by a surge in the vote from the 18-35-year-old generation. What LaRouche christened the New Politics, is registering as an impetus for political and intellectual leadership by the 18-35 generation to reject the failed policies of the last 35 years of post-industrial cultural pessimism, typified by the Baby Boomers' irrational fear of nuclear power.
In their statements to their respective caucuses, and later at a LaRouche PAC town meeting held near the convention titled, "2008 Is Too Late," both O'Neal and Inocentes emphasized the need to bring more youth into the party leadership and revive the policy outlook of FDR.
In an interview on the Internet radio LaRouche Show (see below), O'Neal addressed the problem typical of the two leading Presidential candidates, Clinton and Barack Obama:
"They are so concerned about winning an election, that they're missing the reality that's affecting most of the population. And again, in talking to this [Obama] campaign organizer, they don't understand how to talk about it. They think they're walking on eggshells. And for both the candidates, if they just looked at the reality that's affecting the population, and were to speak to some of those things, not only would they not pay any political penalty, but they would gain the population. However, as in Lyndon LaRouche's paper ["Ask the Man Who Owns One," EIR, May 4, 2007], if they were to carry through those things, they would go up against the Wall Street financier interests, and that's probably where we're going to have to see the break."
O'Neal won the election by a vote of 52-35, a vote which included the backing of some state party leaders. Inocentes, who had initially distributed a statement to the Filipino-American Caucus without the intention to run for a position, decided to run at the suggestion of one of the caucus members. After reading her statement, the opposing candidate withdrew from the race to, as he said, make room for a young person committed to changing the Democratic Party.
A Forum for Socratic Dialogue
The LYM has, since its inception during the 2000 Presidential campaign, fought to transform the Democratic Party, which has been castrated by the pro-globalization posture of Wall Street-financed "New Democrats," like Al Gore. The process of development of LYM leadership included last year's official chartering of the LYM's Franklin Roosevelt Legacy Democratic Club, presided over by O'Neal. The club has functioned as a forum for Socratic dialogue between, especially, youth and state party leaders on crucial matters of policy.
"If you want to influence the society as a whole today, you must mobilize the leading strata, from within the 18-to-35 age-group," LaRouche said recently to a LaRouche PAC town hall meeting in Los Angeles. "You see some of that already: The younger generation, the ones who are going to be running the world—if there is a world to run ten years from now—that generation is now taking charge. Not in the sense of saying, 'We're taking charge,' but in the sense of moving in, to shape anything that's good in politics, they're tending to shape it. In the meantime, the generation which is between 50 years of age, and 65 years of age, as the white-collar sociological type, they are going out of business.
"So the problem that people have in politics, even among us, is the failure to accept the implications of what I've just said, even though most among you have some sense of what I've just said. So your job is to convince the Baby Boomer that you have mobilized the 18-to-35 generation out from under them! And that if the Baby Boomer wants to survive, the Baby Boomer has to get in, shall we say, the caboose of politics, where the engine of politics is now shifting to the leading edge of political thought in the 18-to-35 age-group generation."
