LaRouche's HBPA Wins
Rhode Island Primary!
by Matthew Ogden and Alli Perebikovsky,
LaRouche Youth Movement
It's time to take action on the issue of foreclosures. As we know, it affects everyone across the country. Mostly, I ask you to support this resolution to specifically come up with ways to not just feel good, but to actually do good.
—Rhode Island State Rep. Joe Almeida
On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the last state to ratify the United States Constitution. However, on March 4, 2008, Rhode Island became the first state to officially endorse Lyndon H. LaRouche's Homeowners and Bank Protection Act (HBPA), the first step towards saving that same U.S. Constitution today. Rhode Island also made history on March 4, by delivering a crushing blow to London's fascist Bloomberg option, responding to LaRouche's warning, circulated in a mass leaflet during the days leading up to the March 4 primary, that an Obama victory would only pave the road for a Michael Bloomberg Presidency. Record numbers of Rhode Islanders, mostly among the ranks of the lower 80% of family income-brackets, turned out to vote for Hillary Clinton, thereby blocking London's Bloomberg plot.
Lyndon LaRouche is not running for President. However, the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) has been campaigning across the nation to make the issue of a Franklin Roosevelt-style economic recovery the only issue of the current Presidential campaign. State Rep. Joe Almeida and State Sen. Juan Pichardo, in the face of a severe budget crisis and deteriorating social and economic conditions, have turned to the LaRouche Political Action Committee as having the only alternative to fascist budget-cutting austerity policies, like those typified by "Benito" Bloomberg and California Terminator Arnie Schwarzenegger.
LaRouche has long emphasized that if the Democratic Party wishes to survive and to actually save the nation, they must return to their original constituency, the lower 80%, FDR's "forgotten men," or, what LaRouche characterizes as the "sleeping giant." Both the passage of the HBPA in the Rhode Island Statehouse, and the landslide defeat for Bloomberg in the primary, can only be understood as the waking of that sleeping giant; the nation heard "the voice of the voiceless."
Waking the Sleeping Giant
In the days following the Super Tuesday primaries on Feb. 5, both the Obama and Clinton campaigns were scrambling to set up campaign operations on the ground in Rhode Island. However, the LYM was already there, campaigning for its Presidential candidate, the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act. On Jan. 18, the Providence City Council had passed a resolution in support of the HBPA, hours after LaRouche delivered an international webcast. Representative Almeida, the chair of the minority caucus, was already engaged in a fight for this policy, and addressed the following statement to the audience of the webcast: "I support the policy proposed by Lyndon LaRouche in the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act, and we're working very hard right now, to push a resolution supporting this act through the Rhode Island House of Representatives. We are expecting a vote by next week. But I'd also like to urge all other state legislatures across the country to join us in passing similar resolutions. You do not need an economics degree to realize that LaRouche's proposal is necessary."
Before the March 4 vote even took place in the House, Senator Pichardo, deputy majority leader of the Senate, stood up in support of the HBPA and passed it in the Rhode Island Senate on Feb. 28, only four days after the Cranston City Council had cast their vote in support of the HBPA. These rapid-fire resolutions are the result of months of outreach and organizing by the LYM, on the streets, the college campuses, city councils, and the State House.
The Mass Effect Principle
Young people are the political wild card in the 2008 Presidential elections. The LaRouche Youth Movement is actively shaping the policy of the country, defining the political and historical identity of our generation. In Rhode Island, as well as in Ohio and Texas, going into the March 4 primary, our focus was to recruit students off of the campuses and into organizing of their elected officials, and to expose the danger of the Bloomberg fascist coup. We generated the greatest effect at Rhode Island College and at Brown University, where our organizing reached a boiling point. Days of mass literature distribution, motorcade rallies, and one-on-one political discussion, exposed the students to the quality of leadership represented by the LYM—the leadership necessary to revive the Franklin Roosevelt legacy.
Our campus organizing and policy leadership overlapped in one very ironic moment in the basement of the Rhode Island State House. A group of students from Brown University, who had seen us on a street corner earlier that day, were visiting the office of the minority caucus for a school project. Representative Almeida and minority caucus liaison Maria Lopes (a long-term, dedicated pro-LaRouche fighter), interrupted their discussion with these students by enthusiastically introducing members of the LYM, as the authors of Almeida's HBPA resolution. The students, working for the Obama campaign, were flabbergasted that the same young people, who they had seen organizing at a table earlier in the day, were working to make policy in their state government. Weeks later, on the tumultuous primary day, from behind their Obama signs, the same students saw us once again, this time, organizing for the destruction of Bloomberg, just hours before the defeat of Barack Obama in the Rhode Island primary and the triumph of Lyndon LaRouche's HBPA!
This irony is typical of the effect we had on students. At Rhode Island College, the first day of organizing found another "sleeping giant": the so-called apolitical youth generation. The students were shocked to see any sort of political activity going on at their campus. However, within a few months, the campus was completely politicized. Our strategy: ATTACK MYSPACE![1] This pulled the students into political reality and a few of them responded by engaging in the intellectual curriculum by attending a LYM weekend cadre school, attempting to replicate in themselves the sort of political leadership they saw in our movement. Now, even though the primary is over, these students remain mobilized.
Re-creating American Politics
The even deeper effect of our outreach, beyond resolutions and primaries, is to re-create the American political system. Our HBPA mobilization, in the context of the current global crisis, is succeeding in reestablishing the dialogue not only among city, state, and Federal governments, but also the citizens of the United States. The key is activating all layers at once. By bringing our policy to state representatives, city councils, and the people of Rhode Island, simultaneously, we created a truly dynamic political discussion. Our outreach to community constituency groups forced the Providence City Council to immediately adopt the resolution. City Councilman Nick Narducci and State Representative Almeida encouraged each other to fight for this policy. The rapid passage of the resolution in the State Senate, provided the back up for the House to follow suit. News of each endorsement cross-fired through the state and directly to the U.S. Congress.
This kind of collaboration, among the layers of government, has been lost in the recent decades of our history, demoralizing a citizenry that would otherwise be looking to their elected officials for leadership to face oncoming crises. But, as these citizens begin to see their elected officials fighting "to do good," they become remoralized, and become a powerful political force to be organized. The sleeping giant, which the nation saw awake on March 4 in Rhode Island, proves that FDR-style leadership, and the courage to fight the fascism represented by Michael Bloomberg today, is the political strategy that will save the United States.
"Let's kick ass for another day!"—Rep. Joe Almeida
[1] See The Noösphere vs. the Blogosphere: Is the Devil in Your Laptop? LaRouche PAC pamphlet, December 2007.
