Historic Leipzig Peace Rally Hears:
`LaRouche Is the Man'

A world-historic individual, 91-year-old American Civil Rights leader Amelia Boynton Robinson, spoke at a historic demonstration against the Iraq war in Leipzig, Germany on March 31. The Leipzig weekly "Monday demonstrations," which 13 years ago brought down the Berlin Wall, have begun again, this time to bring down the imperial war policy; and Mrs. Robinson told the 50,000 demonstrators that U.S. Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche was their leader to do it.

"Greetings from the other America!" were the opening words of Amelia Robinson's speech that rang out in front of the Leipzig Opera House, recalling memories of the 1963 speech of Dr. Martin Luther King, and of Marian Anderson's 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Mrs. Robinson was introduced to the Leipzig peace demonstration by the famous Father Christian Führer, as a collaborator of Dr. King in the American Civil Rights movement, and as a representative of the other America today. She took the microphone before the crowd of 40-50,000, and speaking slowly and with great dignity for 15 minutes, painted a picture of history.

She described the time when Dr. King came to Selma, Alabama, where she and her late husband, S.W. Boynton had launched the struggle for voting rights. Instead of being welcomed, Dr. King was slandered as a communist and a rabble-rouser. It was Mrs. Robinson who shared her office with Dr. King, gave him a place to stay, and continued to fight alongside him, not only for the civil rights of the American people, but for a higher principle of justice for all the people of the world. She told the demonstrators that those were difficult times, and when in 1968 Dr. King was assassinated, the dream shattered.

"But today," she put forward, "a new leader in the tradition of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Dr. King has arisen in America to pick up the broken pieces, and is continuing the dream of Martin Luther King!" Tension built up throughout the crowd as Mrs. Robinson's words were translated into German. "This man is an economist, a scientist, and loves the people, and he is an candidate for the 2004 Presidential elections. This man is Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., and he is leading the fight against the Iraq war inside the U.S. today!"

The crowd answered Mrs. Robinson's passionate conclusion with loud and hopeful applause, and with great curiousity about LaRouche. She had been brought to the famous Augustus Square in front of Leipzig's St. Nikolai Church to speak, through the intervention of the international LaRouche Youth Movement; and one of its organizers, Abdul Ali of Philadelphia, came up to join her on the stage, where together they inspired the demonstrators to sing the Civil Rights spirituals, "Oh Freedom" and "This Little Light of Mine," Mrs. Robinson's personal favorite. Thus this internationally important demonstration, revived to intervene in a great crisis, did not fall into the "entertainment" of rock-and-roll, but was inspired by the music of justice.

The LaRouche youth were welcomed back for continuing demonstrations. Lyndon LaRouche himself stressed that this was an intervention of the highest strategic importance, particularly since the entirety of Amelia Robinson's speech was broadcast by radio and TV stations all over the region.

'Who Is LaRouche?'

After the LaRouche Youth Movement had earlier been refused the chance to speak in Leipzig, by the convention of groups that is organizing the demonstrations, Father Führer was led through a process of development by German youth organizers sending him encouraging letters about his role in history and faxes with articles about and by Mrs. Robinson. When the Schiller Institute then offered him the opportunity to meet her—she is the vice chairwoman of the Schiller Institute in the U.S.—he happily agreed. She came to Leipzig early on March 31 to the Nikolai Church, and Father Führer was very excited and grateful to have a living legend in his church. Mrs. Robinson was then invited to join the peace prayers in the church, where she was introduced to all the people and the media that were there.

During the day the LaRouche Youth Movement set up a booktable near the church, where they organized the people—generally pessimistic about the spreading war crisis—to come hear Mrs. Robinson and draw hope from her optimism that "We can stop this war!" After the prayers, the Youth Movement joined the demonstration march through the city with banners and signs, and taught the crowd to sing "Oh Freedom." The marching crowd had gathered in front of the Opera House, and once Mrs. Robinson gave her speech, the entire crowd was transformed. One youth organizer was standing in the crowd just in front of her, and at her triumphant declaration that LaRouche was carrying on the fight of Dr. King, a man reached out to grab the organizer's arm and demanded, "Who is LaRouche?!"

In fact, nearly everyone wanted to know more about LaRouche, asking for the leaflets of the Bad Schwalbach Declaration (see EIR, April 4) which were distributed by the LaRouche activists: Demonstrators completely surrounded their booktable. This was the first time a real solution for the crisis had been offered, and the people were given a sense of potency, that they could join Mrs. Robinson and LaRouche to do something to change what's going on, instead of just protesting the war. Even after the demonstration had formally ended, people wanted to have Amelia Robinson's autograph on their signs and banners, and many young people came over, wanting to know more about the youth movement that is joining with LaRouche and to create an economic and political revolution.

The Peace Prayers in Leipzig

It was proven in 1989, that these Monday demonstrations are something very special, and have the ability to change the international geometry. The peace prayers led by Father Christian Führer, and the demonstrations, were a crucial factor that made the reunification of Germany possible, and freed the people from the utopian policies of the Cold War. Just as in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s in America, said Führer, in an interview with the German Schiller Institute magazine Ibykus, "the spirit of Christ of non-violence lifted up the masses" and "became a peaceful force." The roots of the peace prayers lie back in the year 1980, when a program called "Peace Decade" was initiated; then in 1982, a group of young people proposed to have these prayers every week.

In 1989, people began to gather in front of the Nikolai Church for candlelight vigils after the prayers, and the crowd grew from week to week, until the famous Monday, Oct. 9, 1989, when 100,000 people marched peacefully through the city. One month later, on Nov. 9, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet bloc dissolved. LaRouche, then a political prisoner in the United States, immediately provided leadership with a plan for economic reconstruction of the former East, called the Productive Triangle. This would turn eastern Germany into a motor of production to reconstruct the former Soviet bloc. But this great opportunity for establishing an economic order based on the principle of the general welfare, and killing the ugly geopolitical policy once and for all, was missed. The great optimism of the people in 1989 diminished into small-mindedness; now, that revolutionary spirit has to be revived, to finish the job of defeating imperial geopolitics.

As in the days following Amelia Robinson's intervention—where the MDR Radio/TV channel blamed Mayor Tiefensee of Leipzig for allowing "misuse" of the demonstrations to promote LaRouche, whom they slandered as a "communist and radical"—Father Führer had described in a 1990 interview how in 1989, he was blamed for misusing institutions. To the question of the church's intention, he answered, "The idea was, that we could support with our efforts a social environment in which the people could feel better. These goals were supported by people who, spiritually, wanted exactly the same, but they were just very few. Some 'crazy intellectuals' and 'lunatics'.... They understood the great value of history and always supported it."

Today, Amelia Boynton Robinson, Lyndon LaRouche, and Father Christian Führer are among the few people who understand the great value of history and their responsibility to act as historic individuals, demonstrated so beautifully in Leipzig on Monday, March 31. The impact of such actions can lead the whole humanity out of economic collapse, war, and hate, into a new renaissance—their immortal part in the simultaneity of eternity.