LaRouche's Youth Movement
Key to Capital Primary Victory

With six weeks to go before the Jan. 13 Democratic Presidential primary in Washington, D.C., the LaRouche Youth Movement is taking the city by storm. Every day between now and the primary, 50-100 LaRouche youth will hit the streets of the nation's capital, increasing the presence, strength, and visibility of LaRouche's Presidential campaign in the District, both in communities where the lower 80% of income brackets live, and in the "corridors of power." This "no-holds-barred" youth deployment holds the key to a LaRouche election victory in the capital's primary. (See LaRouche's Declaration of candidacy and principles for Washington, D.C. Democratic Primary.)

In the first two weeks of such campaigning, through late November, the results have shown that the lower-income urban constituencies which have been abandoned both by the Democratic Party and the Presidency, are rallying to the LaRouche campaign.

LaRouche, who in November remained the second-leading Democratic candidate in total number of financial contributions, and one of only two Democrats qualified for Federal matching funds (the other is Howard Dean), has defined his Presidential campaign as a major point of intervention into both the District's general population, and the institutions of government which have been steering the country into strategic disaster and economic catastrophe. To this end, he will hold an international webcast Dec. 12, aired before a campaign audience in Washington, on the "hot phase" of his campaign.

LaRouche has specified that the activity of his campaign will involve no "single, local issues," no tactics predicated on narrow support of one group, no point-by-point political programs or "platforms" defining its character. Instead, the central focus, beginning with this important first primary—in which he may face Dean and only three of the other Democratic candidates—will be the quality of LaRouche's leadership, and the current effect of that leadership, without which, the United States is doomed. His second fundamental issue reflects that directly: It is his ongoing drive to get the prime perpetrator of the policy of escalating war, Vice President Dick Cheney, removed from office now, rather than "blame it on President Bush's policies and defeat him in the next election"—as "pragmatic" rival Gen. Wesley Clark preferred it at a campaign forum in New Hampshire on Nov. 19.

In his "Declaration of Candidacy," written Nov. 22 for inclusion in the Voters Guide which will be provided by the Board of Elections and Ethics to all voters in the District, LaRouche lays out the main problem to be addressed by all candidates for the 2004 Presidential election: 1) U.S. military policy, and 2) "the failure of the present Administration, and most among the U.S. Congress, to acknowledge the reality, for the U.S.A. itself, of the world's presently onrushing general monetary-financial crisis. The conditions of the poor within the District of Columbia itself contain a sharp and brutal reflection of those two much-neglected realities."

As he has done in recent major campaign speeches, LaRouche identifies Vice President Cheney as the chief proponent in the Administration of the doctrine of preventive nuclear-armed warfare, a policy which Cheney has been pushing since the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. "Since January 2002, as a result of that policy, U.S. relations with the rest of the world have degenerated to a degree beyond anything in our memory of the past century and earlier," LaRouche says. Economically, nearly all of the states are virtually bankrupt and are operating in emergency mode. The "general welfare" clause of the Constitution has become a "cruel insult to the sections of our national population within the ranks of the lower 80% of family-income brackets." LaRouche notes that he is the only candidate willing to think like President Franklin D. Roosevelt who rescued the nation from the Coolidge-Hoover catastrophe, to build the United States, once again, into being the greatest productive power on this planet during the first two post-World War II decades.

A 'Civil Rights'-Modelled Campaign

LaRouche's statement of candidacy, along with a million-run leaflet, "LaRouche: Dump Cheney Now!" is being circulated throughout the Washington area as part of a very upbeat and unconventional campaign modelled on the Civil Rights movement, and being carried out almost entirely by youth in the 18-25 age bracket. Though LaRouche has been kept out of the Presidential debates and is being obstructed and blocked wherever possible by the Democratic Party's national leadership, the youth are taking his campaign to the streets, directly to the "forgotten man." This is the population which the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has totally disenfranchised by not recognizing the District primary, and by trying to get the nine other Democratic candidates to drop out. While Kerry, Lieberman, Gephardt, Edwards, and Clark did withdraw from the primary, LaRouche filed for the ballot with the explicit intention of putting his unique leadership at the forefront of the campaign.

Although Dean, Carol Moseley Braun, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, and Al Sharpton have remained in the game, they have been relatively quiet because of the DNC diktat, and none have dared to address the issues of vital national security as defined by LaRouche. General Clark told the candidates' forum at Plymouth University, in answer to a question from a LaRouche Youth Movement activist, "Don't pick on Cheney."

The LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM), which has already made its mark on Washington, is stepping into this vacuum and will escalate in the coming weeks, joined by growing numbers of youth from elsewhere on the East Coast who have vowed to turn the city upside down with their own unorthodox style of campaigning, and their uncompromising mission to win the primary election for LaRouche, and thus fundamentally alter the course of the 2004 Presidential election.

With rallies held this week in Washington's Southeast and Anacostia districts—the site of earlier LaRouche mobilizations to save D.C. General Hospital—the LYM is rapidly demonstrating that it is the only political force which can revive the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt and Lincoln, because of the passion it places in the fight for truth. The LYM has been saturating D.C. with the leaflet targetting Cheney since Nov. 12, focussing on the poorer neighborhoods where LaRouche is already a recognized factor.

Their 12-car caravan went through those neighborhoods outfitted with a sound system broadcasting LaRouche's radio ads, now airing on Washington's all-news radio station WTOP, (which address the shutdown of the investigations of the Senate Select Committee in Intelligence into Cheney's role in the Iraq War intelligence fraud), and signs reading "Dump Dick: and "D.C. does not stand for Dick Cheney." People said, "those are the white guys who tried to keep D.C. General open and now they are trying to kick Cheney out of town. They're okay." At one public school, when the kids heard the LaRouche youth singing spirituals, they begged them not to leave.

At the same time as they conduct daily rallies and motorcades, the youth have also been hitting the halls of Congress, holding face-to-face meetings and discussions with aides and well as Congressmen on the vital issues facing the country, trying to educate them on the urgent nature of the crisis.

The Power To Win

Going directly into the communities, the youth have been stopping in barbershops, restaurants and grocery stores as spreading-points for campaign literature to deliver the message that Cheney must go. They have also gone onto the campuses such as UDC, Howard and George Washington University, urging students to join them in the "hot phase" of the campaign to put LaRouche's leadership on the table. They report that older people, especially African-Americans, have been coming out of their houses and onto the street to find out what the campaign is all about. The campaign is also resonating with African-American youth, both on campuses and off, who are part of the "no-future" generation.

The power of victory is being conveyed by LaRouche youth veterans of the landslide re-election victory of Mayor John Street in Philadelphia on Nov. 4, after LaRouche and the LYM were asked by Pennsylvania and Philadelphia Democratic leaders to spearhead the fight against the police-state onslaught of Cheney's friend, Attorney General John Ashcroft. In Philadelphia, as earlier in Los Angeles County and other areas where the LaRouche Youth mobilized against the California Recall, it was proven that when the people of a nation recognize that their vote has the power to effect a change in society, and, even more importantly, to change history, they will respond.

This is why the LaRouche Youth movement has dedicated itself to taking the country back by giving the population a "sense of mission," such as last seen during the Civil Rights movement in the 1950-60s. To capture the quality of leadership of these turning moments of America's past, and give rebirth to them, as LaRouche has emphasized in recent campaign speeches, is their goal.

LaRouche told an educational weekend retreat of the East Coast LaRouche Youth Movement on Nov. 23: "Your object is to create a movement for that result, and the movement will recruit the voters." The ability to get people to move, lies in recognition of their immortality in the contributions that they make to the future, LaRouche has also stressed. For them, this idea of immortality lies bound up in their recognition of their power to win victories for change against the odds, in what the LaRouche Youth Movement has laid out as their paramount task: the election of LaRouche and the political destruction of Cheney.