Exonerate LaRouche!

A discussion about the urgent necessity of exonerating economist, scientist, and former presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, followed the main presentations of Panel 3, “The Job of Youth,” at the Schiller Institute International Conference, on June 27, 2020, “Will Humanity Prosper, or Perish? The Future Demands a Four-Power Summit Now.” This is an edited transcript of that discussion, initiated by Theo Mitchell, former South Carolina State Senator, with panelists José Vega, Daniel Burke, and Franklin Mireri.

Theo Mitchell: I want to pay my respects and regard to my good friend Helga Zepp-LaRouche, for having the temerity to put on this panel, this conference; and certainly to her late husband Lyndon LaRouche, my long-time friend, recognizing his contribution and his foresight and his perspective as far as even today is concerned. It’s really perplexing to me to see that we are living in a time and an administration that has little interest at all in doing the right thing, especially on exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche.

I have been active for quite a while with the Schiller Institute. We dealt with the Operation Fruehmenschen and the human rights abuse concerning Lyndon. The Operation Fruehmenschen, of course, was targetted at the African-American elected officials. We managed to bring that to a standstill or halt, and consequently we don’t know what if anything Lyn paid the price for, for he served time for nothing: It was abuse. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark said that it was the worst case of abuse of the so-called system of justice, of all the chronic abuse that he had ever seen. And this man was in the Attorney General’s office, one of the Cabinet offices. Consequently, he came out in support of Lyn. We all did.

We are all happy to know that there are so many young people who are now participating in this saga. There’s a lot of work to do, but we always have to remember this: To be able to get the justice that Lyn deserves and the exoneration, we’re going to have to press people into the service, as far as this world is concerned. How can we act, when there’s still abuse? No matter what you talk about as far as the Four-Power conferences are concerned, they’re not going to spend one nickel or dime on Lyndon LaRouche; especially this administration.

This is a program that we certainly can’t forget. It is something that we must continue working on. In the cases of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery in Atlanta, it’s an abuse. It’s open season. Still, open season on the black male. Consequently, I’ll ask this distinguished panel, “What suggestions if any do you have to be able to help save us?” Exonerate our good friend, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.!

Megan Beets: There’s a really wonderful video on Lyndon LaRouche’s exoneration which people should watch and help us disseminate.

Daniel Burke: The most important thing that we can do, in my view, is to create 50 million new productive jobs in the United States, and 1.5 billion jobs in the whole world. This is not a jobs program; this is a fulfillment of what Mr. LaRouche was fighting for in his life. It is a policy of transforming the human species to a new and more noble level of activity. It means that we’re going to be invigorating all Americans with a mission for the future. Because it is only by means of the future that we have any ability to unify Americans. It’s always been that way; we’re always for a “more perfect union” to fulfill the promissory note known as the Declaration of Independence.

It’s in that effort, as people commit themselves to creating such a future, I believe, that we’ll be able to solve the abuses of people that exist. Intolerable crimes that are committed against people in the name of—for all types of justifications. We’re going to have to take a look at a universal standard of man that demands of us that we fight with such a passion to overcome the brutality of this system in all of its representations by establishing a scientific optimism about the future.

To put it very directly, I am perhaps more optimistic than you are, that we could get this administration to exonerate Mr. LaRouche. I think that this is a time for miracles, and whatever circumstances stand in our way that appear to be objective, the fact of the matter is that their system is in a total breakdown crisis. So, the rules that have been set up to keep this system going are crumbling, because the system is crumbling. Therefore, I’m committed to the idea that it is possible in a short amount of time to create a breakthrough on the recognition of Mr. LaRouche in the United States.

Perhaps the most important thing we can do, in addition to fighting for his exoneration itself, is to recruit people to the vision he developed. Which includes taking the people of the post-industrial cities of the United States, taking the people of the poor areas of our nation, and giving them a means to contribute to the future. This is how we’re going to give people a deeper identity and get them out of a feeling of nihilism and despair, which is clearly inundating the country.

José Vega: If black lives matter, why isn’t there a space program in the Bronx, or in Oakland, California?

I live just a few blocks from Gouverneur Morris’ grave. Gouverneur Morris, the person who penned the Preamble to the Constitution. In that Preamble, it speaks of promoting the General Welfare. So, if we’re promoting the General Welfare, doesn’t that include developing the minds of all Americans, and giving them the opportunity to educate our youth?

I’d like to reference the story of Kalief Browder. He was wrongfully put in Riker’s Island prison, over a dispute of stealing a backpack. He was there for three years; his mother could not afford bail. Eventually, he was found innocent. He refused to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, and three years after leaving Riker’s Island, he committed suicide. There was no more hope, no future for him, in his mind. That is a tragedy. That is what’s happening to many young Americans today who feel as if there is no future and no hope. We will give them one.

In Plato’s Meno dialogue, Socrates and Meno, a slave master, are having a discussion about virtue and where knowledge comes from. Socrates says, I’d like to see one of your slave boys. So, Meno brings out a slave boy, and Socrates asks about the slave, was he born here, and can he speak the language? These two things imply that this is not a native Athenian. This is somebody who does not look like them, or may not even sound like them.

Socrates brings him to the beach and tells the boy to double the area of the square. What does that mean, exactly, to the slave boy? The slave boy does it, and the slave boy is not learned. He has not studied at all, nobody’s ever taught him anything. And yet, he was able to find the solution to a complex geometrical problem, which is not so complex. The point is, he could easily be the slave master, as Meno could be a slave.

The way we’re going to solve this, is just develop the minds of people, so that 50 million years from now, when everybody owns their own galaxy, what will the questions be? Will the question be, do black lives still matter? Or, what do they become? How do you transform the future in that way?

Franklin Mireri: It’s been wonderful hearing from the fellow panelists and even from Senator Mitchell, and how passionate he is about the issue of exonerating Lyndon LaRouche. While many people outside of the United States may have heard of Lyndon LaRouche, I first heard about him this year, when I started taking the economics classes being offered by the Schiller Institute.

Many people may not have heard about him, what I know which does resonate across the world is what he stood for. For example, the way the financial systems are currently skewed against developing countries. So, that’s just one aspect. As we then seek, as we then sign the petition, let us not forget the importance of global solidarity towards that cause. You never know; the more people who get to know his wonderful works, the more pressure might be gradually put on any administration. It might be this administration, or the coming one; but ultimately what he stood for was greater than just in the United States.