From the LaRouche Youth Movement:
The LaRouche Show
If Americans Understood Beethoven, Would Bush Be President?
What follows is excerpted from a discussion with LYM leader Nick Walsh, from Boston, on the Aug. 21 webcast of "The LaRouche Show," moderated by Marcia Merry Baker.
Nick: What we've been doing here, in Boston, the main mission that we have: There's about 18 of us here, that LaRouche wanted to come in, as primarily a singing/recruiting contingent of youth. So, we have four people of each voice: We have four baritones, we have four tenors, four altos, and four sopranos. And then there's a couple otherswe have a couple more than 16. And, we've been doing two-hour chorus rehearsals in a church across the street from the hostel here, where we're staying. And the priest of the church allows us to sing there, for two hours every morning.
So, we've been working through the Bach "Jesu, meine Freude," and then, taking this out onto the streets, into the population. And setting up on different street corners, where there's large amounts of people. Like at one prominent place, called Harvard Square, where we've been having meetings, every single night, at 10 p.m. And we sing, maybe every hour. And then we have differentwe have a couple of whiteboards, or dry-marker boards, set up on easels, positioned all around the corner, where large numbers of people are passing through. And then we have, different scientific, pedagogical experiments. We have a very beautiful, the five Platonic solids, constructed out of wood. We have a large brachistochrone, which is a cycloid curve, compared to a straight-line ramp, where you roll both marbles down the ramp and the curve, and you see which one will get to the bottom first.
So, we have all these kinds of set-ups. And then, on the whiteboards, we've been asking people, "Do you know how to double the cube?"
So, imagine about 18 of us, on the same corner there, singing through Bach, drawing increasingly large crowds through the music. When it started, you know, three or four people would stop and listen, and most people would kind of walk byeveryone would be provoked, and their ears would perk up and they'd listen, but they'd keep walking. The last few days, especially, I've noticedwe've been doing it a lot at nightwe've been drawing crowds of people, youth and Baby Boomers, and I guess what you would call senior citizens, or the World War II generation, of 30 to 35 people; standing around, actually listening somewhat intently, to the music. And then, asking people, as they pass through, "Do you know how to double the cube?"
Or, "What is the quickest path between two points?" And then, people say, "The straight line, of course." And we say, "Well, let's see," and we roll the marbles down each of these tracks, and people see that the marble going down the cycloid curve gets to the bottom the fastest. And they go, "What is this?" And we hand them the platform, LaRouche's "Real Democratic Party Platform." And we say, "These types of experiments, doubling the cube, the brachistochrone, Bachthese ideas are essential to being able to rebuild the United States economy!" And people say, "What're ya talkin' about!"
So, we're engaging people, and we say, "You don't understand Riemann, do you? You don't understand LaRouche. You don't know about physical economy." And this is what we're teaching.
- Living History -
And the neat thing, these same streets, where we're doing this, where Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, the Winthrops, and eventually Benjamin Franklin, were actually organizing the population here, in the early 1700s, with newspapers, different types of literature. But also, different types of inventions, kind of spreading, and promoting different types of inventions and ideas, throughout the community here in Boston. To actually create a much more intellectual, more literate kind of population, a culture that would be capable of assimilating the kinds of ideas needed to have a nation-state.
And you had a situation in the 1700s, where the population was prepared, by people like Franklin, for the American Revolution. And you have a situation now, where LaRouche is, in a certain sense, doing the same exact thing, largely through our youth movement. Saying: We need to go into places like Boston, where there's an appetite here for ideas, and we're very easily able to engage people. People here want to know, and they want to discuss things like the brachistochrone and the relationship to economics.
But, we're engaging people, really fighting with them about LaRouche's epistemology, or the epistemology of the human mind. And, creating the conditions where we're going to recruit young people, and create the kind of movement where this American population can actually survive, can actually be morally fit, and intellectually fit, to demand the right kinds of ideas coming out of the government, coming from John Kerry, coming from the Democratic Party, whoever they may be. And also, of course, the same thing in places like Germany: Create a culture in different countries of the world that will not tolerate austerity, and fascism, and war.
- Harvard Square Pedagogicals -
And then, just to conclude, last night, we had our first kind of "official" student class. We've been having these meeting every night. And there's people are coming at us from all different directions: Some people are hearing about us from their friends, some are hearing about us from their parents or running into here. Yadda, yadda, yahit's a very open process. Well, last night, we had Bill Ferguson teach a pedagogical in the middle of Harvard Square, on Bernouilli and Leibniz's catenary, which is the hanging chain, and the shape that that takes. And we had about 30-40 people, total, participate for at least 15-20 minutes in the class. You had 17-year-old kids talking about "LaRouche's catenary," and you had a Baby Boomer couple standing there for 45 minutes trying to figure it out.
We had a woman come up to a sign that said, "If Americans understood Beethoven, would Bush be President?" And this one woman came up to this sign, and said, "Who's in charge of this sign!? You can't put a sign like this in the middle of the sidewalk and walk away!" So, one of our organizers went up and started telling her why Beethoven was essential for politics....
- Boston: A 'Youthful City' -
Boston is a very interesting town. I think there's an intellectual concentration here. It is a very stimulated place. There's a lot of colleges. It's a youthful city. But, you get this in other parts of the country, too.
Wherever there are human beings, what we really respond to, is ideas. And people don't really believe this, but, what really is powerful, and what really sinks in, and what people actually tend to recognize, is, unique ideas. You know, concepts which have the potential to change the world, or change the way that an individual thinks, or change a certain society, or certain organization of people. And that's what LaRouche is, notorious for his ideas. People know our movement, because of the uniqueness and the kind of potency, of LaRouche's concepts of economics, and physics, and history, and philosophy. And there is a huge, kind ofsomewhat, I'd say, "subconscious" almost, support, and defense, of what we as a movement represent.
And, indeed, in places like Los Angeles, the population of Los Angeles is a better population because we're there. And if we were to all leave there, and to stop organizing there for a few months, that population would degenerate, because of us not being there. The intellectual quality of the culture there, and the abilities of the people there, to discuss ideas, and contemplate the universe, is much, much increased, because we are there, organizing them.
And the same thing is here. We're actually a kind of a geological, universal, cultural effect, on the way that Americans think. If we didn't exist, this country would be a very barbarian place, it would be very ugly, if LaRouche's ideas weren't being communicated so well by the youth movement. And this great relationship of LaRouche, his writings, his ideas, his speeches he's delivering, and the youth's ability to assimilate them and communicate them to the population, in exciting, different, creative ways.
And we, here in Boston, we've recruited two new members already. There are people that are just coming around, all the time, because they recognize: It's a crisis. Human beings are suffering. There's no answers being provided. And what's being given, more and more and more economic value, in people's minds, is not money, but truth, and ideas, and being right.
So, it's good. This is the kind ofthis is the time when we become, this is the time we've been working for, is when being right is the most valuable thing to be able to have on your ticket.
The LaRouche Show:
Zepp-LaRouche, LYM Spark Monday Demonstrations
From the LaRouche Youth Movement
Marcia Merry Baker, host of "The LaRouche Show," on Aug. 21 interviewed two members of the LaRouche Youth Movement from Germany, Tina Rank and Stefan Tolksdorfwho, with the leadership of Helga Zepp LaRouche, are leading Zepp LaRouche's BueSo Party in the "Monday demonstrations" against Germany's "Hartz IV" austerity plan (see p. 1). Here are excerpts:
Baker: Helga Zepp-LaRouche issued a Manifesto, a statement, on the key elements of this situation, where in Germany, you have an official austerity program.
Stefan: Gerhard Schroeder, the Chancellor, is right now digging his own grave politically. That is, the situation we have here, with a worsening economic situationand since we are calling from Dresden, that is, the lower part of the former east of Germany, and a part that has been hit, especially over the course of the last 14 years.
We see a reaction from the political machines, not only of the SPD, the Social Democratic Party of Schroeder, but also from the other partiesthe Christian Democratic Union, the liberals [FDP], the Greens, that just shows that these people are not in reality. That is, from discussions, we know that the heads of banks, of the leading political parties, know that the international financial system is about to blow out. But, the reaction they show, is always the same: austerity, austerity, and more austerity. They cut every budget they can. And, it has reached a certain point, psychologically, with the introduction of the Hartz IV legislation, what they call "Sparmassnahmen," the austerity measures....
Now, this has led to a situation where, over the course of the last year, we saw the SPD is falling apart. They are losing membersI think it's around 100,000 so far....
And interestingly, in the last couple of days, actually, a certain terminology has come into play, which is that of 1989. And there's a special word, "Betonkoepfe", which is, "heads of concrete." That is, they're unable to move. They're unable to change. And this is now what has been said about our leading political class, including Schroeder....
- The Betonkoepfe -
If you talk about Betonkoepfe, these Concrete-heads, this was said about Honecker, for instance, the head of the GDR, the former East German state. And, he was presenting, at the 40-year anniversary of the GDR in 1989, in the summer, an outlook where he just said, "The Wall is going to stand for another hundred years. Socialism and communism (and whatever) is going to make it." And then, it took about one to three monthsand that was it, the state was gone.
So, they refused to change, and the GDR collapsed. And now, in the present situation, it appears that Schroeder refuses to change.
And people are angry. A lot of people are unemployed. Even the official institutions have verified that we have, not the so-called "official" number of 4.5 million people unemployedbut rather, some 8.6 million people unemployed. And, these people are on the street. They're seeing no chance, whatsoever, from the leading parties or leading institutions, that they could turn to.
So, you have a situation, in a sense like 1989, where a system comes to an end. But, in the perception of the population, there is a crucial difference to 1989: And that is, in '89, people had a certain vision. There was also an explosive factor in that, which was the question of the freedom to travel which they wanted to have. This time, they're faced with an impossible system, but apparently also no way out. That is, they have no other state that they could look for, for another reunification, or whatever. It just appears that a second system is crashingand that's it.
And so, with this situation, what we have to do, is inspire people. And Tina's going to tell you how we do that, right now.
- The Goetterfunken -
Tina: Well, we had this situation in front of us. We saw that the government did not have any connection to the population any more, which people more and more realized. And the fact was, what we could seebecause we're going out every day; we're going out to the universities, we're going to the inner cities, we're going to the poor parts of the citiesand we saw that the population, especially in the East, that they've been really angry.
And you have to understand that, because, you know, you have to come into the East German cities, and they are empty. There are no people. Because, people, after the Wall came down, they all flew into the West, because they got promised, they would get a job there. And everything that happened here, they destroyed all of the economy, all of the industrythere was a huge industry here in East Germany.
So, people aresince more than 14 years, they got cheated! They got traded, they got sold out. And they became more and more angry. And the thing is, there was no solution there. So, what you would call, what happened, was the "Goetterfunken," God spark, what Schiller is talking about in his poemand what is also the European hymn. What we did, is that Helga ignited the God spark: She took up the idea of the '89 revolution. She saw that, now, all the people have to be united, we have to bring people together, we have to gather them, and let them do what they did in '89: That is, to become big persons.
Because, in that time, people were also enragedyou know, they actually lived in a prison in '89. They couldn't move anywhere. And this became the last drop in the glass of water, which brought the glass of water to overflow, which was, then, the Wall came down. And this is what Hartz IV is, today: which is, that Hartz IV is the last drop in the glass of water.
So, there she comes with the idea, "Let's do the Monday demonstrations." So, we took our sound-car, and we went into Leipzig: Leipzig was the city, in '89, where, with the leadership of Father Fuehrer, who is the priest of the Nikolai Churchhe was leading the peaceful demonstrations in '89, which had been the key factor to bring down the Wall, to bring down the Communist system in the GDR. And, Leipzig also has the tradition of great people, like Johann Sebastian Bach, like Kaestner, and those people we're always referring to.
So, we took these cities, and said, "We have to take out these Monday demonstrations." And we got around 50 people, in the first demonstration, together
- Call for Monday Demonstrations -
Baker: Tina, was this in July?
Tina: Yeah, we got the leaflet which Helga wrote, and this leaflet officially came out on July 7, with the caption where Helga calls for the Monday demonstrations. So, that means that we've been the first people who started the Monday demonstrations in Germany, which was in Leipzig.
And, it was fantastic! I mean, the first demonstration we had, we'd been 50 people or sobut, where we distributed the leaflets, people just got inspired. "Yes! We have to come there! This is the idea how we can be together!"
And, the next weekand it was raining like hell, the next week! We gathered together 150 peoplethis was a huge breakthrough. And the main thing is, if you look now at our demonstrations, you have a population, where in Leipzig, you have more than 30% unemployment. And these people are enraged. You know, we would have people coming up to us, and saying, "The next time, I see Mr. SchroederI'm gonna kill him!" That's what people tell us! They are enraged.
And now, we are gathering these people together, and what we do, we are making a unit. Because, what we are doing is, we are singing. We are taking up all the songs they sang in 1989, for example, "Die Gedanken sind Frei," which means, "Thoughts are free." Or, songs like "We Shall Overcome," which connected the civil rights movement of '89 with the civil rights movements of Dr. Martin Luther King.
And also, we are taking up "Jesu meine Freude," which is a piece by Bach. It's a motet. And people are getting inspired! Because, we are in the city Johann Sebastian Bach was leading the church choir, and was leading the music in a church, and where he was living. So, this is something really, really, really different.
We have around 50 young people here, in Saxony, and these young peoplewe have the focus. With the people in Saxony, these were our marching orders, from Helga: With these 50 people, and with the population, we're going to make a change, coming from Saxony. Because the people in Saxony, they know that a system can come down. But, what our mission isand this is the inspiring part!this is where the spark comes in: is that we give them the idea. And with the ideas we're giving them, with showing them, "Okay, we need a renaissance." Our mission is now, to take up this anger, to take it, and to transform it! To turn it around. And to get out of this anger, turn it into an emotion which uplifts people.
And this is the mission we have.
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