The LYM's State House Organizing around the HBPA is Causing a Political Earthquake
By Lewis Whilden
This political earthquake has started in the Pennsylvania State House, followed by a significant tremor in the State House in Michigan, with the introduction of resolutions in both states calling on the federal government to adopt Lyndon LaRouche's Homeowner and Bank Protection Act. The Pennsylvania resolution (HR 418) has been introduced by State Representative Harold James, and the Michigan resolution (HR 190) has been introduced by State Representative Lamar Lemmons Jr. These are the latest in a cornucopia of endorsements and resolutions put forward by State Representatives from Missouri , New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Alabama. However, if these resolutions were the only resolutions to be filed in the United States, then LaRouche's plan for the immediate moratorium on Home Foreclosures would be ripped to shreds by the enemies of mankind, eaten by the hedge fund crocodiles before it even had the chance to move a federal congressman to action. It is now the end of September, and LaRouche's deadline for federal intervention is approaching. This extremely important activity at the state level is the first step to bringing LaRouche's HBPA to the Congress. To make this a reality, we must escalate!
The LaRouche Youth Movement recently deployed into the Pennsylvania state house in Harrisburg to organize representatives to co-sponsor Harold's resolution. There, we found a unique, fertile field of potential, mainly because of the leadership that rep. James has shown throughout the years. It is no coincidence that the first major shot in this fight was in Harrisburg. Rep. James was the first elected official to endorse LaRouche for president in 2004. In 1996, he also introduced legislation to tax speculative financial transfers, as a means of generating the funds to provide for the general welfare of the citizens of Pennsylvania. This Earthquake is the result of the cumulative effect of our organizing in the Pennsylvania State House throughout the years. The legislators we spoke to were very knowledgeable of LaRouche's leadership, and had a lot of respect for Rep. James. As of this writing, Rep. James' resolution has 35 co-sponsors, 31 are democrats and four are republicans, with 13 democratic committee chairmen, 2 republican minority committee chairmen, and one republican caucus leader. This is 17 % of the legislature, and nearly 1/3 of the Democrats in the Pennsylvania house. The legislator turnout in co-sponsors is a bipartisan response to LaRouche's leadership, the legislature knows that both LaRouche and Rep. James are fighters.
This is an initial blow to the hedge fund lobby that is looking to obstruct any impulse amongst Federal Congressmen to protect the general welfare. With the resolutions in Harrisburg and Lansing, we have punctured the enemy lines, and now, to win the war, we must charge through with everything we've got. Imagine if once the American soldiers at Normandy made it to the beach, they took their shirts off and started to sunbathe. That is not the kind of war we are running!
It is important to immediately spread this momentum to the statehouses in the Midwest, West Coast, New England, the South, and all of the states that are hit hardest by the mortgage crisis. In this way, you can insure that the Pennsylvania and Michigan resolutions do not become a target of the oligarchy. To guarantee the success of this fight, the LaRouche Youth Movement has targeted State Houses in State capitols throughout the country.
One representative in Harrisburg, while also ripping into his own federal congressman for his inaction on everything, expressed doubt that the federal congress would do anything if given a resolution from the Pennsylvania State House. We told him that our own mobilization involves getting resolutions passed in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Texas, Alabama, Michigan, Ohio, California, Washington St., Missouri, i.e., all of the states in which our youth movement is either directly involved in statehouse organizing, or we have legislator collaborators who are introducing Lyn's legislation like Rep. James has done. The legislator responded "Now that'll work. I'll support this resolution, if that's what you're doing."
What follows is a small glimpse of what the youth movement is doing.
--Our Fight in the Midwest--
The Harrisburg effect has first spread to Michigan, where our organizing has resulted in Lamar Lemmons Jr.'s resolution receiving 20 co-sponsors at the time of this writing, which is 1/5th of the entire legislature, and nearly 1/3rd of all the Democratic representatives in the State House!
The eyes of the world right now are on the Midwest, a region hit devastatingly hard by not only home foreclosures, but also the theft of the citizens' means for survival with the shut down of industry and manufacturing. The government of Michigan is threatening shut down due to its bankruptcy, and the state of Ohio is similarly bankrupt. Because of the Midwest's past in the development of our nation, being a center for the implementation of new technologies, it has been an area targeted by destruction. The Midwest, however, is also the region where a revolution of the type LaRouche is calling for is most likely to start because of this history. As one organizer said to a rep who wanted to know if anyone has introduced our resolution at the federal level, "you are not going to find anyone, because the nation is looking to the Midwest to show leadership on this."
We've intervened in the State House in not only Lansing, Michigan but also Columbus, Ohio. In both state houses, we found ourselves fighting the localist attitudes of the legislators. They are obsessed with solving the immediate crisis for their constituents who are becoming homeless, but we insisted that if they do not fight for an FDR solution on the federal level, then they are wasting their time. Why give the man in the desert a glass of water, when you can take him out of the desert!
In Columbus Ohio, our strategy was to play LaRouche's "Firewall chat," an 81/2 minute audio statement on the foreclosure crisis recorded by LaRouche, to everyone we met with, and managed to play it 18 times with a lot of good responses and questions afterward. We had a total of 32 meetings. We were also able to have many impromptu meetings, and there was a level of openness in Columbus that we have never experienced before. This was perhaps due to the current crisis, with many Ohio cities being amongst the top 100 areas in foreclosures, and the developing crisis with the impaired mortgage assets of the state chartered National City Bank.
Our organizers were very enthusiastic about the potential of the legislators they met with, and we received general support, but some work needs to be done to show the reps in the Ohio legislature how to be leaders. The Legislature does comprise of Franklin Roosevelt Democrats and McKinley Republicans, but one organizer compared their behavior to owls: "Who are you guys talking to? Who has endorsed this resolution? Who in Washington is willing to introduce this legislation? Who? Who? Who!" It seems that no one, at this point, is willing to introduce the resolution, until they get some sort of approval from others. They may move with the idea, but no one yet is willing to stick their neck out onto the hedge funds' chopping block. The situation in Ohio requires a leader. Who will it be?
Foreclosed in New England?
So far, our organizers in Boston have traveled to state houses all over New England, to a tremendous response. They have been to the capitols of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island. New England has many cities listed in the top 100 foreclosure rate list. We also attended hearings held by the Massachusetts Attorney General on the crisis in four of the state's hardest hit cities
In Connecticut, we took advantage of an emergency session that was called. Our strategy in was to have meetings with the representative's aides, following up on these meetings by calling the representatives themselves "off the floor." The Reps we talked to were most exited about the idea of them and their state being incorporated into a national mobilization. We briefed them extensively about our activities in State houses around the country.
When we talked to one aide in her office, she had just gotten off the phone with an LPAC representative from our national center, already discussing the HBPA. She told us about her own family's experience with a bad mortgage that ended up in the hands of a company other than the bank that originated the mortgage. When we pulled her Representative off the floor of the House, he agreed that it was necessary to deal with the crisis now, but thought he couldn't do much because of the bureaucracy in the state house and in the federal government. We challenged him to see that it was precisely the bureaucratic policies in Washington that have destroyed the economy, and that the issue of leadership is having the courage to buck this bureaucracy.
Another rep gave the common argument that the market ought to sort this out. Concerning the revaluation of mortgages in the foreclosure moratorium stage, he said, "Shouldn't the law of supply and demand determine that?" Our organizers compared the law of supply and demand to somebody's libido determining their daily decisions, then attacked Adam Smith as the originator of the idea that economy is driven by society's sex drive. After this polemic, the rep. asked seriously, "What's your plan?"
With the targeting of multiple statehouses in the New England area, and the damage that this foreclosure crisis has done to New Englanders, a breakthrough on the northeastern flank is immanent.
--And California?--
As was emphasized earlier, the key to the success of this mobilization is to spread the Harrisburg effect. The pressure that will force the congress act must come from the states. In order to win this fight, many more local leaders around the country have to put the kind of pressure on their congressmen that is as unbearable as the reality of the crisis is for the average citizen.
The region that is thus far conspicuously missing from this fight is California, a state that has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation. This silence comes despite the intensive work of the LYM and State Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally. When Mervyn Dymally tried to introduce this to a California Black Caucus meeting, the resolution was shot down in favor of discussing Governor Schwarzenegger's energy policies. Besides this go-along-to-get-along farce, the LYM have contacted 70 city councils out of the 90 in L.A. county, and have maintained a continuous presence at the state house in Sacremento.
With the victories in Pennsylvania and Michigan, the first few bricks in LaRouche's firewall have been laid!
