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Amelia Boynton Robinson Addreses
French, German Party Congresses

Solidarité et Progrès

October 2007

Saxony BüSo Party Convention (below)

One hundred ten youth organizers and other activists of the LaRouche/Cheminade Solidarité et Progrès in France gathered over the October 20-21 weekend in Paris for the party's General Assembly, coming from Rennes, Nantes, Lyon and the Drome area, Nancy, and Lille. The banking crash, the policies of Nicolas Sarkozy in favor of the rich, bringing France into alliance with the Bush administration, and the implosion of all opposition since the election, all contributed to the attentiveness and feisty mood of the participants.  The presentations, identifying different aspects of the economic, financial and deep cultural crisis and also identifying the solutions, inspired everyone to begin to see the pathway out of the crisis.  In the days following the general assembly, breakthroughs were seen in recruitment and deployments.

Jacques Cheminade attacks Voltaire

Jacques Cheminade gave the keynote address defining the foundation of our commitment: We live in a destructive society which robs us of the best of ourselves, but the French do not fight it, because they don't believe another perspective can exist. Our job is to give them that other perspective! Beginning with the US Presidential elections, Cheminade identified the danger of fascism potential in the context of the acceleration of the world financial crash, and asked why is there not more reaction from the population? Using the example of September 11th, he showed how fear is manipulated. The France of the omnipresent Nicolas Sarkozy, is close to that of Dick Cheney with the announced reintegration of France to the integrated military structure of NATO, and a "Bushist" domestic policy of promoting the "France of the Homeowners," and cheating the poor and the middle classes. In Europe, policymaking has totally broken down, and it is incapable of accomplishing the Galileo project, the European GPS, not to mention a space policy worthy of the name. France is in reality applying the policies of the IMF.

Out of the Beer Garden, Into the Future

To counter the cultural pessimism, Cheminade reported on the many exciting things happening in the world, such as the conference on the development of the Arctic and the Bering Strait which just took place in Anchorage, Alaska. There, an impulse between Russians and Americans towards mutual development on the basis of great projects became manifest. This higher level solution to our tragic beer-garden is both a project of war avoidance through entente and renewed cooperation, and a lever to change the cultural paradigm towards a culture of discovery, in the service, not of an eternal present, but of the future generations. In Ibero America, also, a Bank of the South is being created by the main countries of the South American continent aimed at financing great projects for mutual development. The decisive step however, will come from Helga Zepp-LaRouche's call for a New Bretton Woods, which many world leaders, and also French Deputies and personalities have endorsed, and the Eurasian Landbridge.

Cheminade then read from Rabelais, whose works exemplify the quality of polemics needed defeat the underlying axioms and prejudice of people, and then concluded by saying that we must never resign to the suffering of men, of our fatherland, never resign to the suffering of one single human being. We must struggle against the dismantling of the principle of humanity. The examples of the past show us that if we show all our determination, victory is possible. The world of tomorrow depends on us, not on our “secret garden.”

Christine Bierre opened the afternoon session with a polemic on the "cloud of subprimes". In the midst of the worldwide subprime crash, at a time when the real estate bubble has already exploded and where the average indebtedness of the French citizen is at a record high 64%, that Nicolas Sarkozy had a law voted up to improve the access of the lower income brackets to homeownership! As a result, real estate credit lenders have reopened credit facilities to people in the lower-income brackets who can qualify for those loans. Even worse, because it concerns the future of the entire nation, Bierre showed how in the last 20 years, such state-supported measures have been crucial to erecting at least two huge real estate bubbles, one which popped in 1990, leaving several financial institutions in bankruptcy, and the present one which has grown since the collapse of the Internet bubble in 2000, leading to a doubling of rents relative to inflation, to an increase by 10% per year of home prices, and of nearly 60% in the price of land.

Special American Guest Speaker
Amelia Boynton Robinson

Amelia Boynton Robinson

Amelia Boynton Robinson, the General Assembly's guest of honor, then addressed a full room, many of whom had come especially to hear her, because of their respect for Martin Luther King and the civil rights struggle in the U.S. and because of Amelia's personal contribution to that struggle. In her remarks, she insisted on the fact that freedom is not ever assured in advance. It's an internal mental condition of each of us and the duty for each to make it possible for all of us. She recalled how everything changed in 1963 in Selma, Alabama, when masses of Selma's black community attended a memorial service for her husband, S.W. Boynton -- who had fought for 30 years for civil rights in the county, and had died of a stroke after years of abuse and attacks at the hands of the racists. When those who attended the service returned to work the next week, they found themselves fired for having dared to honor Boynton who had defied the authorities on their behalf. Those people thought until then that they were protected, leading a normal and modest life, working and not asking anything from anybody. But that day, when they realized that they themselves were being treated like slaves, they freed themselves and became activists.

Mrs. Robinson advised the audience to take advantage of the publication of her autobiography Bridge Across Jordan, now out in French under the title The struggle of Blacks in the United States, As Witnessed by Amelia Boynton Robinson, Friend of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, published by the Duboiris Editions, in order to learn history from the mouths of those who made it. And if you still think that somebody else will fight for you when injustice strikes, you will change your mind reading this book. In the question period, Amelia encouraged people to lead the same struggle in France if the situation is the same as the U.S. Amelia had just finished a series of events, including an interview with the major station Radio Beur, whose audience is the Franco/North African community; a press conference with some 25 journalists at the Foreign Press Center of the Quai d'Orsay; and a book signing where some 35 African or related personalities showed up to meet this tireless militant.

Negro Spirituals as an Anti-Oligarchical Culture

The first day was concluded most appropriately by a youth panel which started by offering a Negro Spiritual to Amelia, "Must Jesus Bear the Cross Alone," the introduction best possible to their presentation for an anti-oligarchic culture. Alise Franck first developed the genesis of spirituals, a unique heritage of two cultures, European and African, which everything seems to oppose; a music which uplifts the soul of an American black population who have been constantly deprived of it and relegated to the rank of human beasts, as the general letting out steam "shouting" sessions in the churches, as the background of Gospel and jazz illustrate.

Fred Bayle showed this treason of the principle of reason in art has become standard today, using the example of a modern version of Mozart's Don Giovanni which betrays the composer's intent, where in the final scene, a kind of fantasy delirium develops and a child appears from nowhere, distracting attention from the dead commander whose return from the after-life represents the principle of a superior natural law asserting itself over that of oligarchical dictate. Fred attacked the current notion of “liberation” in our culture today, superimposed on us by the oligarchy, and used video footage of current pop culture to demonstrate that in a culture devoid of universal ideas, art, even that which appears to protest the evils of the system, sinks into rage and existentialism.

Calling on the public to develop a contrary hypothesis, Julien Lemaître resumed with the chorus singing the Negro spiritual, indicating the main dissonances that compose this piece, and showing how very simple paradoxes arise between the text and the music, thereby provoking the active mind of the public into a precise and deep questioning which the composer had intended to evoke. It is from that rediscovering of the principle of Classical composition that an anti-oligarchical culture can emerge among the youth today.

Economic, Political and Cultural Sovereignty

Three more presentations, by Christine Bierre, Karel Vereycken and Odile Mojon, followed the closed session, dealing with the need to reaffirm sovereignty in the economics, politics, and culture. The final session was concluded by a youth panel on the work of Kepler by Sebastien Drochon and Yannick Caroff.

Christine Bierre established the parallel between the policies leading to the Great Depression and those followed by France in the post-de Gaulle era. The oligarchy does everything to weaken the state, but the time has come for France to reestablish sovereignty over its economy, leave the Maastricht Treaty, and reestablish sovereign control over credit utterrance. Karel Vereycken used the example of Belgium to show how financial globalization and European integration are deliberately used to bring the sovereignty of the state to an end in favor of a financial oligarchy. To understand how Belgium is being pushed to disintegrate one must go back to the perverse writings of one Leopold Kohr of Austrian origin and a friend of Eric Blair -- better known as George Orwell. Going further into the problem of the need to reestablish sovereignty, Odile Mojon presented original work on the destruction of sovereignty via the degradation of the education system which is producing today a lot of analphabetism. She showed also in a material which will be soon made available in print, how the financiers and the Europeanists are not far from such destruction as well.


Johannes Kepler

In the last panel, Sebastien Drochon and Yannick Caroff of the youth movement, addressed the question of "Why Must the Youth Study Kepler?" The idea was to transmit the difference between a fixed Cartesian mind and a dynamic thinking, with Kepler's discoveries as a weapon. Sebastien decided to play with the minds of people (some boomers and youth: 30 persons in total at the end) by asking to people to draw a solar system and to respond to the question: "How do you know? Has anybody seen the Solar System before? Nobody has!" It is impossible to "see" it entirely! But in the mind, yes! Sebastien explained the hoax of Newton to distort the truthful way of thinking of the relation between the human being and the universe.

As an echo, Yannick asked people to represent the solar system in their minds, in 3D and with all different parameters (different speeds of planets, forms of orbs...). Revealing the difficulty of the exercise, he came back to his difficulties when he first discovered Kepler because of his academic background, who, for five years as a history student, he was told that Copernicus, and not Kepler, was the genius discoverer. Yannick reported how he started comparing both in his mind, starting with the way in which each of them wrote. He saw that Kepler was fun because he invites you to share his difficulties and mistakes; while Copernicus announces a finished study of a seemingly objective universe. Sebastien concluded in answering a youth's question by showing the need to understand Kepler in order to understand economics, and therefore we have to educate ourselves as political leaders in society.

In conclusion, Jacques Cheminade encouraged the participants of those two days to become themselves inspirations for others and awaken their minds, stifled by habits.

 

Saxony BüSo Party Convention Hosts
Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Amelia Boynton Robinson

Dresden, October 27, 2007 – Eight members of the LaRouche Youth Movement attend the Saxony meeting to elect a new Dresden BüSo board and organize there. With had about 25 guests and many members, Helga Zepp LaRouche opened the party Congress with a political briefing, leaving no space for any doubts about the current financial crisis given the effects of hyperinflation. Afterwards elections were held: Kai-Uwe Ducke chairman; Karsten Werner, vice chairman; and Michael Gründler, second vice chairman.

Special guest Amelia Boynton Robinson, Vice Chairwoman of the Schiller Institute in the USA and well known Civil Rights heroine, was introduced with a small chorus singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing" the African American spiritual, also called the Negro National Anthem. Amelia used the opportunity that there was an older audience to talk about the mission which is ahead of us recreating the economy in an FDR approach. She created a very visible picture of all the different branches of industries and the various skilled labor you need to build something, like a dam. After the official conclusion of the Congress, we had some smaller lively discussions, specifically addressing the expansion of our operation in the Saxony area.

 

Related pages:

European Tour, Autumn 2007:

Amelia Boynton Robinson In Lyons, France

Amelia Boynton Robinson in Paris

Amelia Boynton Robinson à Venissieux, France (in French)

Amelia Robinson Takes Denmark by Storm

Amelia Boynton Robinson Organizes the Swedish Nation and Youth

Amelia Boynton Robinson's Speech to the Schiller Institute Landbridge Conference

 

Other:

Amelia Boynton Robinson's Continuing Leadership

Solidarité et Progrès

BüSo (Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität)

Schiller Institute Landbridge Conference Kiedrich, Germany September 2007