Barbara Simmons Interview with Lyndon LaRouche
December 6, 2023

Here is the radio interview with Lyndon LaRouche, conducted by Barbara Lett Simmons on WYCB-AM, one of Radio One's Washington, D.C. stations, on Dec. 6, 2023. Ms. Simmons is a Democratic National Committee member, who has asked questions of LaRouche at numerous of his Washington webcasts.

Barbara Lett Simmons: Presidential candidate LaRouche?

Lyndon LaRouche: Yes, I'm here.

Simmons: Very good. Very good. We're delighted that you were able to negotiate the technology across the Atlantic Ocean.

LaRouche: Yeah, right, sure.

Simmons: I just want you to know, that my listening audience will be delighted to hear from you. We noticed that, just last week, we see that you qualified for some $840,000 matching fund dollars. Is that correct?

LaRouche: That's what I understand, and I'll have to see what comes. You know how these things are.

Simmons: Right, right. Well, we know that you are a candidate that has not had an opportunity to speak in the forums. So, this is one of the forums that's being provided, and I trust that you will be perfectly free and candid, in letting people know how absolutely critical and crucial this election of 2023 is.

LaRouche: Absolutely. Say "when."

Simmons: [laughing] "When"!

LaRouche: Okay!

Well, there are two fundamental issues, or classes of issues, which face us now. On the one hand, as everyone knows, that Cheney and his associates inside the Bush Administration, particularly--others are involved, but they are pushing war. And, the war is not only the war in Iraq, or Afghanistan, they also intend to have a war with Syria, a war on Iran, and they're also aiming at China. So, pretty serious. We are in a very dangerous period, and if Cheney remains in office, with his neo-con associates, and if they control the Bush Administration, then we're in a very dangerous year, this coming year. Because, they are dangerous people. And were, by some chance, the Bush Administration elected with Cheney as part of it, I don't think there's much hope for the human race for some time to come. So, that's number one.

But, behind this war issue, which is an artificial issue--that is, something imposed for which there is no need; there's no excuse for these wars--the economic issue is the other issue.

Simmons: Right!

LaRouche: The international financial system is collapsing. There is no growth in the U.S.: The only thing that's grown is about 110% utilization of missile production capability by government money. And government money spent on Bechtel and Halliburton and so forth in Iraq, that $87 billion package. That's being spent.

But, for the average person, for the real economy, the real economy is collapsing, and the figures that show growth are completely fake. The real growth in unemployment, in industry and related things, shows the truth of the matter.

So, what has to be done now, is to get the war question out of the way, get the war-makers out of politics, and get back to face the reality of the economic crisis, which hits especially the lower 80% of our families in the country: We have destitution; we have homelessness; we have conditions that did not exist 20 years ago, are now the commonplace conditions for much of the population, the lower 20% income group particularly.

So therefore, we have to change the policy. My answer is: go back to the kind of thinking that President franklin Roosevelt brought to the Depression, which had been bequeathed upon him and upon us then, by the Coolidge and Hoover Administrations. We have a similar situation now: For the past 40 years, we've been drifting in this direction, with the Kennedy assassination, the entry into the Indo-China War, the Nixon Administration (which was really a Klan administration, essentially); then, the Democrats shifting over to the "suburban" policy, that is, the upper 20% of family-income brackets, which means that the lower 80% are left out. We're losing health care, we're losing hospitals, we're losing everything that is important: And, using the Roosevelt approach -- not exactly the same things he did, because the conditions are somewhat different, but the same approach, the same way of thinking, the same way of caring -- we can out of this mess.

My job is not to win an election. It's more than that: My job is to create a movement, among the American people, which will do the job. A guy making promises as a Presidential candidate, that doesn't mean much. But, a Presidential candidate who can head up a movement, as Franklin Roosevelt did, to change the situation in the United States, and to start off by addressing these two crucial issues -- what are we going to do about getting out of war? what are we going to do about dealing with the economic question?

I'm delighted about this D.C. primary, in a way. It's a funny event. But, what it does, it permits the people in the Washington, D.C. area, and the people around the same area, who are more than on-lookers -- they're concerned about what happens here -- we can bring that portion of the population of Washington, D.C., which is part of the lower 80% of family-income brackets, the "forgotten men" as Roosevelt said, back in 1932, the forgotten men and women: If we can mobilize them, and show the Congress, and show the parties, that we mean business, that the lower 80% is willing to stand up on its hind legs and demand its representation in government, we can change things.

It's my job to do that. And I'm the nasty kind of guy, who will do just that, and I'm a stubborn character, and I won't quit. And what I need is, not just support, I need people who will work with me. We've got to create a movement.

Simmons: You've got a youth movement started, already, in America.

LaRouche: Oh, we're having fun! And, we're having fun in D.C.

Simmons: Right, and I want you to speak to that. And, Monday evening, those youth are going to be at the Martin Luther King Library.

LaRouche: They're singing their way through the ghettoes. Children are coming out, and joining the singing!

What we're doing -- of course, we're quite serious -- but, a part of serious politics, is trying to make some people happy, people who are depressed and frightened and feel that nobody cares about them. And get involved with people. Get the children singing. And get the people laughing, about things that we can laugh about. And work together seriously to try to push forward what we have to push forward.

Now, the youth movement in this country are -- you know, 18 to 25 years of age, that's a young person, who's come out of adolescence, who has passed out of the vestiges of childhood, is now a young adult: They're looking at what they face -- there is no future, for them, in the United States, the way it's going now. Their parents' generation went to sleep at the switch, and let us get into the mess over, you know, the past 40 years. These young people are saying, "We have been given no future. We don't accept that. We demand, that we organize ourselves. We demand that our parents' generation come back into the fight, and begin to do the kinds of things that we stopped doing, about the time Kennedy was shot."

And that's the only way we can change this: Create a movement, but get the lower 80% of family-income brackets back in. What Roosevelt called the "forgotten man." And these youth will do it. The youth do inspire older people; they inspire children. It's our chance.

What we did in Philadelphia, in helping Street win an election against Ashcroft, the Attorney General, that is an example: We won by a landslide. We won, not because our youth movement did it all -- not at all! We did it, because we added to to the process of making that, not an election campaign, but making that a movement --

Simmons: Right --

LaRouche: To defend our right to be represented, against Ashcroft.

And, that's the way we'll win this thing in D.C., if we win it.

Simmons: Very good! And I appreciate the fact that you recognize the D.C. primary, and you will be a candidate -- am I correct?

LaRouche: Absolutely! And, one of the things we're going to do -- but it's only one thing: We're going to get that D.C. General Hospital rebuilt, as it was before.

Simmons: Great! Now, we need that, desperately.

LaRouche: Well, that's the signal. That's telling people we mean business! That's teaching the nation, we mean business. It's going to go back; we're going to get our rights back. We're going to get our hospital back.

Simmons: Excellent! Well, I am so delighted that you were able to negotiate the technology, that we have you on air, today. And I believe we have three more weeks before our primary. And I want you, and people who speak for you, to share your good words and your thoughts on this airways. Because our listening audience, are the people who go vote.

LaRouche: Good.

Simmons: Okay! They are not for entertainment: They're for learning, and increasing their knowledge.

LaRouche: Good.

Simmons: And, that's why they tune in, to Educationally Speaking. So, I thank you, Mr. Presidential Candidate, so much, for calling and sharing with us today those profoundly significant, major points, and what this election is all about.

LaRouche: Well, thank you Barbara. And, let's win.

Simmons: All right, very good. Very good.