Jose Vega, Independent Candidate for U.S. Congress in New York’s 15th Congressional District (the Bronx), issued an open letter to the students in France on Oct. 15, the eve of their Saturday nationwide demonstrations, expected to be the biggest mass actions yet. Paris area students started the protests in September in response to poor education conditions, and now many other parts of society have joined in the action. The new Vega statement is titled, “To All Friends of a Future without War.” It follows an Oct. 10 Vega statement, “A Lesson from Spain: Dignity or Subjugation,” which was inspired by the mass protests in Spain this month, triggered by the housing crisis there.
A wave of protests is sweeping Europe, and elsewhere, in reaction to the worsening quality of life confronted by citizens in many ways, from fuel costs to lack of housing, education, and other essentials. Vega’s statements intervene into a similar sentiment increasingly sweeping the United States, and elevate it to the necessary top-down strategic understanding of the crisis.
While there are not hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets of the United States at this time, nor in Canada, apart from the recent, significant truckers’ convoy protests, there is widespread rejection of U.S. foreign wars and the economic breakdown. This is dramatically evident in the U.S. mid-term elections, as seen in the record or near-record number of candidates running in November as independents, on the federal, state, and local levels. Out of the total of 435 Congressional districts in the House of Representatives, independents are on the ballot in 129 districts or at-large seats, and in 24 Senate races.
More Americans than ever in history are identifying themselves as independent voters. Some “surprise” winners are expected in several states. Their common denominator is to want real leadership out of the present disasters. Vega has moved to connect Americans with those in motion abroad for a new world framework of economic justice and peace.
In his Oct. 15 statement to the students of France, Vega makes references to culture and history, including citing principles important in the founding of the United States, and he specifically references French-U.S. collaboration. “I want you to know that in the United States, we are following what you are doing in France, just as 250 years ago Lafayette watched what was happening in the American colonies, and joined and fought for their declared independence.
“A revolutionary moment, such as the one we are now living through, requires a higher ideal of a single humanity. Poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), the author of the famous ‘Ode to Joy,’ wrote that ‘we are born for that which is better.’ The people who came into the streets in Spain in June and France in September to see Pope Leo, and who stood with 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal when she was evicted, saying ‘We are all Maricarmen,’ are one with people in Germany, Italy, and around the world.”
Vega also hit hard at the decrepit school conditions in France, which sparked the first protests by students near Paris in September. There is no reason, he said, for the collapsing conditions of education, housing, transportation, health care, jobs. He declared, “The ‘elites’ have lost their authority and credibility to govern. Instead of upholding your right to a decent education, to go to schools which aren’t plagued by leaking roofs, burst pipes, broken heating, and rats, they mobilize your nation and the rest of Europe for a war with Russia.”
The sense of the message to France is that we can all stand together against these common enemies of humanity. There are Americans who will march alongside the French and Spanish demonstrators, and go on to link up with the Global Majority, especially the young generations. Vega cites the important international role played by his associate from New York, Diane Sare, who is running as an independent for President in the 2028 election.
Vega says about their shared view, “We believe in a new security and development architecture for the whole world. We believe that the world can generate as many as 1.5 billion new productive jobs in mining, manufacturing, agriculture, construction, transportation, machining, building hospitals, houses and schools. As economist Lyndon LaRouche once said, ‘mankind is the only living creature which has demonstrated the capability of changing the characteristic relationship of our species to nature in such a way that we can willfully, through scientific and technological and related progress, increase the potential population density of our species.’ That is a deep, revolutionary idea, a vision of the future to be discussed, debated and explored worldwide. And we must especially discuss this with the young people of the Global South, such as in Africa, where, out of a population of 1.6 billion, almost 1 billion are under 25 years old!”
He ends by reiterating that the “future should be free of wars and conflict…We must declare our independence from the Epstein class, and seize the future now!”
