On Thursday evening, June 6th, Jose Vega, a LaRouche Independent candidate running for Congress in New York’s 15th Congressional District, hosted his first major event and fundraiser at Bronxlandia, a venue in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx. Featured headliners included Jimmy Dore, a popular stand-up comedian and political commentator with over 1.33 million followers on his show, along with Keaton Weiss and Russell Dobular of Due Dissidence.
A crowd of well over 100 showed up to the event, with supporters of Jose from both the Bronx and from other areas. Several individuals who had volunteered to successfully get Vega on the ballot by petitioning New York voters over a six-week period starting on April 16th also attended, including some from out of state who flew in just to attend the event.
The significance of the event was marked not just by its headliners, but by the intense diversity of the audience, as well as the support from those in Vega’s community. Majora Carter, a long-time business owner in Hunts Point, and the owner of Bronxlandia, the venue where the event occurred, opened it with impassioned remarks about her first encounter with Vega:
“I own a little café up the street, and the first time that he walked in, I was looking out the window and there was this really happy dude, playing chess with this guy outside, and it was Jose who was wandering outside the Bronx. He had no idea our café was there, but when he realized (it), we got to talking about what we believe to be the value of understanding and supporting our own community.
“As a business owner, as someone who gets that, the fact that Jose is doing what he’s doing, I cannot tell you, as someone from this community, being so proud to know that there’s things I always knew to be true—that there is amazing talent coming from our neighborhood; and that we want to support ourselves, and we are also looking outward, because we are not just this insular people. We’re the kind of people who also understand that the world is something we can also take care of.”
Russell Dobular, a co-host of the Due Dissidence podcast, who has hosted Jose and his colleagues on his show several times, noted in his speech that Vega may very well be considered as the first to set the trend of political disruption and intervention against the gatekeepers of the Establishment class, who are so committed to endless wars and the never-ending financial assistance they are willing to supply to perpetuate these wars. The interventions of Vega and his colleagues on President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former Secretary of State/CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Hillary Clinton, have had a profound effect nationally and internationally, inspiring many people to rise up and become active in a moral, anti-war, pro-peace process against the ever-increasing danger of war against Ukraine and Russia, and the brutal genocide in Gaza. Dobular remarked:
“When it comes to disrupting the civility politics so beloved of the liberal class, Jose has not only been at the frontlines, it’s fair to say he’s helped to set the trend. Jose represents a future where a new generation of activists working in politics, labor, and the arts is truly ‘woke,’ in the original sense of the word … that is truly awake to the failure of our system to address the needs of all our people, and rises up to challenge that system.”
Keaton Weiss followed up on the subject of Vega’s viral intervention against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in October 2022, and noted that when he first encountered Jose online, he was directed away from him, because of his involvement with Lyndon LaRouche’s organization. Despite that, Weiss invited him to his show, nevertheless, and found that he was anything else but some wild cultist: “I think a conversation with Jose could be a great demonstration in transcending political labels in order to forge common ground on the most important issues of the day.”
Weiss continued, noting that discussions about the danger of nuclear war and the ongoing genocide in Gaza being financed and supported by the United States, have shattered previous, outdated notions of what actually constitutes political dialogue in the United States.
Jimmy Dore followed with his set. Most of his jokes covered the COVID-19 pandemic, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and related political topics. Dore noted towards the end of his set that he was “proud to be supporting Jose Vega.”
Jose Vega thanked Dobular, Weiss and Dore for their contributions. He noted that it was the 80th anniversary of D-Day, where the allied forces worked with Russia to turn the tide of the war against the Nazis. Much like that moment in history, Vega said, this present moment marks the opportunity for independent voices, not just candidates, to actually take back their government in each of their respective districts. Vega noted that this was a process that involved many of his colleagues, with the purpose of having other people replicate it in each of the 435 congressional districts in the United States. The incumbent of NY-15, Rep. Ritchie Torres, who vociferously defends Israeli “Crime” Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s murderous campaign against the innocent children and women of Gaza and the West Bank, has taken over $600,000 from AIPAC, along with many other contributions from big, super-PAC type lobbyist groups, totaling at least $1.5 million. Torres’s unapologetic acceptance of these contributions translates into his advocacy of Gestapo-type laws, like the recently introduced Columbia Act, a bill Torres himself sponsored. This bill threatens to put monitoring agents in college campuses, such as New York’s Columbia University, to intimidate students now protesting Israel’s legally criminal actions. Vega said that his campaign is a message to sell-outs like Torres, and his controllers, who think they can buy a congressional district in a place like the Bronx, because they believe the people there are too ignorant to stop it.
A Q&A followed, featuring all of the previous speakers. Weiss and Dobular, following questions from those who identified themselves as petitioners for Jose Vega’s campaign, identified the importance of their own active participation in that process, when they came for a weekend to do it. Weiss noted that he had not canvassed for any candidate since Bernie Sanders, when Sanders looked like a promising candidate, but was incredibly moved to speak to people in the Bronx who are itching for an alternative independent voice. Weiss asked the people in the audience who petitioned for Vega to stand up.
This was no “headliner” event. The group of diverse, active, and passionate individuals who either donated or volunteered to petition for Vega made for an incredibly vibrant atmosphere. More will be done in the following days and weeks, particularly an intensive campaign to create a Bronx Freedom Summer, consisting of science, music, and economics classes in the South Bronx and other parts of New York City, noted Vega, at the event’s conclusion.