Message from Jose Vega to French Students — A Future Without War

To All Friends of a Future Without War:

This is Jose Vega, Independent candidate for Congress from the Bronx, New York City, in the United States. 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 that 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.

There is a United States Presidential candidate, Diane Sare, with whom I am associated. 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!!!

I, Jose Vega, am 28 years old. I represent the poorest Congressional district in the United States. The 15th Congressional District where I am running was home to Gouverneur Morris, the man who wrote the Preamble to the United States Constitution, and was George Washington’s second ambassador to France during the French Revolution. He distinguished himself from many of his colleagues at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. While the delegates gathered to frame a constitution for the new nation, he spoke out against the nefarious institution of slavery and demanded that the slaveholding states make all of their slaves citizens if they wished to receive greater representation in the government. Morris asked the delegates, “Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens, and let them vote. Are they property? Why, then, is no other property included?”

The Preamble which Gouverneur Morris wrote says, “We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more Perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

That statement, along with the Declaration of Independence which declared that “all men are created equal,” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” are intended for the world, not just one nation. Today, we need to think—particularly those of us who are in their 20s as I am—of how we might create a more perfect union among our nations and among those in our nations that wish to define a positive and productive world future for the next 50 years. We don’t need “parties” or “factions,” but a new School of Athens, through which we can pull the best ideas of our own cultures towards the betterment of humanity today.

That future should be free of wars and conflict. 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. This is a war which you, not they, will fight, which cannot be won, and which would, probably result in nuclear war, destroying the planet.

You are expected not only to accept this dismal future, but to also pay for it. You are to accept cuts in social services, food, energy and infrastructure investment, either to “defend Western civilization,” or to “protect the climate,” or something else. We need not accept this future, for we are all human beings, and deserve to live better than the generations which preceded us.

We must declare our independence from the Epstein class, and seize the future now!

Jose Vega