Two political activists were confronted by a disgruntled DeKalb resident at about 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday.

The activists stood on Lincoln Highway in front of the DeKalb Post Office. Their demonstration signs read, “Impeach Cheney Now,” accompanied by a snarling portrait of the vice president.

Who were these two, and why did they prompt such a response from that resident?

The activists are John Morris and Don Clark, native Chicago residents and full-time political activists working for the Larouche Political Action Committee. They spent the entire day Tuesday talking to DeKalb residents, students and passersby.

Morris encouraged people to review the Larouche PAC Web site to obtain specific details and various forms of multimedia information about Larouche, the Larouche PAC and their current political objectives and concerns.

According to the Web site, “Lyndon H. Larouche Jr. emerged over the course of the 1970s and 1980s to rank among the most controversial international political figures of his time ... [and] the recent, fresh demonstration of his exceptional qualifications as a long-range economic forecaster has placed him at the center of the presently erupting global systemic crisis of the world’s economy.”

Larouche ran for president six times and was “convicted and sentenced on conspiracy charges,” according to the Web site. Why would Larouche - a man with elaborate political aspirations and a number of organizational accomplishments - be thrown into prison?

Morris explained that Larouche poses a threat to neo-conservative power.
“President Bush Sr. put Larouche into a state penitentiary, in which he stayed there for five years, and [President] Clinton came along and got him out of prison.”

Neo-conservatives are not keen to the ideas, activities and interests of political activists such as Larouche. Larouche believes the U.S. is approaching “the greatest financial collapse ... that we have known in living history.”

In his Emergency Address to the People of the United States on Sept. 1, Larouche stated, “the month of October is enormously dangerous ... we may find a depression hitting us in October which will be far worse than that of 1929 and 1933.”

Before we write this off as a conspiracy theory, consider the current status of U.S. financial burdens, which are essentially wrapped around the military costs of the Iraq War.

If financial collapse is indeed a possibility, it makes sense for us to remove the political leaders who continue to spend billions of national dollars on this controversial war.

Cheney is an advocate of war-profiteering and has no problem allowing our nation to pay for more war, while private corporations reap the profits and bear none of the financial burden.

Activists such as Morris and Clark are attempting to attract the public’s attention to these issues through peaceful, intelligent and critical discussion. After all, this country is supposed to be a democracy in which “we, the people” have a voice. But we won’t truly be democratic unless “we, the people” unite from time to time and discuss the status of our country.

While NIU students are in class, at work or running errands throughout DeKalb, Morris and Clark are out in the world putting in overtime.

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