Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 2, 1990 TAG: 9004020096
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A4 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Medium
"We have got to wake people up as to where America is going, because believe me, brother, it's on the bottom," he said last week. "And I was definitely interested in seeing what I could do to get it squared away."
Williams, 64, became one of nine council candidates in five Hampton Roads cities to join a "Common Sense Slate" organized by supporters of LaRouche, a four-time presidential hopeful and convicted felon whose apocalyptic views have made him America's best-known fringe candidate.
"I don't agree with everything he says," Williams said of LaRouche, who is serving 15 years on fraud charges. "But I like some of his ideas, and I'm an old, common-sense man, brought up the hard way."
Impending bedlam is a hallmark of LaRouche's philosophy, which paints the world economy as teetering on collapse and drug trafficking as the work of a Zionist conspiracy. He demands a return to "classical education" to counter the effects of the "rock-drug-sex counterculture."
LaRouche, who from his Minnesota jail cell is running for Congress in Northern Virginia's 10th District, argues for continued distrust of the Soviet Union, an ambitious defense buildup and federally backed reindustrialization.
The LaRouche group's nine Hampton Roads candidates - four in Norfolk, two in Virginia Beach, and one each in Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Hampton - are part of a campaign by LaRouche's National Democratic Policy Committee to seek hundreds of local offices throughout the country.
Such a big-picture platform may seem a long way from the usual city council fare. But Jerry Belsky, the slate's treasurer and a local LaRouche coordinator, argues that few issues are too big or too distant for municipal government action.
The group's belief in council power is reflected in one of its most visible platform planks: A call for cities to adopt resolutions supporting independence for the Soviet republic of Lithuania.
"If city councils had taken a stand on Czechoslovakia," Belsky said, referring to Nazi Germany's occupation of that nation, "we might have avoided World War II. I would even go so far as to say that, as goes Lithuania, so goes Norfolk."
Some incumbents have greeted the plank with bemused humor. When a LaRouche supporter at a candidates forum questioned Portsmouth Councilman Jack P. Barnes last week about his views on Lithuania, Barnes replied: "I didn't know I was running for Lithuania City Council."
by CNB