By Nathaniel Tishman

"The Dick is loose!" yells Andrew Laverdiere at the bustling crowd getting off the train at the corner of 19th and Holloway. The pack either ignores him or walks quickly in the other direction. He isn't deterred.

"Oh, so you like the Dick!" he roars. "Do you want to get fucked by Bush again?"

Laverdiere still has his pants on.

He's waving a pamphlet entitled, "Children of Satan II, The Beast Men," featuring a prominent picture of Vice President Dick Cheney on the cover, and an executioners shadow in the background. On the small folding table next to Laverdiere are more pamphlets, from, "Is Your Clergyman or Congressman a Moonie Sex-Cultist?" to "Stop Ashcroft's 'Heinrich Himmler II' Bill -- While You Still Can."

Laverdiere is a member of WLYM, the Worldwide LaRouche Youth Movement, a global network of supporters for perennial fringe presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. Extolled in an almost messianic fashion by his followers as 'the world's foremost economist, thinker, and statesman,' LaRouche is seen by his detractors as a con artist, conspiracy theorist and leader of a cult of personality, who served five years in federal prison for fraud in the 1980's. Despite his questionable record, LaRouche has more than 20 chapters of young supporters across the US and Canada who advocate ceaselessly for what seems to be an impossible goal, LaRouche's inauguration in January 2005.

LaRouche's brand of democracy is an unusual one. While advocating for causes most liberal-minded people would agree with, such as reforming HMO's and supporting health care for everyone, LaRouche also has something of a draconian, and what some might call a paranoid streak. Within the past few years LaRouche has said the way to deal with the AIDS epidemic is to screen and permanently quarantine those who have been infected, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom was running a drug-dealing ring, and that Vice President Dick Cheney was not merely evil, but literally a spawn of Satan himself. His supporters speak in quasi-militaristic terms, referring to their tabling events as deployments, and calling their group gatherings 'Cadre Schools.'

Originally from the small town of Madison, Maine, Laverdiere, 35, first found out about LaRouche after leaving the Navy eight years ago, and has become a passionate advocate for his campaign. He has a wide, toothy smile, a wispy blond goatee, wire-rimmed glasses and balding scalp. His face lights up as he speaks about why he supports LaRouche, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Why are all these wacky kids supporting this old guy," he asks. "Because who outside of LaRouche has people marching in the streets? Democracy is in trouble, big trouble."

LaRouche's critics may agree that democracy is threatened, but they question whether LaRouche and his movement are the ones to change things.

"They're a parasitic social phenomenon," says Eric Wolfe, Communications Director for a Bay Area labor union, who has had extensive contact with the LaRouche movement. " They've burrowed into the body politic. They have a crackpot ideology that is able to feed off the legitimate energy of people who are disaffected with the status quo."

"They really annoy me," says Sam Devine, a Music major at SF State, after encountering a table of LaRouche activists at a recent 'deployment' on campus. "They strike me as people who are activists just for activisms sake. Although they act Socialist, they're clearly Fascist."

While presidential campaigns usually try to make themselves as visible as possible, the LaRouche 2004 offices are in an unmarked building above a small snack bar on Franklin street in downtown Oakland. Perhaps 100 feet down on the corner, a single white-on-red LAROUCHE FOR PRESIDENT 2004 poster is taped to a streetlight, but otherwise an average person would be lucky to find it. A creaky and cramped elevator is the only visible access to the third floor, where the campaign is headquartered.

The inside looks very similar to any other campaign office: computers, telephones, pamphlets and signs are stacked throughout the space. The literature weighing down the blue wooden bookshelf betrays the LaRouche movement as anything but typical. From "Is Satan in Your Schoolyard," to "Treason in America," and "The Night They Came to Kill Me!," all have subjects usually outside the standard realm of politics.

In the voluminous library in the back of the office one Saturday night, Laverdiere speaks to Eddie Lopez, 18. Wearing a hooded black sweatshirt, Lopez says he has never really been political, but he doesn't like Bush. He says he met some of the LaRouche supporters at City College, and they invited him to the meeting tonight.

"So, you've never been political," says Laverdiere, smiling. "Don't worry, we change a lot of those."

In the background, a DVD plays of LaRouche speaking to a rapt audience, with Lopez half-watching, half-listening to Laverdiere.

"I honestly think Dick Cheney is a dummy, and his wife Lynne is a ventriloquist," says LaRouche.

In the next half-hour approximately 20 more people arrive, and take seats in the main room off the library, where Sylvia Spaniolo has called the meeting to order. The 'political briefing,' the first portion of the meeting, claims that LaRouche predicted the early March train bombings in Madrid, which killed almost 200 people.

"LaRouche has specifically talked about how Madrid could be another target," says Spaniolo, a young woman with thick-rimmed glasses and highlighted blonde hair, wearing a short-sleeved flowery dress. The audience, almost as one, murmurs their approval.

After Spaniolo sits down, Timothy Vance, the leader of the evening's class strides to the lectern, adorned with a large poster of LaRouche. A clean-shaven, boyish-looking brown-haired man with glasses, he speaks for almost three hours on 'LaRouche's Policy of Statecraft,' topics ranging from Bach to the profession of Journalism. At one point Vance calls up two men from the audience to help him sing a musical scale.

"Bach is part of a great tradition of thinkers that LaRouche partakes in," says Vance.
In the March 2004 primaries Alameda County voters elected four prominent La Rouche supporters- Summer Shields, Charles Spies, Spaniolo and Laverdiere, to the Democratic Central Committee. In the March 10 issue of the East Bay Express, Will Harper reported on their election and the concern it creates among mainstream democrats.

"Party officials doubt the LaRouchies teach anything but Lyndon worship," Harper writes.

Laverdiere says he's still shocked from his election victory, but is looking forward to promoting LaRouche in the committee. He already has big plans though, and a message he wants to expose.

"They said that in all of Alameda county LaRouche got only 300 votes, and I got 18,000," says Laverdiere. "But you know the government stole the rest of his votes, right?"

Laverdiere doesn't put anything past election officials and the government in what he sees as a quest to discredit his chosen candidate. They'll do whatever they need to do.

The Dick is loose, after all...