Thursday, March 12, 2009

The screaming sessions of Larry...


There were cultural differences between Sweden and the USA... We who worked in the Swedish organization was, in short, used to a more liberal atmosphere. And we did not work as many hours as the americans did.

So when a young person from Sweden went to the USA to organize there and see how things work in the USA this almost all the time led to a complete disaster... The young Swedes that went to the USA were simply chocked to see how dehumanizing and bad things were there, when they came to the U.S. 

I remember G. Mo. A young man that went to the USA around 1995. When he came back he just simply went to his parents and did not call the office for some time. When I later met him he was still in a state of total chock. People were like robots there, he told me... And he was horrified that leaders of the organization would shout and scream at the members. he had visited Baltimore!Some other youngsters that were around had the same experience when they came to the USA. R. Su, for example. He and O. Po told me about the "screaming sessions" of Larry Freeman in Baltimore. "Larry must be sick..:" were their comment, and both of them were so scared that they did not become members (for that reason and other reasons).

I knew about the screaming sessions. I witnessed them myself in 1992 when I was in Baltimore. I remember the first time I saw it. It was when E. Th had disobeyed an order to return back immediately to give me a chance to get a haircut and to get a subscription from a woman. Larry took E. to the litterature room next to the phone team room and yelled at E. Th for twenty minutes so the whole office could hear it.

That was the moment I for the first time was thinking about dropping out. "What the hell am I doing here", I was thinking!" Larry is raving mad and the whole Baltimore office must consist of mad cowards... No one protests!!! is this the way a beautiful soul should behave?"

I stayed in the organization because I knew Sweden was more liberal (Good old M, who had many doubts about the organization, had warned me that USA could be quite crazy...) and because I, as well as many others, believed that "Lyn is in jail, he does not know about this... If only Lyn knew", I thought.

Admittedly, things had changed a bit when I returned to Baltimore in 2003. Larry did not shout at the youngsters anymore. They were "organized" differently with a more soft version of brainwashing and group-pressure. The older phoneteam members were under enormous pressure though and Larry and Deborah used the same old hatefilled un unrespectful language to make them more "efficient" during fundraising as before. There was a shift in method... The young once got one day of as reading day and were treated in a softer way, while the older "boomers" were treated harsch with work seven days a week, etc... 

I was almost fooled by this diversion of method... Until I realized that first, the LYM works as dehumnizing and mad as the boomers, but in a different way, and that the future of LYM would be to organize like the older members... 

The way the "boomers" (the older members) are treated today will be the same way the LYM would be treated, and treat each other, in the future!

And when I later in November heard Helga say that Lyndon LaRouche himself had ordered the seven days workweek for the older members, I lost my last hope about the organization.


/T

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