Dr. Jill Stein Is Fighting for
Open Debates, Real Democracy
and a nation where Black Lives Matter
and police obey the law.
“The American people have the right to hear from the full spectrum of their choices.”
“The main planks of Stein’s presidential platform include a
“Green New Deal,” ending mass incarceration and police brutality, a $15 per hour federal minimum wage, a single-payer health-care system, universal public education and the abolition of student debt, breaking up big banks and nationalizing the Federal Reserve, initiating a global treaty to reverse climate change and ending extreme forms of extraction.
During her interview, she also announced the filing this week of a lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates, on behalf of herself and other 2012 presidential and vice presidential candidates from independent third parties. The case argues that the Commission on Presidential Debates and the Federal Election Commission have violated federal election law.
Stein said that by running as a third-party candidate, she can stay in the race until the bitter end in November of 2016 rather than getting knocked out in the primary. “And if we were to be eliminated, we won’t be standing and directing everybody to go vote for Hillary Clinton or whatever corporate Democrat becomes the recipient of the Democratic Party nomination,” she added.
But Dr. Jill Stein also stressed key differences between Sanders’ political stances and her own.
“We’ve much more closely involved with Black Lives Matter and standing up for communities of color, both here at home and overseas,” she told ThinkProgress.
“We also have a much more specific climate agenda. We’re calling for 100 percent clean, renewable energy by 2030. Bernie is also calling for movement, but he doesn’t have the same sense of emergency we have. And finally, we would not be providing weapons to the Netanyahu government, nor the Saudis, nor the Egyptians. I know Bernie has a weapons industry in Vermont, so he’s in the place that makes it hard for him to stand up on that. But we need a foreign policy based on international law, diplomacy and human rights.”
“As her campaign revs up, Stein plans to travel the country promoting her platform, which includes universal single-payer healthcare, abolishing student debt, slashing the Pentagon’s budget in half, and “creating police commissions that empower citizens to control their police.”
Q: How do social movements like the Occupy movement, which swept the nation in 2011, and now the Black Lives Matter movement, which emphasize direct action and civil disobedience tactics, complement a political and electoral strategy?
A: When you look at US history–the abolition of slavery, the women’s movement, the labor movement–[those started with] direct action & very difficult struggles in the street, but those struggles then became political. In the words of Frederick Douglass, “power concedes nothing without a demand,” and that demand needs to happen in the street, in our communities, in our schools and in the voting booth. Because failing that, all the progress that we make in the street and in our communities will be rolled back if we simply wave the white flag of surrender inside the voting booth. History says these movements didn’t move forward inside the established parties at the time. They needed independent parties. These things [direct action and electoral politics] go together
Source: Interview with Candice Bernd of Truthout.org , Jun 25, 2015
Black Lives Matter: fix the system of racism
Q: Your campaign so far has been talking a lot about what’s been happening in Ferguson. You’re talking about the Black Lives Matter movement , and the issue of police violence seems to be more at the top of your agenda. Why?
STEIN: This has also been the direction of the Green Party. The Green Party has expanded over the last 8 years. Cynthia 
McKinney and that race, that was a wakeup call, for a lot of Greens to understand the broader agenda. We sort of historically associated with the green movement, and there’s been sort of a progressive understanding that we will never fix the environment unless hand-in-hand we are fixing the economy and the system of racism and the civil liberties and police state and all those issues that–they cannot be separated. We have become much closer as a community. I began working with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign and that whole network as of four years ago. And we have worked together over the past four years.
Source: TRNN: The Real News Network 2015 interview of Jill Stein , Mar 27, 2015
Stein tells the truth:
“The idea here is that moving to this Green New Deal you not only jumpstart the economy, you solve the climate crisis, you also make wars for oil obsolete because the chief motive of our foreign policy is procurement of new energy sources, as well as economic and military domination worldwide, which is really an unsustainable paradigm.”
The Green New Deal also proposes radical financial reform measures, which include relieving homeowner and student debt; nationalizing federal reserve banks; breaking up oversized banks; ending many existing taxpayer bailout programs; regulating financial derivatives; restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, taxation for bonuses on bailed out bankers, and the support for the creation of publicly-owned banks.
The final dimension of the Green New Deal urges reforms to American democracy. It does so by advocating for the revocation of Citizen’s United and ending corporate personhood. It also supports Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s proposed “Right to Vote Amendment,” which establishes a constitutional right to vote, and improved voter rights overall. The policy idea proposes the creation of a Corporation for Economic Democracy, which would encourage participatory government agencies that involve communities in their decision-making. And, finally, it proposes to repeal the Patriot Act and other laws that impinge on 
personal liberty, as well as rein in the military-industrial complex.
Black Lives Matter
Jill Stein addresses the human rights concerns of the Black Lives Matter movement, including the spectrum of racism and white supremacy that must be confronted.
“What Black Lives Matter does is insist that we look at the totality of this problem,” Stein said, adding: “It’s not rocket science about how to fix it.”
As for the incredible amount of police brutality that has come to light in a new way over the last few years with the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and others, Stein advocated for short-term solutions to immediately relieve some of the problems between police and communities.
“We need communities to be empowered to control their police,” Stein said. “We should have citizen control boards, citizen police review boards, and provide a crosscheck on police who are beginning to acquire a record of violence and racism.”
She explained that the police need to be fully demilitarized, and that standing investigators are needed in communities so there’s no need to have a special investigator appointed.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” she admitted. Longer-term solutions would include economic justice solutions, quality schools in all neighborhoods, health care as a human right, and an end to the drug wars, the prison state, and the school-to-prison pipeline.”
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More resources:
And we CAN make a difference.
https://thewordsmithcollection.wordpress.com/2015/07/01/racism/
“Ignorance and prejudice are the handmaidens of propaganda. Our mission, therefore, is to confront ignorance with knowledge, bigotry with tolerance, and isolation with the outstretched hand of generosity. Racism can, will, and must be defeated.” ― Kofi Annan
“Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice.”
https://thewordsmithcollection.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/black-lives-matter/
Dr. Jill Stein:
“We can win this election by winning the White House… We can also win this election by reclaiming our political voice and our political courage and going forward to reclaim our democracy and the peaceful, just, green future, we deserve. It’s in our hands…Get the word out!”
“Don’t let them talk you out of your power. They want you to think that you are powerless, that you have to go to the polls and vote for one of the Wall Street sponsored candidates. But, remember, what that means is not just wasting your vote on more of what’s hurting you, it’s actually using your vote as a weapon against yourself. In fact, you are the most powerful thing out there.”
~Dr. Jill Stein
https://thewordsmithcollection.wordpress.com/2015/05/16/shine-with-stein/
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