Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein spoke Thursday night at the Naglee Park home of Karen and Richard Ajluni, an event attended by more than 30 persons, amongst which the local Palestinian American community was well represented.
She was introduced by longtime nonprofit executive Ajluni, who cited the ongoing deaths of children in the current Middle East war and said that the two-party system would not change unless voters had the courage to walk away.
Stein, sporting a black-and-white kaffiyeh draped around her neck, launched a blistering attack on the Democratic Party, accusing its leaders of selling out to large corporations and oil companies by failing to adequately address the climate crisis, suppressing progressive voices and complicity in what she repetitively described as a genocide.
Saying “health care is a human right ” and “education as a human right,” Stein called for implementing a single payer Medicare-for-all universal health care system, ending student debt, admitting immigrants who show up at the border after a criminal background check and implementing a $25 minimum wage.
“The most important thing we can do about the immigration crisis is to stop causing it. We need to forget the wall. The wall kills people and kills wildlife and ecosystems and doesn't keep out drugs. Drugs, by the way, are not being brought by immigrants. Drugs are brought here by red blooded Americans,” Stein said.
Stein continued, “Crime is not brought by immigrants. Yes, there’s the occasional exception, but immigrants make our country safer, more stable, culturally richer and more prosperous.”
Stein advocates declaring a climate emergency “to create the millions of jobs that we need in order to create clean, renewable energy,” adding, “We don't solve it with electric vehicles… we need a really good high quality mass transportation system. We need regenerative farming and sustainable agriculture. And to take back our farming from Big Ag, which is making us sick and the killing planet.”
Stein called out what she termed “the nonprofit industrial complex” of Big Green for joining the Democratic push to marginalize her campaign.
While third-party candidates are unlikely to affect the allocation of California’s 54 electoral votes, disaffection with Democrats in Michigan, where many Arab American voters reside, could impact its 16 electoral votes, potentially affecting the national outcome.
Green Party candidate Ralph Nader was accused of tipping the 2000 election to George W. Bush, and some analyses suggest Stein’s 2016 campaign was a factor in Donald Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton. This year, Democrats worry that protest votes could help Trump’s reelection.
“She’s funded, supported and co-opted by extremist Trump MAGA loyalists who know she cannot win but that she only serves to make it easier for Trump to win,” MoveOn chief communications officer Joel Payne told The Hill.
In a recent twist, former KKK grand wizard David Duke endorsed Stein, who is Jewish. Pundits described it as an effort to sway votes toward Trump. Stein tweeted on X, “A racist troll has ‘endorsed’ our campaign to draw attention to himself.”
At Thursday’s event, Stein cited a recent poll that showed her drawing more votes from Trump than Harris, arguing that Green Party supporters have already been lost by Democrats. The poll of 2300 likely voters by the Phoenix, AZ-based Noble Predictive Insights showed Stein at about 1 percent, according to Newsweek.
I applaud SJI for covering this event.
Back in 2020 presidential candidate Ralph Nader spoke at a rally at SJSU and there was zero coverage in the Merc. I learned about it by picking up a Spartan Daily while attending a neighborhood meeting in a college classroom. I walked out of the meeting and a couple hundred yards to the rally.
The Merc’s censorship of a presidential candidate speaking in its own backyard was one of my first clues that the mainstream media is a malevolent force. They are not honest brokers of news but rather propaganda organs.
Spoiler for who? She is entitled to run for President like she has before – that is her right, and criticizing that or supporting her NOT being able to run is disenfranchising a lot of people. Stein is the NO WAR candidate and that speaks to people right now, and speaks loudly to some specifically Muslim communities in swing states like Michigan. This is the game the Dems play – they blame others for their failures. For example, it’s not Trump’s fault he got so many Supreme Court appointments. It’s the Dems fault for not speaking with Ginsberg and asking her to retire (she may not have) so they can replace her with a more liberal judge. They just essentially let her spend her entire adult and elderly life at the bench. That isn’t the Republican’s fault! OR, Harris doing poorly in the polls. That’s, again, the Dems fault! They decided not to run a primary – and if they did and allowed the voters to choose a more centered candidate – they would be winning. A guy like Shaprio could’ve won them the election.
So the real issue for Dems isn’t Stein’s existence and decision making – it’s the Dems decision making, and lack of a solid candidate that is the issue here. LOOK IN THE MIRROR!!!! As an Independent voter who voted Republican for the FIRST time in a presidential election this cycle (voted Obama twice, Hilary the Biden) – it’s disappointing to see the continued lack of leadership, decision making and fairness in the Dem party. I don’t really dislike Kamala individually, but she is a progressive state level politician and that’s it – she is not presidential, nor is Walz. I am not saying that because she is a “woman” because I voted for Hilary – it’s because of her track record in CA. Horrendous.
but muh democracy is on the ballot, right?