Realitista

Five Questions for Jill Stein of the Green Party - NYTimes.com

Q. Why are you running for president?

A. We are in crisis and people are losing their jobs and their homes and their health care and affordable higher education and civil liberties. You name it, they are losing it. We have got a 1 percent that’s rolling in dough as much as ever and the political establishment is not fixing it. The establishment got us into this mess, in both parties. And that’s clear as day. Over 10 years, I have been a recalcitrant political challenger, a recurrent alternative that would not go away.

Q. Is there a difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties?

A. You might look at one party as a rapidly sinking ship and say we’re going to vote for the other guy because the ship’s not going down so fast. We don’t like him but he’s not sinking the ship so fast. But the real question is, if both of those ships are heading for the bottom of the ocean, do you want to be on either of them? No. There’s no question about where those ships are heading if you are looking at the economy.

Read the rest here

The Party of Our Discontent? An Interview With Green Party Candidate Jill Stein | Truthout

I’ve been fighting as a third party candidate for ten years. I stepped up to the plate for this election, basically. I stepped up to the plate because it is a perfect storm for really organizing a political alternative, a politics of integrity that our lives depend on - and more and more people are seeing that.

Specifically, it was the debt ceiling debacle last spring when President Obama put Social Security and Medicare on the table: it really felt like, “How could we not put an opposition voice up against this? This is outrageous!”

Between the Keystone XL Pipeline debacle, the ozone regulation roll-back; expanding war - multiple wars, drones and drone surrogate wars - our “pull out of Iraq”; only to establish a new base in Kuwait, that we now have a new front in the war for oil in Central Africa; and the tripling of the troop presence in Afghanistan, it just felt like “How can we not have a voice of opposition here? This is nuts!”

Jill Stein (Likely Green Party Candidate) to Run First Federally Funded Campaign in US History

She has been to various occupations all across the country, and she says they were all opened the door to her. She almost got mic checked by some of the more anti-politician occupiers, but after listening to her speak for a few minutes, they were all like, “So wait, why are we mic checking her? She just said what we were going to say.” Many times she’s heard occupiers say, “Oh, wait, you’re just like us!”

She also plans to run the first publicly funded presidential election in US history. Check this out, to qualify for matching federal funds for the primary, she only needs to raise $5000 in 20 states. In the general, she can qualify for $20 million in public funds! Not bad, huh?

She encouraged and supported the efforts of Rocky Anderson’s Justice Party, as well.