Realitista

Jill Stein is the Green Party Presidential Candidate

Glad to hear, I liked her the best.

After winning Green Party primaries in Maryland and Delaware, Dr. Jill Stein announced this weekend that she crossed the 50% threshold to winning the Green Party’s 2012 presidential nomination. With 200.5 delegates required to win the nomination, and 105.5 delegates in hand, Dr. Stein has moved from frontrunner to prospective nominee. She has won over 75% of all delegates allocated, with the next nearest candidate, Roseanne Barr, at 14%.

“I am thrilled to be well on my way to representing the Green Party in this year’s presidential race,” said Dr. Stein, who is beginning her search for a vice presidential running mate. “We’re the only national party that isn’t corporately owned, and I am proud to stand for those who are committed to putting their votes where their values are.”

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.

Why I Joined the Green Party « DuPage County Green Party

When my 17-year-old daughter came home yesterday, she laughed at me and asked why I had a brand-new “Vote Green Party” sticker on the bumper of my car. “They’re never going to win- you know that, right?” she asked.

If she’s talking about the presidential election coming up next November, there’s a pretty good chance that she’s right.  But creating change in politics to better our world is a whole lot bigger than any one election, and voting for who you think has a good chance of “winning” is no way to participate in a democracy.

If you follow politics closely like I have for the last 10 years or so, it’s very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day battles between the “conservatives” and the “liberals” that dominate our national media.  Did you hear what Nancy Pelosi said today?  And the response from John Boehner?  To choose a side is only human, and to defend that ideology against all who oppose it is nothing short of a patriotic exercise of one’s First Amendment rights.  You have to pick a side, right?

But what if you start to realize that BOTH sides are really one in the same?  What do you do when you recognize that BOTH sides are bought and paid for by the corporations that funded their multi-million dollar election campaigns?  What happens next when you come to the conclusion that BOTH sides are happy to argue for a position when they think that it will help sway public opinion, but write legislation that only serves to maximize profits for the executive class of America at the expense of We the People?