Jill Stein pens open letter to Bernie: Green Party president

Jill Stein pens open letter to Bernie: Green Party president

Postby admin » Wed May 25, 2016 5:20 am

Jill Stein pens open letter to Bernie: Green Party presidential candidate invites Sanders to “cooperate on political revolution”: "The Democratic machine has launched an unjust attack on your campaign," Stein writes to Sanders
by Sophia Tesfaye
April 25, 2016

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While overly presumptive Republican presidential candidates are rushing to announce potential vice presidential running mates, one presidential candidate is openly courting the idea of a bipartisan unity ticket.

Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, wrote an open letter to Bernie Sanders, asking the Independent Vermont senator to consider ditching his attempt to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination for a real “revolution for people, planet and peace” alongside Stein.

Stein, who has long called on Sanders to join forces with her in the interest of their “shared goals,” wrote to Sanders over the weekend: “I invite you to join me in pushing the boundaries of that system to a place where revolution can truly take root.”

“You’ve proven that in today’s rapidly changing America, a populist progressive agenda covered by the media and the televised debates can catch on like wildfire and shake the foundations of a political establishment that seemed invulnerable just a few short months ago,” Stein wrote to Sanders, asking if “in this wildly unpredictable election where the old rules are giving way one by one, can we think outside the box and find new and unexpected ways to synergize beyond obsolete partisan divides?”

Stein, who first ran for the White House under the Green Party banner in 2012, argued that despite its early successes, Sanders’ campaign has faltered as the “neoliberal Democratic machine mobilizes to quash revolution in its ranks”:

The Democratic machine has launched an unjust attack on your campaign – from the NY Daily News hit job to Paul Krugman’s unfounded assault, the DNC’s efforts to minimize your debate exposure, and the near-unanimous endorsement of Clinton by Democratic elected officials and super-delegates.

“I would love to explore with you collaborative ways to advance that effort and ensure the revolution for people, planet and peace will prevail. Please let me know if you’re interested in talking,” Stein concluded.

This isn’t the first time the Harvard-trained physician has reached out to the Sanders campaign with an offer of a possible third-party unity ticket.

Dr. Jill Stein ✔ ‎@DrJillStein
Because many are wondering: we have always been open to talking with @BernieSanders about ways to move our shared goals forward.
11:04 AM - 16 Mar 2016


“Many of my supporters are also his supporters,” Stein told NBC News last month. “I’m asked all the time if there could be a Bernie Sanders collaboration and my answer to that has always been yes. The Green Party has long sought to establish a collaboration with Bernie Sanders.”

But, Stein said, “that phone call has not been returned and I don’t expect that this will happen.”

“We’re different,” she added. “He is working inside the Democratic Party. I threw in the towel a long time ago.”

In another interview with The Huffington Post last month, Stein expressed worries that Sanders’ campaign would ultimately end and his supporters will eventually support Hillary Clinton, arguing that the primary “is over” and that “the party machinery is behind [Clinton].”

“There are many things about Sanders that are great. We agree on a lot domestically. But to allow yourself to be lulled into compliance with the Democratic Party means you’re allowing yourself to be reined in from establishing a real progressive message,” she said.

For his part, Sanders has repeatedly stated he intends to support the eventual Democratic nominee — even if it is Hillary Clinton.

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's Deputy Politics Editor. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.
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Re: Jill Stein pens open letter to Bernie: Green Party presi

Postby admin » Sat Jun 11, 2016 3:19 am

Jill Stein to Bernie Sanders: Run on the Green Party Ticket
by Amy Goodman
June 9, 2016

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As Bernie Sanders prepares to meet with President Obama, we speak to Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, who has also been reaching out to the Vermont senator.

With Hillary Clinton claiming victory in the Democratic race, Stein is attempting to start a dialogue with the Sanders campaign.

In an open letter in April, Stein wrote, “In this hour of unprecedented crisis—with human rights, civilization and life on the planet teetering on the brink—can we explore an historic collaboration to keep building the revolution beyond the reach of corporate party clutches, where the movement can take root and flourish, in the 2016 election and beyond?”

Stein joins us from Albany ahead of this weekend’s New York Green Party convention. Watch here:



Here’s the transcript of the interview:

Juan Gonzalez: We turn now to the race for the White House. Hillary Clinton has dominated this week’s news after claiming victory in the Democratic contest, setting her on a path to become the first woman to win a major party’s presidential nomination. With only one primary to go in the District of Columbia, Clinton has an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates over her challenger, Bernie Sanders. But Clinton’s pledged delegate count falls short of the 2,383 needed, meaning she will need to rely on the support of unelected superdelegates to officially secure the nomination at next month’s convention in Philadelphia.

But Hillary Clinton isn’t the only woman aiming to be on the ballot in November. Jill Stein is moving closer to securing the Green Party nomination. On Tuesday, Stein won the Green Party’s primary in California. She has so far won 20 of the 21 contests ahead of the party’s national convention in August in Houston.

Amy Goodman: Jill Stein first announced her candidacy on Democracy Now! last June. She also ran for president on the Green Party ticket in 2012. In April, she wrote an open letter to Bernie Sanders urging him to consider joining forces to, quote, “ensure the revolution for people, planet and peace will prevail,” unquote. Jill Stein joins us now from Albany, New York, ahead of Saturday’s nominating convention of the New York Green Party.

Jill Stein, welcome back to Democracy Now! Can you respond to what happened this week, Hillary Clinton clearly saying in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, before thousands of people, that she has secured the Democratic Party’s nomination, she is the presumptive nominee?

Dr. Jill Stein: Yes and good morning, Amy and Juan. It’s great to be with you. You know, this is kind of what many people have foreseen all along. It was kind of in the cards. The Democratic machine has very steeply tilted the playing field, from the beginning, by limiting the debates, limiting the exposure of Bernie Sanders, some very questionable election practices, 100,000 voters disappearing from the rolls in Brooklyn, some very questionable things that happened in the Democratic primary in California where independent voters thought they could just show up at the polls and cast a vote for Bernie Sanders but were unable to, by large numbers and huge discrepancies between the polls in advance and the actual outcome of the elections. So, you know and needless to say, the superdelegates have massively tipped the playing field. And the announcement the night before by major news organizations that Hillary Clinton had already clinched it, you know, hard to call that just a coincidence, seems tailor-made for discouraging people from actually turning out and exercising their right to vote.

So, this is what the Democratic Party has done for decades—many decades, in fact. And after the election of George McGovern in 1972 as a peace candidate—I should say his election to the nomination of the Democratic Party, the party changed the rules to steeply tilt that playing field, creating superdelegates and Super Tuesdays that make it very hard for a grassroots campaign to prevail. And over the years, the party has allowed principled candidates to be seen and heard, but has, at the end of the day, sabotaged them in one way or the other, often through fear campaigns and smear campaigns, in the same way that Bernie is being called a spoiler now and has been for some weeks. Dennis Kucinich was redistricted and basically, you know, taken off the political map. We saw Jesse Jackson the victim of a smear campaign. People remember the Dean scream that was used against Howard Dean as a peace candidate who was doing well. So, in many ways, the Democratic Party creates campaigns that fake left while it moves right and becomes more corporatist, more militarist, more imperialist. This is why we say it’s hard to have a revolutionary campaign inside of a counterrevolutionary party. That’s why we’re here as the Green Party to build a place where a revolutionary movement can truly grow with a political voice.

Juan Gonzalez: Well, Jill Stein, you’ve been trying for months to reach out to Bernie Sanders, because you acknowledge that there are many similarities in your program and his, to join forces. What’s been the response from the Sanders campaign and what are you hopeful for now?

Dr. Jill Stein: Well, the response over the last several weeks has been the same as the response over the last several years. And in fact, the Green Party reached out to Bernie Sanders before the last election to see if he might be interested in running on the Green Party ballot line. And that was in 2011. And basically, we haven’t heard back yet, so I’m not holding my breath that we are going to. And in fact, I think it was just yesterday that Senator Sanders announced that he would be meeting with President Obama to basically stay the course and to essentially move his campaign inside of the Democratic Party, which I think is a mistake and would be essentially an abandonment of the movement that has been built. We’ve seen many very principled and powerful efforts to reform the Democratic Party from within over the course of many years and Democratic Party keeps marching to the right. So, you know, my hope, as Senator Sanders himself said, is that this is a movement, it’s not a man. And my hope is that the movement will continue. And we’ve offered—I’ve offered, basically, to put everything on the table and to see how we can work together and explore the—what it would take in order for that to happen—

Amy Goodman: Well, let’s go to Bernie Sanders—

Dr. Jill Stein: —to run a joint ticket, for example.

Amy Goodman: So, let’s talk about that for a minute. Let’s go to Bernie Sanders last July speaking at the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, when he was asked if he would run on a third-party ticket if he failed to win the Democratic nomination.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: If it happens that I do not win that process, would I run outside of the system? No, I made the promise that I would not and I’ll keep that promise. And let me add to that: And the reason for that is I do not want to be responsible for electing some right-wing Republican to be president of the United States of America.

Amy Goodman: So that is Bernie Sanders last July. You talked about the possibility of a joint ticket. Are you saying that you would—I mean, you are not the presidential nominee of the Green Party yet. You’re running in different state primaries and conventions. But are you suggesting that the Green Party would consider him being the presidential candidate, whether or not he would consider this?

Dr. Jill Stein: It would obviously take a major change of rules for that to happen. But what I’m saying is that if Senator Sanders made the case that now he understood, after the very, you know, disturbing experiences of the last many months and the way that he’s been mistreated and beaten up by the party, perhaps he has a different view of the potential to create revolution inside of a counterrevolutionary party. Maybe he has come to see the necessity for independent third parties to actually move this movement forward. That would be—you know, that would be a game changer if he made the case that he has come to understand the critical need to build the Green Party as the political voice of that revolution. If that were the case, I think many things would become possible at that point for making the rules changes. I can’t change those rules, but I can have those discussions with him and lay the groundwork for it. It would probably have to be taken to the Green Party convention. But in terms of my own view, you know, I’m a physician, not a politician. I don’t have a vested interest in a particular political career or a particular political office. My job is to do everything that I can to create an America and a world that we can live in and that we can survive in. And I would be very interested in having this discussion. I am not holding my breath that it’s going to happen. And I think it’s important that our campaign be plan B, if not for Senator Sanders, then for his supporters.
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Re: Jill Stein pens open letter to Bernie: Green Party presi

Postby admin » Sat Jun 11, 2016 4:02 am

Green Party's Jill Stein: What We Fear from Donald Trump, We Have Already Seen from Hillary Clinton
by DemocracyNow!
June 9, 2016

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Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein takes aim at the presumptive nominees of both major parties, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. "Trump says very scary things—deporting immigrants, massive militarism and ignoring the climate. Hillary, unfortunately, has a track record for doing all of those things," Stein says. "Hillary has supported the deportations of immigrants, opposed the refugees—women and children coming from Honduras, whose refugee crisis she was very much responsible for by giving a thumbs-up to this corporate coup in Honduras that has created the violence from which those refugees are fleeing." Stein goes on to say, "We see these draconian things that Donald Trump is talking about, we actually see Hillary Clinton doing."

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein takes aim at the presumptive nominees of both major parties, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. "Trump says very scary things—deporting immigrants, massive militarism and ignoring the climate. Hillary, unfortunately, has a track record for doing all of those things," Stein says. "Hillary has supported the deportations of immigrants, opposed the refugees—women and children coming from Honduras, whose refugee crisis she was very much responsible for by giving a thumbs-up to this corporate coup in Honduras that has created the violence from which those refugees are fleeing." Stein goes on to say, "We see these draconian things that Donald Trump is talking about, we actually see Hillary Clinton doing."

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jill Stein, what do you say to those, for instance, who criticize third-party efforts as spoiler efforts throughout the history of the country—Ross Perot running in the early ’90s with the result that Bill Clinton was able to defeat the Republican candidate, then, of course, Ralph Nader in the 2000 race, blamed by some, although others disagree that that was the result, for resulting in George Bush being elected in 2000?

DR. JILL STEIN: So, let me say first off, this is a problem that could be fixed with the stroke of a pen, this electoral system that tells you to vote against what you’re afraid of and not for what you believe. And, you know, what we’ve seen over the years, this strategy has a track record: This politics of fear has actually delivered everything we were afraid of. All the reasons you were told you had to vote for the lesser evil—because you didn’t want the massive Wall Street bailouts, the offshoring of our jobs, the meltdown of the climate, the endless expanding wars, the attack on immigrants—all that, we’ve gotten by the droves, because we allowed ourselves to be silenced. You know, silence is not what democracy needs. Right now we have an election where even the supporters of Hillary Clinton, the majority don’t support Hillary, they just oppose Donald Trump. And the majority of Donald Trump supporters don’t support him, they just oppose Hillary. And the majority are clamoring for another independent or several independent candidates and an independent party, and feel that they are being terribly misserved and mistreated by the current politics. So to further silence our voices is exactly the wrong thing to do. And I’ll just point out, Donald Trump himself is lifted up by a movement which is very much the product of the Clintons’ policies. The lesser evil very much makes inevitable the greater evil, because people don’t come out to vote for a politician that’s throwing them under the bus. And so we see houses of—the houses of Congress, we have also seen statehouse after statehouse, flipping from red to blue over the years as the Democratic Party has become a lesser-evil party. And Donald Trump is buoyed up by the policies passed by Bill Clinton, supported by Hillary—that is, deregulation of Wall Street, which led to the disappearance of 9 million jobs, 5 million people thrown out of their homes, and by NAFTA, which exported those jobs. That’s exactly the economic oppression and stress that has led to this right-wing extremism. So you can’t get where you want to go through the lesser evil. At the end of the day, you’ve got to stand up.

But we could fix this right now simply by passing ranked choice voting, which takes the fear out of voting. If you can’t put your values into your vote, we don’t have a democracy. Ranked choice voting says you can rank your first choice first, and if your first choice doesn’t make it, is eliminated and loses, your vote is automatically reassigned to your second choice. This is used in cities across the country. My campaign actually proposed this in the Massachusetts Legislature through a progressive Democratic representative back in 2002 in the first race that I ran. I was running for governor. We proposed that bill, filed it, so that there would be no splitting of the vote. The Democrats refused to let it out of committee. And that tells you something very important: They rely on fear. They don’t want you to vote your values. They need to use the scary tactic of, "Oh, the other guy is worse." Why is that? Because at the end of the day, they are not on your side. They need you to be afraid of them, because they are not for you. That alone speaks volumes about how far we are going to get.

In this race, I’ll just conclude saying, this is a unique moment now. We’ve never been here in history before. What we are facing, you know, is not just a question of what kind of world we want to be, but whether we will be a world at all, the way the nuclear arms race has been re-engaged, the way Hillary Clinton wants to create an air war over Syria through a no-fly zone against another nuclear-armed power—that is, Russia—the climate crisis, where the day of reckoning is coming closer and closer all the time. We can’t keep using this failed policy of silencing ourselves with this politics of fear. It’s time to forget the lesser evil, stand up and fight for the greater good like our lives depend on it, because they do.

AMY GOODMAN: And to those Sanders supporters who have started saying, "If it’s Hill, it’s Jill"? And this is going back to the point of what would you say to Sanders supporters worried about Trump.

DR. JILL STEIN: Yes, exactly. I’d say putting another Clinton in the White House is only going to make that right-wing extremism greater. We will see more of these neoliberal policies, like Wall Street deregulation, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Hillary has always supported. She’s changed her tune a little bit, but Hillary has walked the walk. Look at the walk and not the talk. In fact, you know, Trump says very scary things—deporting immigrants, massive militarism and, you know, ignoring the climate. Well, Hillary, unfortunately, has a track record for doing all of those things. Hillary has supported the deportations of immigrants, opposed the refugees—women and children coming from Honduras, whose refugee crisis she was very much responsible for by giving a thumbs-up to this corporate coup in Honduras that has created the violence from which those refugees are fleeing. She basically said, "No, bar the gates, send them back." You know, so we see these draconian things that Donald Trump is talking about, we actually see Hillary Clinton doing.

And it’s not only the militarism that Trump talks about, it’s Hillary’s massive record of militarism: the rush into Libya, which was really—you know, she was the prime mover behind that campaign, which the military advisers were largely against; her approval for the war in Iraq and so on; you know, her threat to bomb Iran; and, you know, she—and her demonization of Russia and China, and the pivot against China. We are rushing towards war with Hillary Clinton, who has a track record.

And on climate, you know, Trump talks terrible on climate, although in Ireland, I believe it is, he does believe in climate change: He’s trying to build a wall to protect one of his luxury golf courses in Ireland, because he’s worried about sea level rise from climate change, according to the papers that he’s filed for that permit. And on climate, Hillary Clinton established an office to promote fracking around the world, while secretary of state.

So, the terrible things that we expect from Donald Trump, we’ve actually already seen from Hillary Clinton. So I’d say, don’t be a victim of this propaganda campaign, which is being waged by people who exercise selective amnesia. They’re very quick to tell you about the terrible things that the Republicans did, but they’re very quick to forget the equally terrible things that have happened under a Democratic White House, with two Democratic houses of Congress. It’s time to forget the lesser evil, stand up and fight for the greater good. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Neither—

AMY GOODMAN: Jill Stein, we just—we just have—

DR. JILL STEIN: Neither party of the evils will do it for us.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but your unsolicited advice, unsolicited by Bernie Sanders, for what he should demand when he meets with President Obama today, and then your advice to him when he comes outside?

DR. JILL STEIN: You know, I don’t think President Obama is going to change his tune because of something that Bernie Sanders says to him. I think what’s really important—you know, in the words of Frederick Douglass, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will." This is why third parties are effective, whether they’re in power or whether they are simply pushing. Otherwise, there is no counterweight of the power of corporations, which have basically taken over the two major corporate political parties. So, I think it’s very important for Bernie to—you know, to have a teachable moment here and to take heed of his experience of the last many months, and for him to actually stand up and do what the world needs for him to do and what the world needs for this movement to do. And if Bernie is not able to overcome his experience of many decades as a loyal and faithful Democrat, I really understand that. But I think for those of us who are living in today and who are seeing what tomorrow looks like, it’s very important for us to move ahead and take back the America and the world that works for all of us, based on putting people, planet and peace over profit.

AMY GOODMAN: Jill Stein, we want to thank you for being with us, 2016 presidential candidate for the Green Party.
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