The News
On Monday, the president celebrated his environmental record to commemorate Earth Day; as he left the podium, he condemned both “antisemitic protests” and people who “don’t see what’s going on with the Palestinians.” On Tuesday, tens of thousands of Pennsylvania Democrats voted for a Biden alternative in their presidential primary. All of this was very relevant to Jill Stein, the 2012 and 2016 Green Party nominee for president, who is running again this year; Cornel West, who briefly sought the nomination with her help, acrimoniously bolted to run as an independent.
Stein talked with Americana recently about why she thinks Biden’s decisions have given her a great opportunity. She went to Columbia yesterday, to declare her solidarity with the Gaza encampment.
Q&A
Americana: What’s the opportunity you see for a third party candidate who says that Israel’s carrying out a “genocide?” President Biden isn’t doing it, RFK Jr. isn’t doing it; certainly Donald Trump isn’t doing it.
Jill Stein: Most of the American public wants an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated solution. Every day, we are seeing more evidence of genocide in bloody images across our various screens. So, the American people are being extremely mobilized right now. People who are normally very faithful Democrats are saying that this has crossed the red line for them. Genocide is not okay. This is a game changer.
I think all bets are off on what will happen. We’re seeing the Abandon Biden movement really take off, not only among Arab Americans; we saw 1,000 African American ministers the other day expressed real interest in that policy. We’re also seeing it in the polls.
Americana: So how does this change the political landscape for you? Are there particular places you focus on now where you expect this to resonate most?
Jill Stein: This dramatically increases interest in the campaign. We are meeting all the time with communities who feel like they have been thrown under the bus. That’s Arab Americans, in particular. But it’s also students who feel like they are being blacklisted now, and censored. Their student groups are literally shut down and told they can’t say certain things. It’s outrageous. It absolutely is. And they’re being blacklisted from their future employment and careers. This is McCarthyism and political repression. This is not what a democracy looks like. There’s a very wide range of demographics right now that are champing at the bit for an alternative.
Americana: I covered your 2016 campaign, when there was plenty of voter anger about the major party nominees. How does the environment you’re seeing now compare to what you saw in that cycle?
Jill Stein: People really feel like these are zombie candidates from two zombie political parties that have completely lost touch. Even in 2012, we saw a lot of resonance for our agenda, which has basically been adopted by the progressive Democrats. It was Ralph Nader who launched Medicare-for-All as a national issue in the 2000 election. In 2012, we put student debt abolition and free public higher education on the agenda, and a green New Deal, as well as reparations. We launched all of those as national issues. And the media landscape is so different now. It’s not nearly as monopolized among young people.
Americana: Do you see any substantive difference between a second Trump term or a second Biden term? One answer I get from Democrats is: Look at how they handled climate. Look at who Trump put in charge of the EPA, and compare that with who Biden put in charge. Look at the Inflation Reduction Act, and look at how Trump wants to repeal it.
Jill Stein: The IRA is an extremely compromised bill. We describe it as a fossil fuels first bill, because the IRA requires, before a penny is spent, developing any major renewable energy project, you have to first auction off 60 acres of offshore space and you have to auction off a million acres of onshore public lands. You have to first devastate the climate and the offshore environment. This is a deadly law.
So, forget all this praise for the inflation Reduction Act. It really relies on you being uninformed, and not really paying attention. The Biden administration has given the thumbs up to 22 new liquid natural gas export facilities. Some of them may have been built before Biden, but on his watch there were at least 12 new ones that came online. The Sierra Club recently put out a report on what this means: These 22 new LNG facilities amounted to 440 new coal plants. This is the most devastating move against the climate that I have ever heard of. This suggests that Trump is actually a closet climate activist by comparison.
Americana: Another argument you hear from Democrats — and heard in 2016 — was that the Supreme Court was at stake. Obviously, because Trump won that race, he was able to appoint a 6-3 conservative majority, and it’s not clear who might go in the next four years. So how relevant is that issue now?
Jill Stein: I must admit, I’m not seeing that raised as an issue. I guess that suggests that the hot air has gone out of that balloon. To me, it’s always been a bogus argument, because the Supreme Court in and of itself is not the sole solution to our problems. It can’t single-handedly outweigh nuclear war, or climate catastrophe, or the status of our democracy, or crushing economic inequality. We’re just not in a one issue world. Add to that — and there’s been a lot of discussion about this — that there were plenty of opportunities for the Democrats to have codified Roe v. Wade. They didn’t.
It is a really bad sign that so much decision-making defaults to the Supreme Court, because we do not have otherwise a functioning democracy — especially a functioning Congress. So, I just want to challenge the Supreme Court as the ultimate issue. The focus on the Supreme Court is a reflection of what poor health our democracy is in, as a whole. We create a better democracy by engaging in it, not by allowing ourselves to be effectively silenced with a so-called “lesser evil” vote. And if one was trying to figure out the lesser evil right now, it’s a much harder thing to do when it’s the Democrats who are leading the charge on genocide.
