Why I Support Jill Stein & Why She Doesn't Think Hamas Does "Terrorism"

Dr. Butch Ware joined the team recently as Dr. Jill Stein's VP candidate

If you've never run for elected office I guarantee that you have no idea how insanely time-consuming it is. If you're a corporate-aligned candidate, a great deal of your time is spent schmoozing with wealthy donors. If you're a people-aligned candidate like Jill Stein, a great deal of time is spent getting ballot access -- as the wealthy Democrats try to sue you or cheat you off the ballot in state after state. Then a great deal of time is spent getting out the vote, giving interviews, making appearances, listening to voters, meeting with your team, signing off on communications...the list is almost endless. Oh, and raising some money, too. 

Because as I learned when I ran for the U.S. Senate against Susan Collins under ranked choice voting (RCV) in Maine, paid media is what gets you earned media i.e. interviews, features. Oh, and did I forget debate prep? Anyway, you get the idea.

I say all this as a preface to why I am 100% supporting Dr. Jill Stein in the upcoming presidential election.

Sure, I live in Maine where there is RCV for president and thus no spoiler effect. I will rank Stein first, probably Claudia De La Cruz second, and possibly Dr. Cornell West third. I doubt I'll rank the two corporate servants at all as the genocide in Palestine will continue on steroids if either one of them makes it to the White House.

A problem with one of Stein's early tweets is what I want to address today. Here's the tweet (someone else added the green snake face emojis):

I've reached out to Stein's communications director (full disclosure: was also previously my communications director). I've also heard from her campaign manager. Both agreed that the candidate's tweet intended to expose the hypocrisy of people cheering for Israel cutting food, electricity, and water in Gaza while bombing and invading. In other words, Stein does not think Hamas engaged in terrorism on October 7. However, the tweet's intent would have been much clearer if there had been air quotes around the word "terrorism" both times it was used.

Writing tweets that are clear, concise enough for the platform, and effective is an art. It's what communications professionals get paid to do. Stein is a medical doctor and a very smart, kind, compassionate person. But she does not tweet for a living. 

If we examine Stein's record of, not just subsequent words but also subsequent actions, we can see that she has consistently stood with Palestine. She's been arrested standing with pro-Palestine students at their encampment at Washington University in St. Louis. She's explained why, as a Jewish person, she does not support Israel's violent occupation of Palestine. 

If I were her comms team I might apologize for the missing quotation marks and clarify her intent. It's possible this might still happen.

In the meantime, I went to bat for her after faux progressive congresswoman AOC trashed her this week claiming she is "predatory" and "inauthentic." Most amazing to me, AOC claimed in a Tiktok video that Stein only emerges every four years to run for president and never helps down ballot Green Party candidates.

This led to me sharing some history between my campaign and Stein in a tweet that has generated great engagement in a day and half.

https://x.com/NaturalGuard/status/1830727100845973798

Of course haters are gonna hate -- most ridiculed me for thinking that earning 5% of votes cast was an accomplishment. One commenter pointed out that 5% would earn you parliamentary seats in many European countries, but most just trashed me and ignored the fact that the senate race in Maine in 2020 was more heavily funded -- by tens of millions of dollars -- than any congressional race in the state's history.

So actually the metric I was most proud of was our cost per vote. 

Analysis using data from OpenSecrets by volunteer Brennan Barrington who commented, "As extreme as the difference looks, it's actually an understatement of the cost for the major party candidates, given how much was spent by outside groups not affiliated with the campaigns themselves."

We ended up with 40k+ votes so this analysis was just a bit premature but it makes the point.

Under RCV, the incumbent met the 51% threshold in the first round and thus we'll never know how many voters ranked me second.

But that's not the point. The point is that Stein supported me, she also supported Matt Hoh when he ran for the Senate in North Carolina, and she also supported Dr. Margaret Flowers and Joshua Harris in their campaigns.. you get the idea.

AOC is just playing the mean girl card and spreading lies about a candidate who is now polling even with Harris among Muslim voters according to a recent survey.

In conclusion, here are the states where Stein and/or Greens have ballot access for November.

I'm excited that Maine is one of them, and excited that Stein tweeted on Monday in response to Newsweek still publishing false information about her campaign:

We’re expected to have 517 potential electoral votes, nearly double the 270 to win. 

Support our efforts in the next states: http://jillstein2024.com

I surely will. 

Occupying The Narrative Keeps Peace Candidates On Mute, Ensures War Spending Will Roll On

Jill Stein at a fundraiser in Portland, Maine October 30, 2015.
You will not see photos of Stein with a cute baby in corporate media, so I am sharing one here. 

The American Herald Tribune published David Swanson's interview with Green Party leader and presidential candidate Jill Stein this week. In it Swanson makes the audacious claim that, since Stein's platform most closely reflects the priorities of people rather than those of corporations, she has a better chance of winning than do candidates who kiss the ring of Pentagon contractors. Because a majority of people would actually vote for the platform Stein campaigns on.

But my inbox is clogged with letters and op-eds from people who should know better who are "feeling the Bern." Liberals are again hopelessly hoping for change from the Democratic Party. Why in the face of so much evidence to the contrary do they continue to be duped?

I think it's because they still get most of their information from corporate "news" -- a zone which blacks out any reference to non-corporate sponsored candidates.

In life under corporate government, it's all about hogging the narrative. Making sure people never hear from candidates who respond intelligently to what people really want.

Because people want the military budget to stop gobbling up over half the federal budget every year. They want to stop supporting 800+ military bases around the planet. The want the wars for oil and the resulting refugee crisis and the proliferation of nuclear weapons to cease.

"Refugee crisis: Pregnant woman and children among 40 victims after boat sinks off Turkish coast"
Mirror.co.uk  Jan. 30, 2016

People don't want the future inhabitants of the White House to have a blank check for waging war on "terror" with no geographic or temporal boundaries.

People want student debt canceled, and free university education like other rich countries have. Stein has an interesting strategy here. She told Swanson:

"I have yet to find a young person in debt who doesn't become a missionary for our campaign the minute they learn that we will cancel their debt...43 million young people – that is a plurality of the vote. In a three-way race, that's enough to win the vote."

People want universal health care like other rich countries have. Stein retired from practice as a medical doctor to promote the kind of environmental policies that human health needs dictate.

Also on board: Dr. Margaret Flowers, a Green Party candidate for the Senate in Maryland and a vigorous activist on behalf of a single payer health care system. (Actually, click here to read the article.)

People want the government to respond to climate crisis rather than continuing to pump out carbon and other pollutants at the taxpayers' expense.

People want to have a say in whether or not to live under corporate global government instead of having it shoved down their throats by fast tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal through Congress.

From Black Agenda Report "Ethnic Cleansing: The Ultimate Environmental Racism" by Glen Ford

People want clean food and water, and real information in order to know if they are poisoning their own children unwittingly.

People want police accountability and an end to extrajudicial killing by guns at home and air strikes abroad.

People want the government to help poor families fleeing the murderous policies engendered in Central America by CAFTA and torturers trained at the taxpayer-supported School of the Americas. People don't want migrant children handed over to human traffickers after being housed in concentration camp-like conditions for weeks or months on end.

But even more than all these things, people want to believe in something. Anything that might pull us back from the precipice. Don't think corporate media doesn't recognize this. It's very important to manage this profound need of mobs in times of crisis.

That's why the demagogue with the bad hair appeals to so many frightened working class voters. They see enormous structural problems with our system as it stands, but they also have a compelling need to blame it on someone else. It couldn't be their fault, because they feel like victims themselves. They've lost faith in corporate government and most corporate media. Only "news" outlets that broadcast scapegoats appeal to them now.

Their news feed will make sure they never hear of Dr. Jill Stein or Dr. Margaret Flowers. How about yours?