Hi, everyone.
It's great to see everyone here.
My name is Rami Khalil.
I'm from Socialist Alternative, and it is my honor to introduce Keshama Sawant to you
tonight.
Keshama is the Socialist Alternative candidate for the Washington State House of Representatives
in District 43.
She's running against the Washington State Speaker of the House, Frank Chopp, who is
the most powerful legislator in our state.
He's the Speaker of the House, and he controls the Democratic majority in our state government.
Some of the endorsers of Keshama's campaign, our election campaign, are the Stranger newspaper,
the Eat the State newspaper, Dorley Rainey, Reverend Rich Lang, the Green Party of Seattle,
the Jill Stein campaign, and I just got word just today that we just received the endorsement
from the Communication Workers of America Union Local 37083.
Keshama is an economics professor at Seattle Central Community College.
She's also been a teacher at Seattle University, and she's a member, therefore, of the, well,
at least at Seattle Central Community College, of the union there, the American Federation
of Teachers Local 1789.
She comes out of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and she's a tremendous fighter for the interests
of workers, women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and it's my honor and pleasure to introduce
you to her tonight.
So please join me in welcoming her.
Mic check.
Thank you, Rami, for that very generous introduction.
I will try to live up to that expectation.
Thank you all for being here tonight.
It is indeed my honor to be able to speak to you about some of the most burning and
important issues of our times.
And I also wanted us to recognize that we are today in historic times.
We have just been through the Arab Spring with the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions.
We've been through the Wisconsin uprising and the Occupy movement, which finally, after
so many decades, broke the silence on the deep inequality that pervades our society,
the corporate domination, the financial oligarchy, the rapaciousness and greed with which corporations
have been looting not only this country but this entire planet.
So we are indeed fortunate, I think, to be part of this struggle.
It's indeed an honor to be fighting for our fellow human beings and for our brothers and
sisters.
And I wanted to start by saying that we are here in a gathering of third party candidates.
So let's recognize what that really implies.
So if we are living in an era of struggle of the Occupy movement, we are in an era where
we are facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
We are facing deep inequality and poverty.
And we are also in an era when people are refusing to accept the status quo.
We are seeing students rising up everywhere.
We are also seeing young people recognizing that they don't have much of a future.
They are facing a bleak future with this double whammy of very few job prospects and a ball
and chain of student debt that is going to be around their neck for the rest of their
lives.
And in such an era, if a party that has been around for decades and decades and claims
to represent the progressive agenda and claims to represent the working class, if such a
party is not able to sweep the floor in the elections against a Robert Barron Mr. 1% buffoon
venture capitalist, then they have themselves to blame.
We are not the spoilers.
They are.
And the fact that Obama is running neck to neck with Romney and is not able to surge
ahead decisively is a testament to the betrayal after betrayal after betrayal of the Democratic
Party.
And it's no different here.
I mean, we are running a state race, but it's no different here.
And in fact, I would say that we have a stronger case to indict the role of the Democratic
Party because they have been in the majority.
They have held the governor's mansion for well over a decade.
And look at what they have given us.
They have given us massive cuts to higher education, all the almost decimation of basic
health and the disability lifeline.
And they're telling us that, you know what, we need to do these things.
Chop, our opponent, Frank Chop, who is the speaker of the house, is often going on the
campaign trail saying, you know, he stood next to me several times and said that I have
saved basic health.
That means that I have pulled out a few crumbs for you lesser models while I am fulfilling
my real agenda, which is to be a servant to my corporate masters.
And I am a teacher, so I really want to highlight what has happened to higher education.
If you look at all over the state, the cost of higher education for students today now
have doubled since 2006.
So they are facing a really, really tough period ahead.
And we have to be talking about that.
And we have to explain why is it that the Democratic Party is not able to carry out
even a semblance of a fight against what's happening.
And the reason is that they are so tied at the hip with corporations.
Andrew who spoke before me, you know, he talked about the coal terminal.
One of the major corporations behind the coal terminal is Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad
Company.
Mr. Chopp has received $900 in the current campaign from this corporation.
But that is just one really tiny grain of sand in the ocean of evidence that you can
see that if a party is taking corporate money, then they are going to be beholden to that
corporate agenda.
And the sooner we wake up to that reality, the better for us.
Our campaign is calling for free, good quality public education from K-12 through university.
They're calling for single payer health care.
We don't want Obama care, which the physicians for our national health plan have called an
aspirin to cure cancer.
We want single payer health care.
And we know it can be done.
I mean, whenever we talk about this, the Democrats will tell us that, you know, you guys are
dreamers.
You don't know how it is to live in the real world.
You know, in the real world, you have to actually get things done.
You know, have you ever heard this phrase, you know, you have to get things done?
What they mean by getting things done is getting things done for the corporations and selling
us down the river.
So we have to reject that logic.
We're saying that education and health care and all the social needs can be fully funded
in a high quality manner.
There is a lot of wealth in this state.
This state is actually awash in wealth.
Microsoft alone made $23 billion in profit last year in 2011.
So we are calling for all these programs to be funded by taxing the rich.
Tax the super rich, tax the big corporations, tax all those entities who have been bleeding
us dry for all these decades.
We're the ones doing all the work.
They take all the profit and we have to say enough to that whole idea.
But you know, the moment you say that, the Democrats and other people will say, well,
you know, if you tax the rich, they're the job creators.
They're going to leave the state.
What are you going to do then?
Well, I will say it just as an economist that there is plenty of evidence that they don't
actually create jobs.
The way jobs are created under capitalism is by consumption by ordinary people like
you and me.
That is what creates jobs.
However, there is some truth to the fact that if the rich face higher costs, then they will
try to move their, you know, move themselves elsewhere because that is the logic of global
capitalism.
And that is why I am a socialist, because you have to recognize that as long as there
is another source of labor that is even more desperate than us, and so they're willing
to take on lower wages than us, it doesn't matter whether it's South Carolina or the
Philippines.
As long as there is that other source of surplus labor, jobs can move and if they can, they
will move.
That is the logic.
But look at, look at the, you know, follow the logic to its end.
If you accept that, then what are you facing?
You're facing a global and a national race to the bottom.
So you have the governments of all these 50 states fighting not to improve your standard
of living and to make sure your kids get good education and healthcare, but to see which
of us can come out ahead in providing the best conditions for profit making for big
corporations.
And so we're saying, no, we reject those parameters of capitalism.
If Boeing executives want to leave the state, they are welcome to do so.
The factory is here.
The factory is here.
The workers are here.
The talent is here and all the community is here.
We will run the factories ourselves.
We are therefore calling.
We are therefore calling for the democratic public ownership by workers and by the community
of their workplaces, of the big corporations.
We don't need those big bosses.
They don't, they're not the ones doing the work anyway.
So I, I invite you to join our campaign if you agree with these points of view, because
we cannot make change just with a few people.
We need the whole community to rally behind this.
But what are the next steps?
I have just a little bit of time left for myself and I want to say that we should raise
our sights beyond this election campaign.
This election campaign is now going to last for about 18 days or so.
Are we going to pack up and go home after November 6th?
That's what I want to hear, but I want it to be louder, but that's good.
That's good.
So what are we, what are we going to do?
Where are we going to go from here?
And I think we need to recognize that even though we as socialist and activists are running
this election campaign, elections are not the most favorable terrain for activists.
We are doing this as a tool to reach out to people out there who we know agree with us,
but may not think that somebody else agrees with them.
So we're trying to reach out to the community, but ultimately it is mass movements that shake
things up.
And so we need to take the word out and participate in mass movements.
And we are also calling for running a slate of candidates in a similar fashion like our
campaign in 2013 for the Seattle city council races and hopefully for the mayoral races.
We think that the left needs to come together and together fight the corporate agenda.
And I know the left has their differences.
We are socialists.
We don't hide that and we will fight for what we think global society should be going towards,
which is democratic socialism.
But I really want to remind everyone that for every one thing that we have a difference
of opinion on, we have 10 other things that we agree on.
We have a common enemy.
It's corporations and capitalism.
So I want to urge you all to fight together with us and join us in taking this era of
struggle forward and join us in making history.
Thank you.
Thank you, Shoma, for that wonderful speech.
I just want to announce some ways that people can get involved in the campaign real quick.
One is you can go to our campaign's website to find out all the various ways you can contribute
to the Sewant campaign.
And our website is votesewant.org.
Also you've seen in your pews that there's a debate tomorrow with the most powerful legislator
in this state, Frank Chopp.
Shoma here will face off against him for 45 minutes tomorrow at 8 p.m. in Fremont.
And you have the address here, the Doric Masonic Temple.
It's just west of Fremont Ave.
Also I have to explain another campaign that we're involved with.
Shoma here, as a teacher at Seattle Central Community College, has been an outspoken fighter
against the budget cuts that the colleges have been facing.
When the Occupy Seattle movement decided to relocate its encampment from Westlake up to
Seattle Central Community College in order to link the Occupy movement with the fight
against the budget cuts, she was one of the teachers that was instrumental in pressuring
the administration to allow the Occupy movement to camp out at the college.
She also was...the administration also has been trying to restrict students and teachers'
free speech rights and she spoke out against that.
And as a result of being an outspoken workers' rights advocate and all these things, the
administration recently fired her from her job, believe it or not, for this quarter.
But we're not accepting it.
We are fighting to get her job back because we don't believe that workers who speak up
for their rights and for the rights of the community should be fired and that we're going
to go to bat hard to get her job back.
And we think there's a chance that we can win her job back, but we're going to need
your help.
So please make sure that you read this flyer tonight and please call and email the administration
at Seattle Central Community College and tell them that she deserves her job back.
We want her hired back at the beginning of next school quarter in January and we want
her wages paid back to her for the wages that she lost this school quarter.
So that's very, very important.
There's also a public forum that we're having this Thursday about that at 1 p.m. at Seattle
Central Community College.
And lastly, I just want to encourage everyone to stop by the Vote Sawant table in the lobby,
pick up a yard sign to hang in your window in your yard, sign up to volunteer.
You can talk with Kshoma at our table.
And we also have a team of people that are going to pass out clipboards now if you want
to sign the petition to Seattle Central Community College demanding her job back or if you want
to join the Sawant campaign and get involved with social alternative.
And our website is votesawant.org.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I'm Dolly Rainey and tonight I have the absolutely unbelievable honor to introduce the next president
of the United States.
Jill has traveled the last three days, more places than we can name on the map of Western
Washington.
She's been to Bellingham, Tacoma, Olympia, and Tacoma and now here.
She legitimizes what it means to be a third party candidate without publicity in the mainstream
media.
Jill has now gotten more attention by the alternate media than any other candidate and
we need to keep this up.
I listened yesterday to an interview Jill did with one of those real left wing news
magazines, Forbes Magazine.
The interviewer has a blog with the magazine.
His name is Peter Riley and I would urge all of you to get on your computer and pick up
the YouTube interview by Peter Riley.
It's an hour and three minutes but it will give you such complete insight on the wonderful
woman that we have here to speak to us and the way she handles herself in questions that
I would never want to be asked.
And not only that, she does her own income tax on TurboTax.
And she will turn them over to Peter Riley.
I know that we are short on time so here we go without my long speeches.
Please welcome Dr. Jill Stein.
Thank you all so much.
Thank you, Dorlee.
I think no one, no one exemplifies the politics of courage more than Dorlee Ramey.
So thank you, Dorlee, for leading the way.
When I saw that picture of this school teacher grandmother, former candidate who had been
pepper sprayed in the face as the symbol of the resistance to the police crackdown on
Occupy, I said, oh my God, I hope someday I have the honor of meeting that woman.
And I was so flabbergasted when she turned up at a campaign event in Seattle and identified
herself as a former school teacher from Seattle and I started putting two and two together.
Wow.
So I think Dorlee is kind of an example of what's happening right now that really powerful
visionary people like you right here in this room are coming out of the woodwork and it's
you and Dorlee that have really brought us to this incredible historic moment that we're
at right now where democracy and justice are really rising up all around us from the democracy
revolutions in the Middle East to the Occupy protests around the country to the coal train
blockades in Washington to the Keystone pipeline blockades and the eviction blockades to keep
families in their homes and the student strikes to stop tuition hikes from Quebec to California
to Mexico to the rallies for a nuclear free future and on the list goes in so many ways
democracy and justice really are breaking out all around us and as they are people are
breaking away from the establishment parties that have gotten us to this breaking point
and it's so exciting to be at an election time right now where people get focused and
we start having conversations that we otherwise don't have with all kinds of people that we
didn't know and we don't usually talk to because we can actually put all those things
together and make this election a really powerful tipping point to start taking back our democracy
and the peaceful just green future that we deserve and we deserve it now and thank you
all for making that happen.
And we badly need a tipping point right now because we are at the breaking point.
We're at the breaking point for people and the planet and our economy and our democracy
and what's exciting is that people are realizing we didn't get here just on account of one
party but we've gotten here really thanks to both wings of this political establishment,
the Republican and the Democratic wings of that political establishment that together
have really delivered crisis after crisis and as you may know not all your friends may
be quite up to speed on this so I'm going to just run through the litany of how Barack
Obama in fact has embraced the policies of George Bush and in fact gone beyond him in
so many ways and you know in this campaign people ask me as a doctor so what kind of
medicine am I practicing now and I say I'm practicing political medicine because it's
the mother of all illnesses and we've got to fix this one if we want to fix everything
else that ails us but it's actually all of us that need to be political therapists in
this campaign because so many of our friends and colleagues are stuck in an abusive relationship,
an abusive political relationship and sometimes it helps to run them through the reality check
and you know one of the hallmarks of being in an abusive relationship is that you're
making apologies for your abuser things like oh I know he really loves me in his heart
he didn't mean to take away my job and my home and my dignity and my credit worthiness
and all that and next year it's going to be better and someone made him do it it was the
Republicans who made him do it or it was that addiction not to alcohol in this case it was
just that addiction to money that made him do it so anyhow for our friends that are still
stuck in abusive relationships I'm going to run through the reality check quickly that
you might be able to pass on to them and help help them break up with that political abuser
and get their lives back on track.
So to run through the list of how Barack Obama embraced the policies of George Bush and went
even further so on the bailouts for Wall Street 700 billion under George Bush but four and
a half trillion in dollars dispersed under Barack Obama plus another 16 trillion in free
interest loans or look at the offshoring of our jobs and the undermining of our wages
with these free trade agreements it was Bill Clinton as you may remember who actually signed
the first free trade agreement NAFTA that began to ship millions of our jobs overseas
so while Mitt Romney might be making those investments with Bain Capital and establishing
a whole investment prototype and investing his own money it's actually that framework
of these free trade agreements that allow the Republicans to do that in the first place
and that was brought to us by the Democrats exactly and Barack Obama has expanded those
free trade agreements and is now negotiating the mother of all free trade agreements the
Trans-Pacific Partnership which you've probably heard about.
So again this is something that we need to stop and point out to our friends is going
on now under the watch not just under the watch but due to the active pushing by this
president to expand those free trade agreements and this one not only sends our jobs overseas
and undermines wages it also undermines American sovereignty by creating an international
secret corporate board that gets to rule on our laws and our regulations if we want to
protect workers rights or adequate wages or safety in the workplace or our environment
and our climate it has to pass muster with this international corporate board or we pay
them for future earnings lost so this is an absolute outrage and should be a public issue
we are making it a public issue which is why they are doing their darnedest to keep us
out of the debates but we're fighting back as you know.
And on Monday night for the third debate we will be hosting or I should say democracy
now will be hosting an expanded debate so tune in Monday night if you miss it to hear
Koshana's debate which is also important you can get the democracy now debate on their
station taped so you can actually go to both of the debates and you can support a real
debate here in Seattle and you can support a real debate at the national level you can
also go to our website and sign on to the petition to occupy the commission on presidential
debates so that we can demand real debates that we deserve.
So just to continue going through this litany quickly so you're armed to have this discussion
with your abused friends in addition to the free trade agreements you have the skyrocketing
of student debt Romney and Obama had identical positions on student debt they were going
to be heroes they consider themselves heroes for staying the course on this devastating
student debt they promised not to let the interest rates go up but that's not good enough
it's a sinking ship and we're saying it's time to put an end to student debt instead
of bailing out the banks for the fourth time which the Fed is doing right now we need to
break up the big banks and bail out the students instead of the other way around which is what
they're doing.
And while we're at it it's time to make public higher education free which is the way it
should be and we'll come back to that in a minute but just to finish the laundry list
here in addition to skyrocketing debt it's the home foreclosure epidemic which this president
decided to do nothing about he said too much moral hazard the moral hazard was with Wall
Street not with the families who were victims of predatory loans to start with.
We need an immediate moratorium on these home foreclosures not one more family thrown out
on the street and you know talk about a peace president on day three of his administration
the president intensified the bombing of Pakistan and then went on to surge the troops into
Afghanistan spread the drone wars into Yemen and Somalia now they're talking about North
Africa as well and the only reason that Obama brought the troops home from Iraq was why
it was thanks to George Bush actually it took George Bush to bring the troops home under
Barack Obama because he had established a date to end the immunity of US troops and
he fought as hard as he could to extend that date of immunity to keep the troops there
he wasn't able to do that thanks to Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks who had basically exposed
so I think it's fair to say that it was actually Bradley Manning and Julian Assange who brought
the troops home from Iraq and on on civil liberties this White House codified all the
violations of George Bush and then went further to create the power of indefinite detention
these are dictatorial powers that have been given over to this president by Congress and
he was driving this as well dictatorial powers to lock up any one of his choosing without
due process without charge and without trial exactly we've got to repeal that right of
indefinite detention and our administration will do that and likewise the the the power
of assassination now even including American citizens the Patriot Act Guantanamo you name
it there are just so many essential civil liberties that are under assault and we need
to put an end to that this is again a case in which the Democrats have delivered even
more harm than was given to us by Republicans likewise on immigrant rights we've seen in
the first three years of this administration more immigrants who were who were racially
profiled split from their families children taken away from their parents and deported
under the Secure Communities Act so the the policy that the President Obama adopted recently
allowing the dreamers to get two-year work permits that's very nice until they hit age
thirty and they run into a brick wall we're calling for immigrant rights as human rights
ending NAFTA and the free trade agreements that actually drive the wave of economic refugees
in the first place but creating a welcoming and legal path to citizenship for the immigrants
who are here and then finally just to mention quickly the war on drugs the failed and racist
war on drugs we need to put an end to that war on drugs and to treat abuse and addiction
where they exist they should be treated as public health and mental health problems not
treating them as crimes which only makes them worse and on day one on day one of the new
administration a president if she wanted could actually instruct the drug enforcement agency
to do something really amazing and radical that would be to use science in determining
what substances are scheduled and where they are in the schedule of substances because
that would mean that marijuana which is a substance that is dangerous because it's illegal
it's not illegal because it's dangerous which it's not at all if you get what I mean so
that would mean that marijuana and hemp if science was used would be taken off the list
of scheduled substances and then finally I have to mention the climate because here
again is a case where the Obama administration has adopted the policies of George Bush and
it's basically been a matter of drill baby drill and then much more including the thumbs
up for more offshore oil for opening up our national parks to fossil fuel exploration
to more mountaintop removal the giving the thumbs up to fracking and to more coal and
to the southern tier of the keystone pipeline which is laying the groundwork for the northern
half there's no doubt what's coming after this election and then to actually the president
going to Durban South Africa not him he didn't go it wasn't that important to him but it
was his representatives who went to Durban and said no we didn't need an international
trade agreement climate accord instead we could wait until 2020 which is absolutely
an outrage we cannot wait till 2020 we cannot wait till 2016 it's time to stand up
it's time to stand up on the climate right now and that's one of the reasons why it's
not just okay to vote independent to vote your values and not your fears to vote green
in this election it's not just okay it is life-saving it is job-saving and it is planet
saving so that's the list to run through with your with your abused friends to do that reality
check and to help them wake up and and and the reality is in this race that we not only
have the right solutions but that the Democrats and Republicans don't have a single exit strategy
not a one to offer for the critical problems that we are facing not one so in this race
we have not only the facts on our side and justice on our side and the solutions on our
side the real public interest solutions that are affordable available we can do them right
now but the amazing and exciting thing is that we actually have public opinion on our
side on every one of these issues we have the public weighing in on poll after poll
in large majorities that they support the agenda that is our agenda that is voting green
and remember this there are 36 million students and recent graduates who are indentured servants
who do not have a future because of this incredible outrageous debt specially customized for students
lacking all of the consumer protections that are present in all other kinds of debt so
you've got students who've really been targeted and victimized as the latest cash cow for
a predatory economy and predatory politicians Democrats and Republicans who've delivered
this debt to a generation and the students are facing not only debt but also incredible
unemployment rates of 50% unemployment and underemployment and facing the climate crisis
which is coming down full bore on their shoulders that Democrats and Republicans won't even
mention the name of and compete if you heard that outrageous discussion the other night
they are competing they're in a pissing contest basically to see who can deliver more for
the fossil fuels so students are facing that future this is like the future being faced
by the young people in Tarar square and in Tunisia and I think they have charted the
course for our generation our younger generation here as well and that course is to basically
stand up and to say enough we are going to take our future back because if young people
do that if that word gets out and if it goes viral among 36 million students who are better
positioned to go viral than anyone else in this country if that word gets out and students
come out remember 36 million votes in an election that expects 90 million voters could actually
win the race in a three-way race and and speaking of students let me just tell you quickly when
this campaign began actually before it began I was called on the phone by a young woman
in Western Illinois Western Illinois University and she said you've got to come out here we're
having a mock election we did this four years ago it happens every four years here in the
Midwest the press pays attention remember this because it predicts the outcome of the
election and we're having conventions five of them including Tea Party and Green and
Libertarian and the two big parties we're having an electoral college we're having a
general election night I'm your campaign manager and you need to come so I said yes ma'am
that's what our campaign is for we are here to give you a voice above all so I went out
I had six minutes to explain why students at this college that had never voted green
left independent or or environmental why they should vote green and vote for us in this
election and in the course of six minutes and I ran through the agenda very quickly
we went from 3% in the polls to 27% in the polls it took six minutes
and at first you know I was totally blown away we were hoping maybe we would get to
10 or 15% you know I was totally flabbergasted by that and it at first I thought you know
well that's just this school you know that's just this particular place it must have been
a fluke but basically every campaign event after that was the same thing that when we
could get to the microphone and in fact we were being invited to the microphone at places
where we had always been told well thanks for coming to our rally but we can't let
you speak because you're a green you know this was like totally different I thought
this race would be the most bitter divisive kind of oh you persona non grata third party
candidate I thought it would be more of that than any election I've ever been a part of
and it's actually been exactly the opposite it's been like giving out candy at Christmas
and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa all combined because there's been a political earthquake a silent
earthquake it's partly a demographic shift but it's also an economic shift because one
out of every two Americans is now in poverty or low income and heading for poverty and
as I mentioned the predatory politicians do not have a single exit strategy in mind so
we have an incredible opportunity right now to really turn politics on its head and just
quickly so I don't leave things out I want to run through that agenda so you're clear
what it is the key solutions that we are offering it includes the green new deal which is again
what Americans are clamoring for which is jobs not tax breaks jobs and we know how to
create jobs during the Great Depression we had a new deal which is what the green new
deal is modeled on and in the new deal we actually created four million jobs in the
first two months we can do this and we know how and the green new deal we would not only
create 25 million jobs for about the cost of the first stimulus package which created
two to three million why so many more because we would directly create jobs not give tax
breaks which is what the Obama plans have been tax breaks don't create jobs so we'd
get many more jobs put an end to unemployment and jumpstart the green economy for the 21st
century at the same time and that includes and that means that means putting a halt to
climate change and making wars for oil obsolete and then very quickly we're also calling for
Medicare for all health care as a human right it not only covers everyone comprehensively
it puts you back in the driver's seat of making your health care decisions with your provider
not from some profiteering CEO and it saves us trillions of dollars over the coming decade
it is the alternative to austerity I mentioned ending student debt right now they're bailing
out Wall Street again to the tune of 40 billion dollars a month let's do that quantitative
easing but let's do it for something that's real not for just this fake debt which is
absolutely useless from the banks we should not be buying up more of the banks bad debt
they built it they built it they can own it instead we can make good use of those dollars
by bailing out the students and making public higher education free it pays for itself we
know that from the GI bill every dollar we invested gave us seven dollars back in economic
benefits for the economy it's not only the right thing it is absolutely the practical
and responsible thing to do and we should do it in addition to downsizing the military
cut back to year 2000 levels we are not twice as secure for having doubled the size of the
military by no means we will be far more secure to be bringing our troops back from the bases
back from the wars we don't need over a thousand bases in over 140 countries around the world
ending the drone wars bringing our troops and our war dollars home to build true security
here at home with jobs and health care and a green economy finally because I'm just about
out of time we are at this tipping point moment there are 90 million voters who are voting
with their feet by not coming out to this election one out of every two eligible voters
is staying home because they know that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney represent them
what we need to do is get the word out and there are all kinds of ways that we can do
that and remember whether we win the office and if we do that we can turn the White House
into a greenhouse and the world will be a better place but even short of winning the
office we can win the day every vote for our campaign is an irrepressible call for the
solutions that the American people are demanding right now and we advance them with every vote
that comes in for our campaign every vote is a win for the future we deserve.
So by getting on the internet by going to our website jillstein.org by going to Facebook
by going to Twitter and helping this campaign go viral to students to the unemployed to
people of color to the disabled to all of the people to middle class Americans who are
dropping down and joining the ranks of the impoverished to young people who are inheriting
this climate crisis full bore we can get the word out there are so many people who would
stand up and vote green in this election if we can get the word out and you can help do
that another way you can help do that is by contributing to this campaign thanks to you
we made matching funds in the primary that was a history made history together and we
made it on the ballot thanks to you for 85 percent of voters in this election.
If we can raise as much money in the final part of this race as we did in the primary
we have the real potential to hire on the staff and to do the advertising we have this
very simple TV and internet ad that was like really bare bones simple but you wouldn't
have believed how it was bringing people in to the campaign it was just astounding we
can get that ad up and running again if we can raise enough money to do it and the deal
is if we can raise another half million dollars which is what we did in the first part if
we can do that in this general section of the election if we can raise a half million
we stand to be able to reach the five percent level possibly more but if we get to five
percent it's a magic number at five percent we are on the ballot for the next four years
and that means that means that we hit the ground running starting on November 7th for
our upcoming local and legislative races it means we hit the ground running when we begin
our next presidential race in this campaign we spent eighty percent of the campaign just
getting on the ballot and only in the last couple weeks could we begin a real campaign
nonetheless we came up from undetectable to one percent to two percent that is millions
of voters even before we began to get the word out so if we have an adequately funded
and staffed campaign we think we can double that from two percent to four percent get
up a little higher to five percent where not only are we on the ballot then for at least
the next four years it also means that we get a twenty million dollar grant from the
federal government when we start the next presidential race
so this is our moment this is what so many of us have spent our lifetimes laying the
groundwork for and I don't know about you but I certainly never thought that I would
see this kind of political tipping point happen in my lifetime and it's only going to get
bigger because the establishment parties do not have solutions we're going to keep facing
the problems that we face they are going to keep growing because the politics as usual
is not going to fix it so we are laying the groundwork now for a campaign and a movement
that will continue growing there is that social movement on the ground and the work that so
many of you are doing to push us forward on all those fronts and that social movement
deserves a political voice that is what we're building in the words of Frederick Douglass
power concedes nothing without a demand it never has and it never will we are bringing
that demand into the political universe and to quote another favorite guru of mine Alice
Walker who says quite simply that we are the ones we've been waiting for let's turn this
breaking point let's turn this breaking point we face into the tipping point we need and
let's take back our democracy and the peaceful just green future we deserve thank you all
so much for making it happen thank you
good evening thank you all so much for being here my name is Kate Davidson and I am what
we call in the political world Jill's handler if you will it sounds a little crass I know
so I tell a lot of people I'm her personal assistant I want to tell you a little bit
tonight about what it's like to travel with Jill on the road I joined Jill on September
2nd after starting with the campaign on the local level I am a grad student in Kentucky
Louisville where I'm normally stuck with my head in theology books but once I heard about
this campaign I started at the local level collecting signatures for ballot access and
I'm proud to say that after hard work we collected six thousand signatures in Kentucky and she's
on the ballot there
so after Kentucky was a success I thought I'm on fire I got to continue with this and
fortunately and mysteriously they posted these job openings on the Jill Stein website and
my partner pushed me she said you got to really you got to do this and I thought yeah right
you know I'm a student I don't I don't know anything about politics but I applied and
I went through the process and here I am so it's been quite a journey it's been a tremendous
honor and a tremendous tremendous adventure we have been since September 2nd when I joined
her in Charlotte for the DNC we have been to New York City and to DC we've been here
in Washington State we've been all over California Minnesota where else let's see oh we went
to Rhode Island I never been to Rhode Island before so it's been it's been very exciting
and it's been a tremendous honor and along the way we meet some fantastic people both
people who are already affiliated with the Green Party and people who are sort of familiar
with it they've heard about it and also some people who are totally skeptical or don't
want to have anything to do with it and I try to keep a journal at night so that you
know 20 years from now I can look back and remember all of these all of these people
and these incidents that have really stuck with me and so I rack my brain and there's
one person that really sticks with me that I want to tell you about tonight I don't even
know her name but we met her when we were in Cleveland Ohio Jill had just finished doing
the Tavis Smiley Cornell West poverty tour are you all familiar with that yeah it's really
great if you're not familiar with it make sure you go online you can find it on Tavis
Smiley's website so she had just done that and it was a big success and as usual we were
racing out of one thing to go do the to go to do the next thing I think we were going
to the airport to fly to New York City and a woman stopped us in the lobby of the studio
and she continued to tell Dr. Stein about the many struggles and sorrows in her life
how she's struggling with her health and her health care how she's struggling financially
how she's struggling with her family and her job and you could tell just by looking at
her physicality that she was very downtrodden and as I was trying to get us out of the building
to our plane on time I was I was heartbroken for this woman and I couldn't find the words
to say to her and so I want to say to you tonight what I wanted to say to her then is
that as long as you have your voice you have never lost your power this woman felt as if
she had no power whatsoever and I wish I had said to her as long as you have your voice
you've not lost your power and as Jill alluded tonight there are lots of important ways as
you know that you can use your voice in this campaign as Jill uses hers and I use mine
and all of the people you meet along the road do. It's free too and free is one of my favorite
words Facebook right and on Facebook it's just Jill Stein and last I checked we have
about 70,000 likes so let's keep that number going up and up. Secondly on Twitter if you
go on Twitter it's at Jill Stein 2012 please be sure to put the 2012 after the Jill Stein
because at Jill Stein by itself is some other I'm sure lovely woman but it is not her so
at Jill Stein 2012 is our Twitter account and then of course Jillstein.org and on all
three of these you can see tweets and posts and updates photographs stories about what
we're doing where we are who we're meeting the schools we're visiting I do some of those
tweets personally we have a social media person on our staff as well and so we try to keep
you informed and you can tweet to us and we usually tweet back when we have time so that's
a great way to stay informed and it's also a great way to like and share and repost and
to tell your friends about what's going on so I really encourage you to do that. The
second little bit of information I want to talk to you about is using not only your voice
but also using your checkbook and Jill has already explained to you as I'm sure you know
we don't take any corporate donations and so this is a grassroots campaign that is working
on a bare bones minimum we have a small staff all of which including myself are probably
doing the jobs of eight people each of us it's very tiring I'm lucky if I get four hours
of sleep each night and so any contribution that you can make is helpful whether it's
two dollars or it's twenty dollars or two hundred dollars or we always say if you happen
to have a lot of change lying around that twenty five hundred dollars is the limit but
if we can as Jill said if we can get more funding we can hire more staff so that we
can get the word out along with your tweets and your Facebook posts through different
venues and different ways of doing that so if you're able to make a donation tonight
you may have picked up one of those half sheet donation forms either at the door or on the
Jill Stein table in the lobby if you are going to make a donation especially if you're going
to write a check you can also use credit card debit card or do cash please please please
fill out one of these half sheet donation forms if you don't the FEC is going to come
after me and that's a problem that's frightening to me so please fill out a donation form because
we don't want the campaign to get into trouble so thank you all so much for being here tonight
for coming to hear Dr. Stein and Shama and all the other speakers for learning more about
the Green Party and what we're up to for taking part in this campaign for using your voice
because this is what it's all about it's about you and it's about me and it's about all of
us as everyday people fighting for what we need and what we deserve so we're going to
do a question and answer time now with Jill if Jill wants to come back out Dr. Stein paging
Dr. Stein. So I've got about seven of your questions here in my hand and we have a half
an hour to do this I'm really hoping we can get through all of them and we did it just
to let you know we did these cards as a way to sort of make sure we don't have repeat
questions and to try and hit a lot of the topics that are the most popular so here we
go Jill your first question is about women. Oh okay what about them? All right so yeah
no there's a lot of I think disinformation about how the Democrats are going to you know
make everything fine for women but in fact if you look at what Obama is offering it's
pretty much more of the same and women have really been you know in the cross hairs of
this economic unraveling so 40 percent of women headed households are in poverty women
are being paid at like 75 percent of what men are paid for equal work women are the
victims of the minimum wage jobs where the pay has not been raised many women are working
in the tipped professions that are not even subject to minimum wage they get the sub minimum
wage like for sub humans and so they're not even subject to minimum wage they get the
sub minimum wage like for sub humans you'd think they're getting two dollars and thirteen
cents an hour and that hasn't been raised and the Obama administration's failure to
stand up for working people to stand up to raise the minimum wage and the tipped minimum
wage you know has and the failure to stand up for the employee free choice act and to
support unionization and to support the right to form workers all of these critically impact
women the failure to stand up for Medicare for all for a single payer system which the
president took off the table has huge impacts for women and women's health specifically
the president took plan B you know the the morning after pill off the shelf it had been
approved by the FDA approved by sixty medical organizations and public health organizations
and this president took it off and makes a lot out of the difference between him and
Romney that the Republicans are going to deny women victims of rape and incest abortions
which is a terrible thing on the other hand it's also a terrible thing that millions of
poor women have been denied access to abortion for decades under democratic administrations
as well with this Hyde amendment that passed in like the 70s denying women on Medicaid
access to an abortion as well so I'd say you know there's a lot of disinformation about
how Obama would help women women have not been helped and it's important to separate
the talk the warm and fuzzy talk that we hear from the actual walk and in fact women have
not done well under the Obama administration any more than under Republicans thank you.
So the next question comes from Eliza who is ten years old and she says what is it like
being in jail for eight hours and being arrested? So I'll just say quickly it's not fun to be
arrested and all kinds of people are being arrested nowadays just for standing up for
their first amendment rights. I've gone to jail twice during this campaign the first
time was at a protest of evictions by Fannie Mae for two families who had been victims
of predatory loans and my running mate Sherry Honkala and I went to jail and we were processed
for about 24 hours it took them to process us and that was the most eye opening experience
of all to be in a tiny jail cell meant for one person we were three and four packed into
these tiny jail cells for 24 hours and a jail cell if you haven't ever been to jail before
is like the stall in a women's bathroom it's basically a big it's large it's basically a big
stall around a toilet with a metal bench where one person could lie down and there were three
of us that were packed into this little stall in freezing cold weather and in freezing cold
temperature which they kept it cold on purpose so it was it was extremely punitive and very
difficult I basically stood up all night because there was no place to lie down unless you
wanted to lie down on this filthy floor in front of the toilet it's extremely dehumanizing
if dogs were treated that way people would be put in prison for animal cruelty so we got a lot
to do to clean up our prisons and to make sure that we're not throwing people into prison for
simply standing up for their rights of free speech and then when I went to to the commission
on presidential debates to protest you know to say that we deserved a full debate and was
arrested again with Sherry we were actually handcuffed in tight plastic restraints and then
cuffed to metal chairs where we sat for eight hours there were two of us for most of that time
under the watch of 16 police there were all of two of us in this detention center and they
couldn't they couldn't bear to like uncuff us from the chairs as if the two of us mighty
grandmothers would overwhelm the 16 police that were sitting around and watching us so these are
our homeland security dollars at hard work here and I should just mention that they were
especially upset because our team Kate and and one other assistant had been able to track us
down even though we were at a dark site we were at a national security special detention center
that no one was able to find out about they were able to find out about our intelligence trumped
their intelligence and that made that made them madder than anything and in fact they then told
our support staff which showed up at this secret black site they told them that they would arrest
them first they demanded to know how did they find out about this secret site they said well we just
talked to people you know no fancy computer or spy systems we just talked to people and they had
made a lot of phone calls to all the different police precincts and began to piece together little
bits and pieces of information and talk to other people including the EMTs who sort of know where
everything is and had put it together but they were really really pissed and and said to them that
if they stayed on site because they showed up early if they stayed on site that they would be
arrested for just being outside on the public sidewalk near this secret detention center so you
know it just goes to show what a little bit of human intelligence can do to trump this national
security intelligence so thank you next one okay food and nutrition are suspiciously absent from
the health care debate how would you include them in a national health care program don't get me
going on that one but yes I mean we we've made food and agriculture a key part of the Green New
Deal so that we can we can transition our food economy which is currently a very toxic kind of
food it's this industrial GMO highly processed calorie dense nutrition free pseudo food that is
being you know subsidized and made cheap meanwhile food deserts are being created especially in low
income communities and this has everything to do with these public health epidemics that we're
fighting and in fact we're going bankrupt with not a health care system but really a sick care
system which is spending over two trillion dollars a year if you add up private and public expenses
on health care it's about two trillion dollars a year being spent treating chronic diseases that
are preventable at a tiny fraction of the cost so it's one of the benefits of the Green New Deal
in that it would shift subsidies over to small farmers and organic farmers in particular sustainable
food systems. We're calling for sustainable small farmers and community farms and CSAs
community supported agriculture and farmers markets and all those enterprises that create healthy
sustainable nutritious local food which is also really essential for eliminating greenhouse gases
food is a big source and industrialized food production is a big source and we can go so far to
create a real health care system by providing healthy sustainable food and just one quick case
in point when Cuba's oil pipeline went down in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union
overnight Cuba had to green their food system and green their energy system and their transportation
system it was like a Green New Deal overnight which they had to do and what do you think happened
to their health statistics in the middle of this economic devastation and their GDP is crashing
and they can't export anything they don't have their usual imports they don't have any oil and
their usual energy so what happens when people had to start eating right and they had to start
biking and walking to get places and they didn't have pollution from the fossil fuels to poison
them overnight practically their health statistics had a revolution that we cannot buy with $2 trillion
a year their obesity rates went down 50% their death rates from diabetes went down 50% their
death rates from heart disease and stroke went down 20 to 35% it was an incredible health revolution
and it really points to exactly what that question was talking about that a healthy food system is
really critical not just for the climate not just for the jobs in our communities but fundamentally
for our health as well thank you
Next question what are your views on the Federal Reserve banking system should it be eliminated
well there's no doubt the Fed as we know it should be eliminated
there is a role for an institution that serves the public not the private banks and the Fed currently
serves the private banks but we do need an institution to create monetary policy and to oversee
that side of the economy but in a way that's transparent in a way that serves ordinary working
people and not the banks so we basically do need to go back to the drawing boards on the Fed and
make it right thank you
I don't know how much time we have left is anybody Jody out there 10 minutes okay great thank you
okay and Jody gets the last three all right in that case how about this is a frequently asked
question that perhaps you don't hear that much about if you were president would you try and lessen
the billions we give to Israel each year and actually call them out for the government acts of
inhumanity against the Palestinians yes
and simply put when we're in the White House we will put Israel on notice as well as Saudi Arabia
and Bahrain and essentially all the countries who either are our partners or aren't our partners to
say that our foreign policy will no longer depend on allies for oil that it will no longer depend on
procuring scarce resources that our foreign policy will be based on international law and human
rights and that any any support from the US government will be contingent on compliance with
international law and human rights and that means an end to apartheid and then to illegal occupations
and illegal settlements and so on so that we will expect the Israeli government to serve all
Israelis and to build on the work being done right now on the ground by the peace and human rights
groups Palestinians and the Israeli peace movement that are really working to build trust to build
community and to actually create peace and justice on the ground that should be the model for how the
Israeli government moves forward thank you
Finally I'm going to combine a couple of these questions because I think this is a great way to wrap up
so I'll read them both. How can we best use the awesome energy generated from your campaign to help
elect greens locally and will you come to Seattle next year to help us elect local greens in 2014
but also what are the key things we can do to help other than joining the Green Party and donating money
so where should we go from here Jill? Great questions and you know I certainly did not get into this
campaign in order to do something up until November 7th you know and then stop
after 15 years really as an activist for public health for a health care system that would actually
serve people for an environment that could protect our health instead of destroy our health you know
that's how I sort of got into all of this and I worked as an activist for about 15 years until I realized
that working on single issues is exactly where they want you to be so that we will be divided and conquered
and at that point I realized that that's what a political party is supposed to be about it's supposed to be
how we get to critical mass around an agenda for peace justice democracy and sustainability
at that point I joined the Green Party and I actually began to run for office it was back in 2002
and you know everything has just sort of proceeded from there and for me this is very much a part of
building the Green Party as the means of hitting that tipping point and moving past that tipping point
to actually challenging power and taking power so that we can do all the things that we work so hard
to do on the ground so I really encourage people you know to join a Green Party local to become a member
of the state party and to be active in that you know and you can be active doing the work that you're doing
because we run elections but we also help to build the movement on the ground which the elections represent
so whatever it is that you're working on you can bring that expertise into the party and help build
that issue while you're building the broad coalition we'll be having a discussion after this race
whether we're in the White House or we're not yet in the White House we'll be having a broader discussion
about where we go next but I think one of the things we'll be focusing on is municipal elections
and trying to help candidates and local parties break into their city councils or break up where they're
already in city councils to move on up to the level of mayors we do have some mayors around the country
it'd be great to be seeing some more and a bigger presence on our city councils so that may be the first
order of business we're also really interested in bringing more people not only into our local parties
but also into the national party the national party could play a very important role in helping our local
chapters talk to each other and share the solutions and the strategies and the campaigns that we've come
up with so that we all don't have to reinvent the wheel the corporations are very good at sharing their
solutions through ALEC the American Legislative Exchange, CABAL and other sources they have a way to
kind of go viral with their solutions and we need to have a way to do that as well to be sharing
horizontally and I think the national party can do a much better job of helping us do that so those are
some of the things on the agenda it took me you know it took me a couple times running for office to
realize that the minute you finish your run for office you're in another campaign even if it's not
running in an election it's just as time critical it's just as essential it's just as life changing
to keep building that social movement and the political voice that represents it and the Green
Party gives us a platform to do that it's like the saying from 17th century sailor lore you need one
hand for the ship and one hand for yourself so keep working on exactly what you're working on but
also consider joining the party as a way to make all of our movement stronger and get to critical
mass because the clock is ticking we don't have time to spare every moment counts and we need to
keep the heat on there is a big election you know in the in the big universe out there and it's
really important that we win this race for democracy for justice and for sustainability we can
make it happen together thank you all so much for making it so
you