Green Party Candidates Arrested at Hofstra Debate

Posted on Oct 17, 2012

"Democracy Now!"

Green Party candidates Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala were arrested upon attempting to enter the presidential debate site at Hofstra University on Tuesday night, an election event from which they were barred by the Democrat- and Republican-controlled corporation that runs the debates.

“Do you have credentials?” a university security official asked the women.

“Yes, we do have credentials,” Stein and Honkala replied, explaining that their party is on the presidential ballot in most of the country. The two were apprehended and briefly held by straight-faced security guards wearing broad hats and dark glasses before being removed from the site.

“We’re here to stand our ground,” Stein said before they were taken away. “We’re here to stand ground for the American people who have been systematically locked out of these debates for decades by the Commission on Presidential Debates. We think that this commission is entirely illegitimate, that if democracy truly prevailed there would be no such commission, that the debates would still be run by the League of Women Voters, that the debates would be open with the criteria that the League of Women Voters had always used, which was that if you have done the work to get on the ballot … that you deserve to be in the election and you deserve to be heard, and that the American people actually deserve to hear choices that are not bought and paid for by multinational corporations and Wall Street.”

A thorough explanation of how the major parties came to dominate the debate system can be heard here.

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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