Bernie Revolutionaries, Give Your Love to Jill Stein

In the first days since Sanders endorsed Clinton, Bernie supporters are showing a lot of love to Stein. In the first 24 hours, donations to Stein “exploded nearly 1,000 percent,” according to U.S. Uncut, with many of the donations coming in Sanders’ symbolic $27 increments. “There’s been an explosion of Berners coming in through every portal of the campaign, and it’s really exciting,” Stein said. U.S. Uncut added that a “recent live stream posted to the Stein campaign’s Facebook page has been viewed over 300,000 times in less than a day. Her page itself has added approximately 44,000 new likes in the past week. Her Twitter account has over 145,000 followers as of this writing, increasing by the tens of thousands just this week, with 5.6 million impressions on July 12-13 alone. There have also been 10,000 new signups for her email list since yesterday.” Stein is the antidote to Clinton’s Democratic Party, Stein’s platform is more progressive than Bernie’s and certainly more so than the Democratic Party’s. The Democrats rejected a platform plank that opposed the massive global corporate coup, the Tran-Pacific Partnership. They also rejected proposals from Bill McKibben that would have imposed a carbon tax, declared a national moratorium on fracking as well as new fossil fuel drilling leases on federal lands and waters. They opposed indexing a $15 minimum wage to inflation. They opposed Palestinian rights and are now to the right of George W. Bush on Palestine as they refused a plank calling for the “end to occupation and illegal settlements.” The Democrats also refused to support single-payer health care, improved Medicare for all. In the end, the document was so bad that Cornel West and Bill McKibben refused to sign on to it. This is definitely Clinton’s Democratic Party and not Sanders’. Both of the authors of this article agree that the only way not to waste your vote in 2016 is to vote for Jill Stein. Our two tasks are: to make sure she gets on the ballot in as many states as possible (she is on the ballot in 23 states and is working to get on it in more than two dozen others); and to get her to 15 percent in the polls so the Democratic-Republican controlled Debate Commission cannot exclude her from the debates. In the words of songwriting legend Neil Young (a Sanders supporter, by the way), “It’s gonna take a lotta love/ To change the way things are.” Love of democracy, love of honest candidates and elections, love of the planet, love of government transparency, love of equality under law and love of people who are not members of the 1 percent. Given how much the Democratic Party that Sanders ran as a member of is tyrannized by enemies of those things, it’s gonna take a lotta love for third-party insurgents like Jill Stein. We urgently hope Bernie’s revolutionaries show her that well-deserved love for standing up to the corporate duopoly. Patrick Walker, a veteran antifracking and Occupy Wall Street activist, is co-founder of Revolt Against Plutocracy and co-creator of the Bernie or Bust pledge, which spawned the nationwide Bernie or Bust movement. Kevin Zeese has worked on multiple Green and independent campaigns, including as spokesman for Ralph Nader in 2004. Zeese is co-director of Popular Resistance, which grew out of the Occupy movement. This article represents his personal views. Your support matters…

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