Stein Launches Petition to End 'Mockery of Democracy', Open the 2016 Presidential Debates.

Press Release

Dr. Jill Stein, who is seeking the Green Party nomination for President, announced today the launch of a petition for meaningful, inclusive presidential debates in the 2016 general election. Stein and her running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested, handcuffed, and chained to metal chairs for 7 hours at an undisclosed detention facility in 2012 for attempting to enter the Hofstra University campus in order to listen a Presidential debate from which she had been excluded.

Stein commented, "People have had enough of the mockery of democracy we've come to expect from the Presidential debates. By restricting these critical encounters to the Democratic and Republican nominees, the Commission on Presidential debates excludes the views of 50% of Americans, who do not identify as Republican or Democrat."

According to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll in July of 2015, 29% of voters identify as Democrats, 21% as Republicans. "Restricting debates to the political establishment ensures that the corporate sponsors of both parties -- big finance, fossil fuels, insurance, big pharma and war profiteers -- will be the real winners of these contests."

While the Democratic and Republican candidates can be expected to differ on hot button social issues, they have been aligned for decades in their support for Wall Street banks, austerity, the destruction of social safety nets, war, corporate trade agreements, tax favors for the wealthy, inadequate action on climate change, abusive student loans, high stakes testing, school privatization and union busting.

Stein noted, "The American people deserve to hear about real solutions from candidates and parties that are not bought and paid for by the economic elite -- solutions like Medicare for All providing health care for everyone as a human right; abolishing student debt and making public higher education free; enacting a Green New Deal to put everyone back to work greening the economy, turning the tide on climate change, and making wars for oil obsolete; creating a welcoming path to citizenship; and ending police violence, the racist war on drugs, and mass incarceration."

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