Green Party candidate Jill Stein speaks in Columbia after protest arrest
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein spoke to supporters in Columbia on Sunday after she and two campaign managers were arrested while protesting the war in Gaza at Washington University in St. Louis the day before.
Stein addressed about 30 people at the Roger B. Wilson Boone County Government Center as she campaigns to get on the ballot in Missouri and several other Midwest states. The physician and longtime organizer is making her disapproval of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel a central issue in her third campaign for the White House.
“The endless war machine both endangers us and it impoverishes us, so we have a crisis here in Gaza,” Stein said. “The good side, though, is that the American people already get it. They don’t need to be convinced that this is an abomination, and it must be stopped.”
The Missouri Green Party is required to collect 10,000 signatures from registered voters by 5 p.m. July 29 for Stein to appear on the ballot because she is not representing a major political party.
As of Sunday, members of her team said about 8,000 signatures have been collected, but they are hoping to secure 15,000 signatures to ensure that enough are verified.
Obtaining ballot access is a process that varies from each state and typically includes fees and petitioning. The Green Party is already on the ballot in several states, including California, Texas and Florida. The party is currently petitioning for ballot access across the Midwest, including Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois.
Following Saturday’s arrest, Stein said she felt “quite beat up,” but grateful for the students she protested with.
“(Students’) incredible courage and the hardships we experienced, it felt like that was just a tiny taste of what the people of Gaza are going through,” Stein said. “In the scheme of things, we are so privileged here. We may have a really violent police force, but at least we’re not being bombed and having our homes destroyed.”
Stein and her staff were among more than 80 people arrested Saturday, her team said. Protesters were demanding that the university divest from Boeing because the company’s weapons are being used in Gaza. The manufacturer has a facility in St. Charles.
She spoke at length on the Israel-Hamas war. She expressed disapproval of the Biden administration’s support of Israel through military aid and described the nation’s military budget as “an extremely disastrous use of our tax dollars and our resources.”
Boone County resident Randall Quisenberry said he has become “a single-issue voter because of the genocide in Gaza.”
“Certainly she has a lot of support from the cease-fire community, I think that’s what’s making a difference,” Quisenberry said regarding the event’s attendance.
In sizing up her opponents, including independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Stein said her campaign is the only one that is “anti-genocide, anti-war, pro-worker and climate emergency.”
Stein shared several of her other platform planks with voters Sunday, including domestic reforms to address health care, housing and the environment. Among her policy agendas are universal health care and the Green New Deal.
She also criticized the Democratic Party for what she called its “politics of fear”: discouraging people from voting for third parties through “blame and shame.”
Suggesting that votes for Green Party candidates are stealing votes from Democrats is “a very anti-democratic thing to say,” Stein said. “You own our votes? No, politicians have to earn our votes.”
Even though her polling numbers haven’t broken into double digits, Stein said a Green Party presidential victory is “not hard to envision.” She said that with Kennedy’s independent candidacy, she would only need to secure 26% of the nation’s votes to win a four-way election.
“That’s not to say it will necessarily happen, but it is possible,” Stein said.
Boone County resident Aziza Rashid said she attended Stein’s event Sunday because she is frustrated with the results of the country’s two-party system, a sentiment Quisenberry shared.
“This is the first time where I’m actually looking into beyond the two major candidates, just because I know at this point that neither one is going to get my vote,” Rashid said. “I’d like to see where else my vote could go.”
Stein, who was also the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2012 and 2016, is the first presidential candidate to campaign this year in Missouri, a state that once was a presidential battleground but now is considered reliably Republican.
The last time Missouri was competitive was 2008, when then-Sen. Barack Obama, who campaigned at the University of Missouri, came within 5,000 votes of winning the state. Then-President Donald Trump visited Columbia during the 2018 midterm election to boost Josh Hawley’s Senate campaign.
Stein said she visited Missouri because it’s a state that represents “America at the crossroads.”
“We are not strictly traveling for votes,” Stein said. “We believe that America is in a state of flux right now, in a state of crisis, and people are really hungry.”
Stein will visit Kansas City next.
