• After Her Arrest at Washington University, Jill Stein Slams Police Repression… and the Two-Party System That Supports It

On Saturday, April 27th, campus police physically repressed and assaulted students and supporters during a peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis.  Dr. Jill Stein, a  candidate seeking the 2024 Green Party presidential nomination, was among those assaulted and arrested by police. The Green Party is outraged by the violence perpetrated on students and others exercising their First Amendment rights.

Green Party of the United States
gp.org

For Immediate Release:
April 30, 2024

Contact:
Gregg Jocoy, Co-Chair, Media Committee, [email protected], 202-804-2758
Gloria Mattera, Co-Chair, Media Committee,  [email protected], 202-804-2758

Gloria Mattera, co-chair of the Media Committee of the Green Party, said, "The Green Party is appalled at the level of brutality that campus administrators and local police have employed in breaking up peaceful protests by students exercising their First Amendment Rights to protest what they view as genocide by Israel in Gaza. We see yet again that free speech rights are perfectly okay in America, until someone advocates a position that runs afoul of the agenda of the two parties of war and Wall Street. When that happens, the state will respond with illegal violence and unconstitutional repression, and candidates for rival parties will not be spared."

Dr. Stein was in Missouri to collect signatures for her name to be placed on the state's ballot in November. She visited the campus to offer her support to the students and community when she was invited to join the demonstration. A frightening and disturbing video shows Dr. Stein, 73, who had linked arms with other protesters, being assaulted by the police, including one wielding a bicycle against her as a weapon, before she was arrested. Dr. Stein, who has since been released, said in an email to her followers, "We are okay and we are undeterred."

"I was there to support the students and community members who were holding a peaceful, really wonderful, gracious, educational community gathering," Dr. Stein said in a video interview. "The police basically attacked us and assaulted us as well as arrested us... Zionism is something that needs to be debated and anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism." She has called the crackdown on protesters nationwide a violation of fundamental First Amendment rights. She told an interviewer for a radio station: “This is about freedom of speech, and not just any old freedom of speech, but freedom of speech on a very critical issue that needs debate and dialogue.” 

Dr. Stein, who is Jewish, has called for an independent investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his conduct during the six-month assault on Gaza and the West Bank. "The war crimes being perpetrated by Netanyahu against Palestinians... are in a league of their own and have reached genocidal proportions." It has been widely rumored that Prime Minister Netanyahu as well as others in his government may soon be served with arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

On her campaign website, under the slogan of "People Planet Peace," a statement by Dr. Stein reads, "I'm running for president with the Green Party to offer a choice for the people outside the failed two-party system. We'll put a pro-worker, anti-war, climate action agenda front and center in this election and on the ballot in November." Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia and President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, is among those who have endorsed Jill Stein for President. 

Said Margaret Elisabeth, co-chair of the Green Party of the United States, "It's very convenient that the American mainstream media have made the campus protests, as well as unsupported allegations by bad faith actors of threats to Zionist Jewish students, the big current story, which obscures the real story of war crimes being committed in Gaza, including mass burials. We would like someone in the media to explain to us how the "pain" of Zionists who are having their worldview peacefully challenged by people, including many Jews, who happen to disagree with them is in any way commensurate with the agony and anguish suffered by the people of Gaza and the West Bank during this ongoing genocide."

On its main website, the platform of the Green Party of the United States, under the heading "The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict" reads, "The U.S. Greens recognize and reaffirm the right of self-determination for both Palestinians and Israelis, and their right to live in a single undivided secular and democratic state where all residents have full and equal rights, and freedoms... We call on the U.S. President and Congress to suspend all military and foreign aid, including loans and grants, to Israel until Israel withdraws from the Occupied Territories, dismantles the separation wall in the Occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, ends its siege of Gaza and dismantles settler colonies and systemic apartheid toward its non-Jewish citizens." 

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