Jill Stein Officially Now Green Party Presidential Candidate
Image by Courtesy Jill Stein 2016
(JTA) — Dr. Jill Stein, a Boston-area Jewish internist, was officially nominated as the Green Party’s candidate for president.
Stein was nominated Saturday at the party’s three-day convention in Houston. African American human rights activist Ajamu Baraka was nominated as her running mate.
In her acceptance speech, Stein appealed to supporters of failed Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to support her candidacy.
She said that with the backing of Sanders’ supporters “together we are unstoppable.”
“It is such an honor to also being running in alliance with the Bernie Sanders movement, who I now hear call us ‘berning green.’ We are ‘berning green’ together,” Stein said. “We owe you such a debt of gratitude for lifting up this revolution that has been smoldering for decades. You broke through the media blackout, you lifted us up and you refused to be shut down by the DNC.”
Stein has criticized Sanders for announcing his endorsement of official Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton.
As the Green Party candidate in 2012, Stein appeared on ballots in 36 states and won 469,000 votes, or some 0.36 percent of the ballots cast.
Stein ran unsuccessfully for governor of Massachusetts in 2002 and 2010.
Before entering politics, Stein, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, was a practicing physician for 25 years.
Stein has called for ending all aid to Israel, and she has accused it of committing war crimes.
Like the Green Party as a whole, Stein supports the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, or BDS. She places Israel in the company of non-democratic American allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In tweets, she has Israel of “the pillage of Palestine” and written that Israel’s “war crimes & human rights violations are off the charts.”
Stein needs to garner some 15 percent of support in election polls in order to be invited to participate in the presidential debates. She currently is polling at about 5 percent.
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