5
5
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There is a militarized police force out there. Just look at the way the
Occupy Movement was treated with this coordinated attack on their first amendment
rights and brutalization by police in full riot gear with helicopters overhead.
That is not a leveled playing field either, when our civil liberties are being
taken away from us and our rights to protest and petition government for
redress of grievances. That's not happening on a leveled playing field. The
courts are no longer a leveled playing field where so many of the appointment
have been stacked against the public interest. There is no area now where there
is a leveled playing field and that we're not facing a rigged system.
But where it's not rigged is in the court of public opinion and pole
after pole, as well as just talking to people on the street, shows that there
is support for this agenda of bringing the troops home, downsizing the
military, taxing the rich, providing jobs, not bailouts for Wall Street and
bailouts for bankers or more corporate tax breaks, which is what the
President's definition of a Stimulus Package is. We're talking about really
creating job. There is support for all of the solutions that we urgently need
for health care as a human right.
Rob: Let
me ask you something. Last year I started calling for and this year Thom Hartmann
called for basically de-billionairizing the U.S. in one way or another. I call
for laws that make it illegal to be a billionaire and Thom calls for 100%
taxation of income or assets or something like that over a billion dollars.
What do you think about that?
Jill: I
think that's a really important thing to think about. Now, we haven't taken a
position on that, but I think that's definitely something we would consider. I
think we need to get there one way or the other and whether it's by asking the
very extremely wealthy to start paying their fair share by taxing. We've
proposed, for example, a 90% tax on the bonuses of bailed out Wall Street
executives. They're taxing capital gains as income, taxing Wall Street
transactions, which are currently exempted from sales tax. There are so many
ways we can begin to make--just to restore basic fairness to the tax system
which it does not have that will begin to reign in these obscene extremes of
wealth that require that there be widespread poverty in order to support them.
Rob: Okay,
now this is the Rob Kall Bottom up Radio
Show WNJC 1360 AM, out of Washington Township, reaching metro Philly and
south Jersey, sponsored by OpEdNews.com. You can get the podcasts at iTunes
looking for my name Rob Kall, K-a-l-l or come to OpEdNews.com/podcasts with an
"s" on the end.
I'm speaking with Jill Stein. She's the Green Party Presidential
candidate and we've been talking about a whole lost of stuff and you've managed
to--in between my questions--to give a pretty thorough job of flushing out your
platform. Great job.
By the way, I wanted to ask you a couple questions. Now when you were
arrested, wasn't there a question to Occupy Wall Street people with that?
What's your take on Occupy Wall Street and its role in the future of America?
Jill: Yes.
So. I believe Occupy Wall Street--if I'm remembering correctly--I think they were
also present and supporting the demonstration. And in fact, we have been very
connected with Occupy and all of its manifestations, from even before I was
running in this race. And I think our agenda is pretty hard to distinguish from
the Occupy agenda. Now, granted Occupy is very diverse and different sites have
different focuses, but nonetheless the emphasis on economic equality, on
reigning in the excesses of Wall Street, on breaking up the big banks, on
restoring democracy and getting money out of politics. I mean, when I heard the
Occupy agenda, it was like, "Thank God. Finally, it's broken through." And
myself and many other Green's have basically been working on this agenda for a
long time and there's just a natural synergy here, which I think is very
effective.
Occupy is a social movement and the Green Party, I think has very much
has been the voice for that movement and that agenda for the long hall and this
is a--I think it's a marriage made in heaven. This is how social movements
throughout history have made progress, by being the engine on the ground, which
is fundamentally that social movement that Occupy represents. When that works
together with an independent political party, that's when we see things really
change, transformative change happen.
So, for example, in the abolition movement, you had an abolition movement
on the ground and you had the Liberty Party as an expression of that movement
in the political sphere. The Liberty Party drove into the Republican Party,
which was also a small political party and the President Lincoln actually got
elected on that agenda at a really critical time.
So, you had this synergy of mainstream politics then, reflecting what was
coming out of an independent political party and a social movement; same thing
with women's suffrage, where they had the women's party. Likewise in the labor
movement where they had the Progressive Party, the laborer, the socialist, a
variety of other parties as well as the movement on the ground.
The political party, the
independent political party can articulate the vision, the message and the
agenda in a way that is harder for social movements to do because that's not
their job. Their job is to be inclusive and broad and energized on the ground;
not to be doing the process thing, the intensive process thing of boiling down
the message and creating a specific list of priorities. That's not the interest
really of Occupy. They're more diverse than that. So, that's where an
independent political party comes in and we can help drive forward that agenda
and move it into the political limelight where it takes on a life of its own
and that's how we can move forward. We've been there on the ground with Occupy
and supporting them all the way.
Rob: Now,
you've mentioned a bunch of historical connections between movements and
parties. The platform for the Green Party is, I believe, called the Green New
Deal.
Jill: That's
right.
Rob: Now,
that is evocative of course of Roosevelt's New Deal.
Jill: Exactly.
