By Robert Inlakesh

Jill Stein’s recent arrest has been highlighted as an example of how peaceful demonstrators are cracked down upon unjustly by US law enforcement.

Green Party Presidential candidate, Jill Stein, was arrested by police at Washington University in St. Louis this Saturday, making her one of hundreds arrested during anti-war protests taking place at college campuses throughout the United States. 

Yet, many who are stuck in the American two-party paradigm are not even aware that this third option exists, due to a lack of relevant media coverage. 

Who is Jill Stein?

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Jill Stein practiced internal medicine in her professional life for 25 years and was a graduate of Harvard Medical School in 1979, after having studied psychology, sociology, and anthropology prior to this. 

While still working as a physician, Stein found intrigue in the connection between health and the quality of one’s local environment, leading her to a path of activism after having noticed the links between toxic exposures and illness. 

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In the late 1990s, she began protesting the “Filthy Five” coal plants in Massachusetts and ended up receiving awards for environmental activism in the years 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2004. 

She also co-authored two reports on the issue, entitled ‘In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development’ in 2000, and the ‘Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging’ in 2009. Despite having joined the Democratic Party in the United States, she decided to leave and join the Green Party when “killed campaign finance reform” in her State, she told reporters in 2016.

Having organized two campaigns to become governor of Massachusetts, despite beating her Republican opposition fell short of winning both races. 

She did however run for the local legislative body in Lexington, Massachusetts, winning a seat in both 2005 and 2008. At the Green-Rainbow Party state convention in 2006, Jill Stein was nominated for Secretary of the Commonwealth and in a two-way race with a Democrat, gained 353,551 votes, or the equivalent of 17.7% of the vote.

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Presidential Election

In 2012, Jill Stein ran for President of the United States, making history as the first Green Party candidate to have qualified for federal matching funds, but fell far short of competing with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney who she accused of both being representatives of Wall Street. 

In 2016, Stein again won 1 percent of the popular vote in the Presidential election and warned what the two-party corporate system could foster as the result of electing either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump at the time.

During 2016, Jill Stein was also arrested for her activism that supported the Standing Rock protests by the North Dakota authorities. 

Assisting non-profits and marginalized communities to combat environmental injustice and racial discrimination, she has managed to win victories on “campaign finance reform, racially-just redistricting, and the clean-up of incinerators, coal plants, and other toxic threats”. 

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She has also long been a proponent of a Green New Deal, ending the US’s foreign wars and advocates for respecting international human rights law, as well as a Medicare-for-all system. 

As a Jewish American, she has also long been an active supporter of Palestinian human rights and has been particularly vocal in condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Stein, along with Cornell West are the only two actively pro-Palestinian Presidential Candidates who are running for office in the 2024 elections. 

Jill Stein’s recent arrest, while being present in supporting the ongoing mass-student protest movement across college campuses, has been highlighted as an example of how peaceful demonstrators are cracked down upon unjustly by US law enforcement.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.