One of the biggest reasons Bernie Sanders was able to ignite a political revolution in America is a man named Dr. Cornel West. Although Bernie is still technically in the race, he’s endorsed Clinton, and there’s now only one logical choice for progressives longing for America’s first female president. As Dr. West writes in The Guardian, his endorsement of Jill Stein is a powerful political statement:
This November, we need change. Yet we are tied in a choice between Trump, who would be a neo-fascist catastrophe, and Clinton, a neo-liberal disaster. That’s why I am supporting Jill Stein. I am with her – the only progressive woman in the race – because we’ve got to get beyond this lock-jaw situation. I have a deep love for my brother Bernie Sanders, but I disagree with him on Hillary Clinton. I don’t think she would be an “outstanding president”. Her militarism makes the world a less safe place.
Clinton policies of the 1990s generated inequality, mass incarceration, privatization of schools and Wall Street domination. There is also a sense that the Clinton policies helped produce the right-wing populism that we’re seeing now in the country. And we think she’s going to come to the rescue? That’s not going to happen.
The American empire is in deep spiritual decline and cultural decay. The levels of wealth inequality and environmental degradation is grotesque. The correct response to this is: tell the truth about what is going on.
As eloquently stated by the author of Race Matters, Jill Stein provides all Americans with a choice in 2016. You don’t have to vote for a xenophobic billionaire. You don’t have to vote for a Democrat advised by Henry Kissinger who accepts prison lobbyist money.
You can change the same political system that has given us Iraq, mass incarceration, the war on drugs and terror, and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. You can vote your conscience, and vote for the most qualified woman in the 2016 presidential race: Jill Stein.
In an op-ed for The Hill, Stein gives every Bernie supporter compelling reasons to support her campaign:
Millions of hearts were breaking Tuesday, as Bernie Sanders delivered his long-expected endorsement of Hillary Clinton, with notably less enthusiasm than the passion of his usual stump speech that followed.
Though Bernie urged his supporters to forget the past and focus on the future, we forget the past at our peril. We cannot forget the triumph of Bernie’s campaign, and the hunger of the public for an economy that works for working people, not just the billionaires.
My campaign offers real hope for such an economy. Our Green New Deal would create 20 million living wage jobs while solving the climate crisis. Our call to abolish student debt provides relief to tens millions of young people trapped by debt for education that failed to produce the jobs they promised. We can finally make health care a human right.
Within hours of Bernie’s endorsement, thousands of supporters have joined us on Facebook and $27 contributions have surged, as Sanders supporters refuse to be “berned” by a Democratic Party that hopes to absorb their revolution into a campaign that represents the opposite of what they and Bernie Sanders have fought for…
Sadly, Sanders is one of a long line of true reformers that have been undermined by the Democratic Party. Each time a progressive challenger like Sanders, Dennis Kucinich or Jesse Jackson has inspired hope for real change, the Democratic Party has sabotaged them while marching to the right, becoming more corporatist and militarist with each election cycle.
Millions are realizing that if we want to fix the rigged economy, the rigged racial injustice system, the rigged health care system, toxic fossil fuel energy and all the other systems failing us, we must fix the rigged political system. And that will not happen through political parties funded by predatory banks, fossil fuel giants and war profiteers.
Fortunately, this November voters across America will still have the choice to cast a revolutionary vote to improve the lives of all Americans, not just the wealthy and the powerful corporate interests. A vote to provide a welcoming path to citizenship, to end mass incarceration and to create a foreign policy based on international law and human rights.
As the Sanders lead in national polls has shown, our positions are shared by a majority of voters. With the Green Party on the ballot in November, the majority can vote for what they want and get it.
I call on the tens of millions inspired by the Sanders mobilization, the 60% of Americans who want a new major party, and the independents who outnumber both Democrats and Republicans to reject the self-defeating strategy of voting for the lesser evil and join our fight for the greater good.
I ask the rising independent majority to demand our inclusion in the Presidential debates.
Needless to say, Trump and Clinton would lose any debate to Jill Stein, simply because Stein’s policies and value system aren’t based upon money or power. Dr. Stein’s views, from foreign policy to the economy, take a serious look at the state of our nation. She has no corporate interests to appease, and like Bernie, she sticks to her value system at all times.
With the horrific terrorist attack in Nice, France, it’s important to have our next president address the failed war on terror. After the Brussels attacks, Dr. Stein made the following statement:
As I have stated before, the terrorist attacks are clearly a product of the exploding violence in the Middle East over the past 15 years. Governments have been destabilized and weapons have poured into the hands of extremists. Over a million lives, largely civilians, have been lost in Iraq alone. That carnage enables terrorists to mobilize mass recruiting and rationalize their own horrific, despicable acts. In the last decade, the US-led assaults to achieve regime change have created failed states in which ISIS has flourished. In the process, the US has supplied vast stocks of weapons to the Middle East, including nearly $100 million in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in recent years.
Do you think Hillary Clinton would ever make the correlation between Iraq and the world’s increase in terror?
The Guardian states there’s been a “Fivefold increase in terrorism fatalities since 9/11.” Cornel West, Bernie Sanders, and Jill Stein make the relevant correlations, and have the courage to present the correct answers. With Clinton and Trump, we’re only given the narrative that more militancy makes us safer, when the opposite is true. In Clinton’s case, she’d remove any boundaries between Republicans and Democrats on foreign policy and vowed after the Paris attacks to send more U.S. ground troops back to war.
Cornel West’s endorsement of Jill Stein, in addition to Bernie’s work to create this flourishing political revolution, gives all Americans hope for the future. We need a leader who learns from prior mistakes; Clinton continually repeats missteps. In 2004, CNN quoted Hillary Clinton stating she didn’t regret her Iraq vote:
Hillary Clinton: No regret on Iraq vote
April has become the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq since the war began more than a year ago. The U.S.-led coalition faces insurrections on several fronts, including the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, and the militia of a Shiite Muslim cleric in Najaf in the south.
To the disappointment of some antiwar liberals in her Democratic base, Clinton, the former first lady, voted in favor of the Iraq war resolution in October 2002.
“Obviously, I’ve thought about that a lot in the months since,” she said. “No, I don’t regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade.”
Repeating Rumsfeld and Cheney talking points, Clinton sounded exactly like a Bush-era Republican.
Like Dr. West’s endorsement of Stein proves, Bernie’s movement is only growing stronger. I explain in this YouTube segment why Jill Stein is now the most powerful woman in American politics. Jill Stein provides inspiration, wisdom, and hope for the future. We need leadership, and unless Bernie decides to openly compete against Clinton once more, Jill Stein will continue his political revolution as our first female president.
