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From Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s website, June 18th, 2016:
(Philadelphia, PA) Jill Stein, the presumptive Green Party nominee for President, participated today in the Juneteenth observances in Philadelphia. The day marks when slaves in Texas on June 19, 1865 first learned of the Emancipation Proclamation from union soldiers.
“It is unfortunate that more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African-Americans still have been denied equality in our country. We need to ensure that all Americans have access to housing, a living wage job, universal health care, and a free, quality education, including college. It is also time for the United States to deliver on the promise of reparations for the sins of slavery, a promise made in 1865,” said Stein.
To address the issue of reparations, Stein supports the creation of a commission to study reparations proposals and make recommendations to Congress, as called for in HR40, sponsored by Cong. John Conyers. She supports a Truth and Reconciliation process for slavery similar to what was done for apartheid.
Stein also said she would enforce laws and strengthen policies against racial discrimination in jobs, education, housing (mortgages, rental housing), and criminal justice and against the growing segregation of housing and schools.
Stein also said if elected she will make Juneteenth Independence Day a National Day of Observance in the United States. Education and self-improvement have been consistent themes of Juneteenth celebrations.
In January of this year, a UN Working group on People of African Descent reported that “The colonial history, the legacy of enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism, and racial inequality in the US remains a serious challenge as there has been no real commitment to reparations and to truth and reconciliation… Ideology ensuring the domination of one group over another, continues to negatively impact the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of African Americans today.”
The UN group cited “the persistent gap in almost all the human development indicators, such as life expectancy, income and wealth, level of education, housing, employment and labor, and even food security, among African-Americans and the rest of the US population,” and pointed to police killings, the criminalization of poverty, environmental racism, discriminatory voter ID laws and schools’ insufficient teaching about the history of slavery as constituting a human rights crisis that must be addressed.
The Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein continues to grow in popularity. The Green Party candidate for President, Dr. Jill Stein in NBC News poll, Bloomberg poll, Ipos, and USA Survey – in each case Green Party Dr. Jill Stein support tripled. If this continues the Green Party and Dr. Jill Stein will be at 20% in three weeks. When most of America gets a clear look at the intelligent, attractive, kind Dr. Jill Stein the Green Party in the USA, like Austria two weeks ago – will elect a president from the Green Party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knw9JmqXRRs
The more Dr. Stein speaks out on “issues” like this the farther down the list she drops as to whether she could earn my vote. She is currently behind Johnson and Castle; tied with Hedges and only moderately ahead of the two major party buffoons. When she drops below Trump then she will have decided something stupid like undocumented shopping is a human right!
The Green Party has really become ridiculous. This press release is a perfect example of why I left and joined the Libertarians instead.
The most regressive and hierarchical institution in America is the Federal Reserve, which the Greens never make a peep up about. (To be fair, Johnson seems uncomfortable with attacking it as well, likely due to not having a very firm understanding of it.)
Voter ID laws do not necessarily discriminate against blacks, although they can be written or the requirements can be set up in such a way that they discriminate against the poor. Take Texas, for example. To get a “free” voter ID card in Texas can cost several hundred dollars once you consider that it could take a couple days off of work, a car trip of several hundred miles and a hotel stay.
I have never seen a library card here in California that has a picture of the card-holder on it. Many states require government-issued photo ID in order to vote at the polls.
Another point about libraries is that libraries don’t have the patron’s signature on file, but voter registration offices do. In California, there is a random sample check between voters’ signatures in the roster from the polling place, and the appearance of that voter’s signature on the voter registration rolls. This random sample has teeth. A neighbor’s son once signed in the wrong line; he signed on his father’s line, at the polling place roster. The son and the father have the same name. The district attorney investigated, which was quite stressful for that family.
How do voter ID laws discriminate against blacks? I am not suggesting I necessarily support showing an ID to vote but it’s an odd accusation considering that an ID is required to write a check, use a credit card (though many places now ignore), obtain a library card, the purchase of alcohol and tobacco, etc.
I’ve never heard anyone claim that a public library discriminates by requiring an ID to borrow books or that liquor stores are racist.
“Observes Juneteenth with a Call for… Reparations for Slavery”
I’m good, thanks.
Seriously, there is probably no idea more clearly certain to backfire than reparations. You think race relations are bad now?
🙂
Reparations sounds good to me. My ancestor fought for the North and was wounded in the Civil War.
His injury made him unable to work to his full potential for the rest of his life, setting back our family’s economic advancement by at least one generation. We deserve reparations from those African Americans who are economically successful today because their ancestors were freed from slavery by soldiers such as my gggrandfather.