Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein has been arrested. She was participating at a demonstration at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. The demonstrators were calling for the University to sell its investments in the Boeing company, which among other things is claimed to manufacture ammunition at a plant in nearby St. Charles. According to Stein, her Campaign Manager Jason Call and Stein Deputy Campaign Manager Kelly Merrill-Cayer were also arrested.
There is at least one image that appears to show Stein and other people in a line with linked arms. There are other images with her on one side, police facing her at short distance, and a bicycle in midair between them. There are then images with her being led away by the police. I have not found any good overhead videos (drones, anyone) so it is difficult to tell what was happening. There appeared to be crowds of people obstructing peaceful passage, but there could have been gaps at the edges.
Editorial note: Jill Stein shared a video interview with St. Louis local media KSDK News following her arrest via her official X account. Readers can access that video below:
Mirror, Mirror, you bet your patootie Stein does. I have the receipts. Yashar Ali (doing Dem-based oppo research, of course) wrote about this in 2016. For more ethical reasons, I looked to see what she still holds now: https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2023/11/does-green-party-two-time-retread-jill.html
Karl – The last Libertarian presidential nominee to be arrested, that I am aware of, was Michael Badnarik in October, 2004. He was arrested along with David Cobb for crossing a police barricade in protest of debate exclusion.
I will also refer you to agitator extraordinaire Adam Kokesh, who sought the LP nomination in 2020. He has been arrested many times for all sorts of stunts and political protests of unjust laws, and has spent considerable time in jail as a result. His wikipedia page still lists some of the times he has been arrested, but it was apparently scrubbed sometime in the past. If you look at the article versions from 5 or 6 years ago you will find since deleted references to him being arrested for disrupting John McCain’s acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican convention, for example. There are still references to his arrests for disrupting a TSA security line, dancing at the Jefferson Memorial, and others.
And there have been several libertarians who went to prison for tax protests, perhaps most notably Irwin Schiff, who sought the LP presidential nomination in 1996 and had been sent to prison several times throughout his life, lastly for 13.5 years in 2006, when he was 78 years old. He died in prison in 2015.
Karl, libertarian candidate badnarik was arrested in 2004 if I’m not mistaken same time as Stein. Many libertarians have been arrested. Draft resistance was one of their early organizing issues. Some of them also get arrested for tax resisting, like war tax resister Karl Hess who ran their newsletter for many years. They’re also known for being arrested over marijuana laws like former libertarian candidate Steve Kubby who was a cancer patient big in the medical marijuana game, was arrested, exiled in Canada, ran for libertarians. Many others.
Jill has sent a Media Release about her arrest.
News of my team and I being arrested at a Gaza solidarity encampment this weekend has spread like wildfire.
It wasn’t our intent to get arrested this weekend. We went to Washington University because the students invited us. I’m grateful that the flood of media attention has allowed us to center the suffering of the Palestinian people so that we can end this genocide and Israel’s illegal occupation.
I also want to express my profound gratitude for all of you. In addition to the outpouring of well-wishes and support, which I deeply appreciate, our campaign received a flood of new donations as soon as the news broke.
This support comes at an urgent time for our campaign. We have a critical fundraising gap of at least $25,000 that we need to close before midnight tomorrow.
f you missed the news over the weekend, you can read my original message below. Please forward this to your friends and family. We cannot let the world forget what is happening in Gaza. And we cannot stop until Palestine is free.
In solidarity and gratitude,
Jill
From: Jill Stein
Date: Sun, Apr 28, 2024
Subject: I was arrested last night
Last night didn’t end up the way I planned.
By now you’ve probably seen the headlines reading “Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein arrested at Pro-Palestine rally” (or some less flattering variations).
Here’s the full story.
First and foremost: My team and I are okay. Bruised and battered, and with some legal issues to resolve. But we are out. We are okay. And we are undeterred.
Yesterday, my team and I were invited by students at Washington University in St. Louis to visit their Gaza Solidarity encampment. We gladly accepted this invitation.
Once there, it was apparent that tensions were escalating quickly. The student organizers asked us to intercede with university officials to try and de-escalate the coming confrontation. Again, we gladly accepted this responsibility.
But authorities were having none of it. The scene was tense from the beginning, and it was clear that a crackdown was inevitable.
The students asked us to link arms and block access to their encampment by police. And we did.
We braced for impact, but nothing prepared me for what came next.
A total of six police departments assembled on the scene. As they advanced on us, they used their bicycles as weapons against us.
One officer grabbed my arm, glared at me, and roughly pulled me towards him with a bicycle in between us. My campaign manager interceded, shouting at him that he was going to break my arm, until he let go.
We were then violently thrown to the ground, zip-cuffed, and placed under arrest.
In the hours that followed, I was separated from the remainder of my team. They were charged with trespassing, and I was charged with assault – despite the fact I was assaulted by police with a bicycle and then thrown to the ground.
We were arrested around 7:30pm local time and released around 1:30am. .
Let us understand exactly what transpired here:
The students of Washington University have established an encampment to protest the school’s financial holdings in Boeing, which is producing some of the munitions being used against the people of Gaza just a few miles away in their St. Charles facility.
The students are exercising their constitutionally protected right to free expression to pressure their university to divest from death.
The university’s response is to violently assault and incarcerate anyone who dares speak out.
The students are in the right here, as they always are. I am proud to stand by their side as the ONLY pro-peace, anti-genocide, pro-worker candidate slated to be on the ballot across the country this November.
Today I am tired, I am bruised, I am battered – but I am undeterred in my resolve to stop Israel’s genocide and end their illegal occupation of Palestine.
This is not my first protest arrest, but it was unnervingly violent. What we are experiencing on university campuses across the nation right now is a pale shadow of what is to come if the twin parties of war and Wall Street are allowed to remain in power.
I urge you to contribute to our campaign today and make sure EVERY American has a pro-peace candidate on the ballot in November.
If you have the opportunity to join an encampment near you, I urge you to do so. The more community support these students have, the harder it will be for university authorities or police officials to justify their actions to crush this dissent.
In solidarity and gratitude,
Jill
Jill Stein shared a video interview with St. Louis local media KSDK News following her arrest via her official X account. The interview has been added to this article.
If it were a republican, democrat, or a selfish libertarian, they would not have been arrested. The police only target real progressives and outsiders. When have you ever heard of Gary Johnson being arrested? How about Chase Oliver?
Doesn’t Stein hold similar investments herself?