- Jill Stein « Press Release
Contact:
Dennis Trainor, Jr | Communications Director
Dr. Jill Stein Officially Running for President; Demands System Change
Presidential Announcement Coincides with Lawsuit Against Commission on Presidential Debates
Official Launch Video here
Download an HD version for broadcast
or web here.
Dr.
Jill Stein will formally launch her campaign as a Green Party candidate
for President of the United States at a campaign kickoff event Tuesday,
June 23 @ 1:30PM at the National Press Club (529 14th St. NW 13th
floor, Washington, DC 20045) (Map)
Earlier today, in a Democracy
Now!
exclusive,
Dr. Jill Stein broke the news that she is formally seeking the Green
Party nomination. “I have a people-powered campaign," Stein notes. "I
am running with the only national party that does not take corporate
funding."
At the National Press Club event tomorrow, Dr. Stein kick off her
campaign and introduce her Power to the People Plan.
“The Power to the People Plan creates deep system change, moving from
the greed and exploitation of corporate capitalism to a human-centered
economy that puts people, planet and peace over profit,” says Dr. Stein.
It offers direct answers to the economic, social, and ecological crises brought on by both corporate political parties. And it empowers the American people to fix our broken political system and make real the promise of democracy.
This plan will end unemployment and poverty; avert climate catastrophe; build a sustainable, just economy; and recognize the dignity and human rights of everyone in our society and our world. The power to create this new world is not in our hopes, it’s not in our dreams - it’s in our hands.”
ORGANIZED AROUND GREEN PARTY GROWTH AND MOVEMENT BUILDING
A
key focus of Jill Stein’s 2016 Presidential Campaign is to bring the
struggles of frontline communities into the frontlines of the
Presidential debate and dialogue.
“The Green Party in the United States is growing,” says Dr. Stein “because we empower voices of resistance and transformation in the electoral arena. The Green Party can do this because we’re the only national party that isn’t poisoned by corporate money. In 2012, we emerged as the nation’s leading progressive party challenging the status quo. Now we are building on that.”
LAWSUIT AGAINST COMMISSION ON PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES
In the fall of 2012, Jill Stein and Vice Presidential Candidate Cheri
Honkala
were arrested as
they tried to enter a Presidential Debate sponsored by the Commission
on Presidential Debates (CPD). Now, that fight moves from the streets
to the courts.
Dr.
Stein’s official entry into the 2016 Presidential race coincides with
the filing of a lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates
(CPD). Alexandra Shapiro is the star litigator leading the effort on
behalf of Level the Playing Field (LPF), the successor to Americans
Elect, LPF’s chairman, Peter Ackerman, and the Green Party.
Shapiro,
a former federal prosecutor and former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, has
won a series of high-profile victories overturning convictions by New
York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office, including the
highly-publicized reversal earlier this month due to massive juror
fraud of a Deutsche Bank broker’s conviction, as well as the landmark
Newman
insider
trading
case, the Ernst
&
Young
$1
billion tax shelter case, and
several other major white collar cases. Shapiro also defeated the FEC’s
effort to shut down the entity that became Americans Elect in a 2010
victory in the D.C. Circuit. Shapiro will be the public face of a
legal
strategy in which the plaintiffs argue that the FEC must either crack
down on the CPD or empower them to sue the CPD leadership and its
Directors over their exclusionary debate rules.
The lawsuit will be filed in the U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia on June 22, 2015.
According
to LPF, “The suit paints a disturbing picture of a debate commission
stacked with partisans who have been violating FEC regulations and the
Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) by rigging the rules governing who
can be in the debates to ensure that no candidate other than the
Democratic and Republican nominees will ever be invited to the debates.”
ABOUT JILL STEIN
Stein was the Green Party’s 2012 candidate for President of the United States. She is an organizer, physician, and pioneering environmental-health advocate. She has helped lead initiatives promoting healthy communities, local green economies and stronger democracy – including campaign finance reform, green jobs, racially-just redistricting, and the cleanup of incinerators, coal plants, and toxic-pesticides.
ABOUT THE GREEN PARTY of the UNITED STATES
The Green Party of the United States (GPUS) is a confederation of state green parties that campaign to elect Green Party candidates at all levels of government to promote the party's core values of ecological wisdom, social justice, grass roots democracy and non-violence. GPUS was recognized as a political party in 2001 following Ralph Nader's presidential campaigns in 1996 and 2000. More recently GPUS presidential candidate Jill Stein challenged her exclusion from the 2012 presidential debates and joined forces with other excluded presidential candidates to promote alternative presidential debates.
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