We found ourselves hanging out with Dr. Jill Stein, Prof. Butch Ware, and some two dozen or more Greens and other Stein-Ware supporters in the Secret Garden at Pike Place today. Their visit was very last minute and motivated by the machinist strike at Boeing, so it was a super low-key opportunity to connect with the campaign.
I’ve only been a citizen of this Empire for two years, and I use those words carefully; I am a citizen here the way that St. Paul was a citizen of Rome. I exercise my rights and privileges as an act of defiance. So, I’ll be damned if I let my right to vote here go. And I’m glad that my very first vote for president isn’t wholly compromised. I’m glad that I can still vote with my whole heart and full spirit, because victory for me isn’t measured by Empire’s standards. It’s a win for me to build a movement. It’s a win for me to defend my dignity. Karama — if you speak Arabic, you know what I mean.
They can strip you of all your rights, but only you can rid yourself of your own dignity. That’s what Palestine has been teaching us for decades. That’s what Gaza demonstrates every day. Karama. I respect my friends who choose a different path. I’m just sticking to mine.
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This is Kitten, a Green Party organizer from Spokane who came toting two actual kittens in a backpack carrier, and was one of two key facilitators at the event, alongside Alice, based in Seattle, and Jason, based in Maryville, and who also just happens to be Jill Stein’s campaign manager. He told us that the Green Party of WA was one of the biggest and most effective nationwide.
One young man in attendance said he’d never heard of the Greens and this campaign until two weeks ago. Until then, he and his mother were planning on abstaining—“because of Gaza,” he said—but now they’re voting Green. He said he’d managed to convince seven people to do the same. This was very heartening.
I don’t think the people who dismiss pro-Palestine folks as single-issue voters quite understand where we all are in history’s gyre right now. As Gaza goes, we all go—that line from a speech by Jill that got turned into a campaign poster, that’s not an empty slogan. Some of us understand this deep down to our core. The rest just huff and sigh at the inconvenience.
I don’t care what they say about Jill. I think it matters that someone running for president would write “Free Palestine” on my flyer.