After attacking Dr. Jill Stein, St. Louis police charged her with assaulting them. Stein is the presumptive Presidential candidate of the Green Party. On April 27 she spoke at a program of the Green Party of St. Louis and then went to support student protesters at Washington University. There, she was arrested along with Green Party campaign managers Jason Call and Kelly Merrill with about 100 others. As soon as Stein arrived at the campus, students asked her to help defuse an already tense situation. When she identified herself to onlooking university administrators as a Green Party Presidential candidate, police moved to block the conversation. Merrill and Stein looked for a restroom and found all doors locked; but a student was able to unlock one door. Hearing yelling that the police were about to attack, they quickly went outside. They walked into the space between students and police, pleading for calm. But the police moved in, using their bicycles as weapons to push people down. Targeting Stein first, they threw her on her head, threw Merrill to the ground, jumped on Call, and dozens became their victims.
Green Party Candidate Jill Stein
Students who were arrested have been prohibited from re-entering campus even if they will miss final examinations and not graduate. The administration-police reaction followed a pattern at universities across the US as if it had been scripted by Joe Biden’s office. The similarities between practices in Palestine and on US campuses is unmistakable. This is true not only for intolerance of dissent and brutality. It is also the case with the way Israelis destroy sanitary facilities in Gaza, leaving them with nowhere to relieve themselves except on sidewalks. This serves both to humiliate Palestinians and create a health crisis. Jewish herself, Stein claims that “The students are not the villains in this struggle against Israeli violence. They are in fact the heroes, defending the right of free speech and to peacefully protest.” Many already see the villains being the Washington University administration, those who conspired with them to destroy free speech, and the Biden gang whose fingerprints are all over efforts to shut down peace initiatives. Out of one side of his mouth Biden claims he is working to end the killing and maiming of Palestinians. From the other side of his mouth comes the push for billions of war dollars that are causing the genocide.
Caption: Kelly Merrill, Jill Stein, Jason Call with arrest charges. April 28, 2024 photo by Barbara Chicherio.
Dr. Stein joined tens of thousands of students in campuses across the US who are demanding university divestment from Boeing and other companies that manufacture weapons used by Israel. Students presented Washington University with five demands: • cut ties with Boeing; • boycott Israel educational institutions; • drop charges and suspensions against protestors and defund university police; • stop buying land and to return all land to indigenous communities; • and release a statement condemning Palestinian genocide and calling for a ceasefire. The mounting opposition to Joe Biden’s war is reflected by the wide variety of speakers at the St. Louis event: Andrew de las Alas (Asians Demanding Justice), Saish Satyal (College Democrats), Lila Steinbach (Jewish Students for Palestine), Bahar Bastani MD (Dar al-Zahra Mosque and Education Center), Shahab Mushtaq (Green Party of St. Louis), Bob Suberi (Veterans For Peace), Chibu Asonye (Green Party of Illinois), Zaki Baruti (Universal African Peoples Organization) and Omali Yeshitela (African People’s Socialist Party).
Dr. Stein will speak in Kansas City MO at 6 pm Monday, April 29 at HJ’s Youth & Community Center, 6425 Wornall Rd, 64113. It is part of a tour which took her to St. Louis on April 27, Columbia on April 28 and later to Kansas and Nebraska.
This article is by Don Fitz, Outreach Coordinator, Green Party of St. Louis
Please take a look at the Green Social Thought website: http://www.greensocialthought.org/
Its focus is: “Produce less. Distribute it fairly. Create a greener world for all
www.gateway-greens.org For more info, call 314-727-8554
|