Sept. 28 where she spoke about the Green New Deal, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Fight for $15 and some of her other policies in front of a crowd of nearly 300 people.
Jill Stein has had a difficult bid for the presidency. With only four percent of support from registered voters, the Green Party candidate was unable to speak at the first presidential debate last week.
Now, Stein is making speeches across the distinguished I-4 corridor in Florida, a series of towns with large populations that connect Tampa Bay to the Orlando area, to appeal to swing state voters. On Wednesday, Stein spoke in front of nearly 300 people at the Cuban Club in Ybor City.
![Trailblazer: During her press conference before the rally, Jill Stein lays out the importance of clean energy and highlights her Green New Deal. “The [Green New Deal] is an emergency jobs program that not only fixes the crises of our economy, but also solves the crisis of climate change and makes the wars for oil obsolete,” said Stein.](https://crowsneststpete.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/IMG_3172-300x200.jpg)
She used her time at the rally to discuss policies and the upcoming election.
Stein primarily focused on the Green New Deal, which she said is designed to add jobs while eliminating the reliance on fossil fuels.
“The [Green New Deal] is an emergency jobs program that not only fixes the crises of our economy, but also solves the crisis of climate change and makes the wars for oil obsolete,” said Stein.
“We won’t need them when we have 100 percent clean, renewable energy.”
Stein also said that she is leading the way for transformative social changes including Black Lives Matter, immigrant rights, the climate justice movement and the Fight for $15, which pushes to increase the minimum wage.
“In order to accomplish our agenda it’s really important to liberate the ground troops for social change and that really is the younger generation,” said Stein.
Interested in drumming up the support from prior supporters of Bernie Sanders, Stein promised to bring drastic changes to higher education.
“The biggest stimulus package is to actually bail out these young people locked in student debt. I’m calling for a $1.3 trillion bailout which the federal government assumes and basically pays off over the next several years.”
Stein takes a peaceful approach on foreign policy, stating that being involved would only increase a terrorist threat.
“We call for a weapons embargo, as well as a freeze on the funding and bank accounts of those countries that are continuing to fund terrorist enterprises.”
Despite running in the 2012 presidential race, Stein’s only political experience is being a co-chair for the Green Party of Massachusetts from 2010-2011, and being an elected member of the Lexington Town Meeting from 2005-2009.
With the election almost five weeks away, it’s clear Stein is trying to garner more support in a state that relies on its healthy environment for income.
“I think it’s a sad commentary on our government that they’re paying more attention to their big money sponsors,” said Stein.”Like the phosphate company that wants to expand this assault on fragile ecosystems in Florida that are so important to the tourist economy.”.
“It’s not just the economy, it’s also the survival of this state because the major aquifer for Florida has been polluted by hundreds of millions of gallons of this toxic sludge,” Stein said, referring to the sinkhole that opened in Mulberry, Florida.
“Profit should not take the place of our survival. In this election we are not just deciding what kind of world we’re going to have, but whether we’re going to have a world or not.”
USF St. Petersburg freshman Samuel Goetz attended the event hoping to gather a different perspective.
“It’s refreshing to hear the thoughts of a third-party candidate, someone with such a progressive view,” said Goetz.
“We may have not seen the turnout we wanted partly because of the venue change, but you see a lot of dedicated people here. I think the movement as a whole is going in a good direction.”
Mark Moussa, a student at USF Tampa, attended the event because Stein is the only candidate that doesn’t scare him with what she says.
“I just listen to everything Trump says and I’m scared for the future of the country,” Moussa said.
“I’m kind of scared he has at least half of the votes, Hillary the same. I just really support what [Stein] is saying and she touches on climate change which is a big issue we should be focusing on.”
Jeremy Griffin, who works for HCHC advertising, blames the media for the lack of coverage of third-party candidates.
“I think it’s not in the media company’s best personal interest,” Griffin said.
“There’s so much money going around that if one [company] started to stray, it would mess everything up. If these companies were actually doing their jobs they would be covering the event more.”
Griffin went on to talk about the struggles of putting on events like this one.
“When you’re running a campaign that doesn’t accept any corporate money it can be very, very tough,” Griffin said.
“You’re basically running with no money and no media to push your name out there and solicit the individual donations. Basically putting something like this together is no more than just a few people getting together and deciding, ‘Let’s get Jill in Tampa.’ But because we put this on we have media here to get her name out there like Bay News 9, that’s doing live coverage of her speaking.”
