“For the first time in my life, I have someone I can stand behind as a presidential candidate,” Texas resident Diane Boyd, 69, said at a Santa Barbara rally for Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein.
With 31 days left until the Nov. 8 election, Stein brought her campaign to De la Guerra Plaza on Saturday morning, speaking in front of more than 200 supporters.
During the rally, she promoted “the push for peace, justice and democracy.”
“The biggest wasted vote is the one that is thrown away voting for the political parties that have thrown us under the bus,” Stein said. “The best use of our vote is an investment in the future and a real declaration of the power we have.”
Key issues in Stein’s platform are college debt and making public higher education free, she said.
The Harvard University graduate and physician said the 43 million people in student loan debt “have one place to put their vote.”
“Most people are struggling and they aren’t recovering,” Stein said. “There’s only one candidate who will cancel that student debt and who will bail out the students like we bailed out Wall Street — the crooks who crashed the economy.”
Referring to that 43 million people, Stein said the bloc “is enough to win a three-way presidential race and the numbers it takes to turn the election on its head.”
Stein also discussed the need for a “Green New Deal,” the idea to create millions of jobs by making the transition to 100 percent clean renewable energy by 2030.
She said there’s a need to create 20 million livable wage jobs with clean renewable energy that will help restore ecosystems.
“In doing this, we not only revive the economy, we turn the tide on climate change,” she said.
Enthusiastic fans applauded in support after her statements.
Addressing her supporters at the rally, Stein advocated “health care as a human right, for everyone, through a health care-for-all system.”
Throughout her remarks, Stein referenced Republican candidate Donald Trump’s position on immigration.
“We don’t need your frigging wall, we just need to stop invading other countries,” she said. “We call for a welcoming path toward citizenship for the immigrants who have always been at the front of our economy and community.”
She also addressed the Black Lives Matter movement.
“We need to put an end to the abuse and should not let one more die in the arms of police,” Stein said.
Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton will face off at 6 p.m. Pacific time Sunday in St. Louis for a 90-minute town hall at Washington University.
Stein said she will join a live debate response via her social media platforms to coincide with the second debate, which has been preceded by extraordinary chaos in the wake of a tape of Trump describing his pursuit of women in lurid and demeaning terms.
“The political establishment wants us to believe we are powerless and the problems are way too complicated to solve them,” Stein said.
“In fact, in this election, it’s not just about what kind of a world we want but, but whether we will have a world or not going forward.”
National polls put Stein at 2 percent, behind even Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson at 7 percent, according to a CNN/ORC poll of 1,501 adult Americans interviewed by telephone between Sept. 28 and Oct. 2.
Stein was also the Green Party’s 2012 candidate for president.
Green Party Ventura County member Michael Cervantes joined the Santa Barbara rally in hopes of getting Stein to the White House.
“We are here to listen to a true progressive voice,” he said. “The people still seem to need to hear that. Much of what she is talking about is similar to what Bernie Sanders talked about.”
Joining Stein at the rally was rapper Kor Element, who said he started supporting her after Sanders lost the Democratic Party nomination to Clinton.
He’s been campaigning with Stein across Southern California and said he supports her progressive ideas.
— Noozhawk staff writer Brooke Holland can be reached at bholland@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
