Jill Stein was in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania campaigning for what she called “real change.” On Wednesday, Dr. Stein traveled to Luzerne County where she delivered a very passionate speech to more than 150 people.
Many of the attendees were students from Wilkes University and members of various environmental groups. The Green Party presidential candidate told her supporters that there is more to this election than Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
She also presented her plans to make higher education more affordable and help students struggling under debts. She also spoke about sales tax on Wall Street and healthcare.
She started her speech by saying that on Election Day, American voters should know that they do not have to settle for “the lesser of two evils.”
Stein, who has been touring colleges all around America, said she wants to empower people, especially millennials to go out and vote. She told the audience, voters should know that they have the power to change the direction of the election and this country. According to various polls, a majority of her supporters are millennials. She explained:
“Much of the power comes from some 43 million young people who are locked into predatory student loan debt right now. Millennials are the future, not just for our campaign, I think, but for our country and the world. It’s always millennials who have led the way forward. But it’s not just about stopping things, it’s also about starting things”
Like Senator Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Stein supports making college tuition free or more affordable. At the gathering, she said it is about time student borrowers get a break. Stein shared:
“Actually, Wall Street tore up the contract when they crashed the economy. You were told you do the work, you get the degree, you will have a job. But somehow, those jobs have not come back. Those that did are the part-time, low-wage temporary and insecure jobs. So we say, forget that guilt trip. Wall Street deserves that guilt trip, not the younger generation. What kind of society has ever survived by devouring its young?”
She said that healthcare is a human right and added:
“Let’s put all of our healthcare dollars into actual healthcare, not into paper pushing, bureaucracy, red tape and gigantic CEO salaries. If we put healthcare dollars into healthcare, we have all the healthcare we need.”
Stein believes that 20 million jobs can be created in the forthcoming years to get the American economy moving. She stated:
“We’re calling for 20 million jobs — that’s enough to put everyone back to work. We need a national mobilization right now in order to fix the climate crisis that is barrelling down on us. We declare a climate emergency and an emergency jobs program to solve that climate emergency now.”
She sided with Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson on marijuana by saying:
“Marijuana is a dangerous substance because it’s illegal, I would instruct the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to actually use science in determining what substances should be listed as dangerous.”
Experts believe that Stein may cost Clinton some votes. In this increasingly tight race, this could help Trump win the election.
