Around 100 people gathered to listen to former Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speak at the Community Church of Boston about immigration, environmental policy, political division and other issues under the Trump administration.
The purpose of the event was to draw parallels between current-day militarism and Cold War McCarthyism by examining the ways they intersect and cause issues like mass migration, increased war and corporate influence in government, Dean Stevens, president of the Board of the Community Church of Boston, said before the discussion.
Speaking about the global refugee crisis and mass migration, Stein said the mass displacement of people is not the first of its kind in American history, but rather a continuous misstep in the political system. She also said she appreciated countries looking to achieve peace through diplomatic action.
“We really have to change the immigration laws that control our foreign policy,” Stein said. “It’s such a powerful symbol how the United Nations and the other nations of the world … have said … stop competing with each other about who’s got the bigger button and let’s grow up here and let’s create a world that we can live in.”
Stein said she was concerned about voter rights and corporate control in government. She said she supported the establishment of ranked-choice voting, a system in which voters can rank their candidates of choice rather than voting for a single person, as a possible alternative to the current method of voting at the federal level.
“And guess who is trying to stop ranked-choice voting?” Stein said. “The Democrats and the Republicans in the legislature, because they don’t want you to have freedom of choice when you vote. The fact that they have to intimidate you into voting for them tells you that they’re incapable of actually earning your vote.”
Elizabeth Epsen, 33, of Medford, said she was inspired to come to Stein’s talk because she shares the same stances on many issues, particularly ranked-choice voting.
“I was also really pleased because I know that she supports ranked-choice voting,” Epsen said. “She got me excited about ranked choice voting and activated me to be a part of it and join an organization in Massachusetts called Voter Choice Massachusetts. I came here to hopefully mobilize more people who are here and get them to sign up and support our efforts.”
Matthew Andrews, 37, of Jamaica Plain, co-chair of the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts, said he believes politics seems to only favor a select group of people and tapping into popular participation is a way to undermine the “lesser-of-two” evils, as Stein mentioned.
“I think that people generally get the feeling that politics is something for specialists or something for experts or for some elite club, and when we leave it to other people to make the decisions for us, we get really bad decisions,” Andrews said. “When you build a movement that encourages popular participation, we find that we have so much in common.”
Looking to the future, Stein urged attendees and supporters to unite and understand the detrimental changes occurring under the current political system that pose threats not only to the United States, but the global community as well.
“You have to really have your eyes closed or be looking the other way not to know that this is it,” Stein said during the meeting. “This is really it. This is time to go all out in a way which is peaceful and a way which is unified. We really need a very different paradigm that puts people, planet and peace over profit.”
Bil Lewis, 65, of Cambridge, said progressives need to start doing the work they talk about doing. Having isolated conversations among like-minded individuals is not conducive to bridging the partisan divide, he said.
“I went down to muck out houses after Irma, and I show up there and it’s me and a hundred Republicans,” Lewis said in an interview. “And I’m sitting here kind of angered, like ‘Where are all the people who are calling themselves progressives? Why aren’t we on the front line?’”
