COLUMBIA, Mo. — Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein said Sunday she was charged with assault after police arrested her during a pro-Palestine protest at Washington University the day before.
Video prior to the arrest shows officers using a bicycle to push against a group of protesters including Stein. The protesters appear to push back.
Julie Hail Flory, a spokeswoman for Washington University, did not immediately provide information on the identity of those arrested or their charges on Monday. ºüÀêÊÓƵ County police referred questions to the Washington University Police Department.
“While I was being assaulted with a bicycle, one of the police bent down and picked up my foot in order to try to further destabilize me into falling backwards,†Stein said in an interview Sunday. “And I wiggled out of his grip, you know, in an effort not to fall back on my head.â€
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“And he then informed me that I was going to be charged with assaulting a police officer, if you can believe it,†she said.
We were violently assaulted and arrested with ~100 others peacefully protesting genocide at Washington University in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein)
Many US police departments - including ºüÀêÊÓƵ' - are being trained by Israel to use military occupation-style tactics against their own communities.
Stein, a 73-year-old physician and activist who won 1% of the popular vote for president eight years ago, is hoping to take advantage of this year’s fragmented field, which in addition to President Joe Biden, 81, and former President Donald Trump, 77, also includes independent challenger , 70.
Stein has focused on pushing for an end to Israel’s war in Gaza as many on the left voice anger with Biden’s handling of the conflict — and her arrest Saturday has generated national media attention.
Stein said in a four-way race “it’s possible to win with as little as 26% of the vote,†adding she is the only “anti-genocide, anti-war, pro-worker†candidate on the ballot; Stein said her campaign is “on track†to be on the ballot “across the country.â€
Missouri Green Party organizers are working to collect the 10,000 valid signatures the party will need for candidates to run under its label this year. A party official said Monday the party had collected more than 8,000 signatures.
Kennedy’s campaign is also collecting signatures in Missouri. The submission deadline is July 29.
In an interview with the Post-Dispatch on Sunday following a campaign event in Columbia, Missouri, Stein criticized a two-state solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and called for a “negotiated solution†to the war between Ukraine and Russia — dramatic departures from current U.S. foreign policy.
Biden in February rejected a request by Putin to negotiate over Ukraine, The New York Times , and the United States also supports a “negotiated two-state solution†between the Israelis and Palestinians, according to the U.S. State Department.
Even so, the United States on April 18 at the United Nations that would have granted Palestine full UN membership.
“There’s still room for discussion on this, but my sense is that that has been tried for 75 years,†Stein said of a two-state solution. “What you get is ... basically a one-state solution, where the U.S. just vetoed the rights of that second state.
“Essentially the so-called two-state solution is a one-state solution, a one-apartheid-state solution,†Stein said. “We now need a one-equitable-and-just-state solution, where everyone’s rights are recognized.â€
Stein and Russia
Stein in 2015 was pictured at an event for Russian television network RT, seated near Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017 Stein’s campaign for possibly colluding with Russia; a Senate Intelligence Committee released in 2019 said the Russian Internet Research Agency worked to promote Stein’s campaign.
She said Sunday the Senate committee “found nothing†and called “very preposterous†the argument “that we had benefited from Russian social media interference.â€
Stein had been scheduled to appear Saturday night at the Uhuru Solidarity Center in ºüÀêÊÓƵ. Omali Yeshitela, founder of the anti-colonial Uhuru movement, as well as two other Black empowerment organizers active in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, were accused in an indictment unsealed last year of participating in a yearslong Russian campaign to sow dissent in the United States, the Post-Dispatch reported in April 2023. Cases were pending as of Monday.
Stein said Sunday the Ukraine-Russia conflict was “a very regrettable result of the betrayal of the promise made to†then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev for NATO not to move “one inch†eastward following the reunification of Germany — made by Putin in December 2021, prior to Russia’s invasion in March 2022.
“You promised us in the 1990s that (NATO) would not move an inch to the East. You cheated us shamelessly,†Putin said then, one of many times he has criticized eastern NATO expansion.
But Gorbachev, who died in 2022, said in with Russia Beyond the Headlines released in 2014 that “the topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all†during talks, though he did say the decision by the United States and allies “to expand NATO into the east†was “definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990.â€
Former Under Secretary of State Robert Zoellick then-Secretary of State James Baker in February 1990 posed a hypothetical to Gorbachev, asking him if he preferred to “have a united Germany — sort of, independent, neutral, not linked to the West — in the heart of Europe†or if he preferred “to have a united Germany in NATO with the jurisdiction not one inch further?â€
“It’s that hypothetical that Putin goes back on, but then one has to look at what happens during the rest of 1990,†Zoellick , adding the final Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe didn’t preclude other countries from joining NATO.
Told she was echoing the Russian viewpoint on the United States and NATO expansion, Stein said, “you could say Russia is, you know, mimicking my view,†going on to cite “most experts†and political scientist John Mearsheimer, after Russia invaded Crimea that the “taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement.â€
“It’s very unfortunate that the U.S. essentially ginned up this war. It’s unfortunate and, you know, criminal that Putin invaded but under very understandable circumstances,†Stein said.
Stein also said if elected she would declare a “climate emergency†on her first day as president.
“In declaring a climate emergency, the president then has the power to basically shut down all fossil fuel development on the oceans and the pipelines that feed them — the export facilities along the coasts, for example, the liquid natural gas export facilities,†Stein said.
She also said “we would begin the Green New Deal, the jobs program to†reboot the economy and “create a manufacturing economy rather than the financialized economy†that “benefits largely the top 1%.â€