The people checking people in at the Jill Stein rally are warm and efficient. Each guest is greeted, their place of residence confirmed, and the campaign worker quickly provides them with a sheet of Green Party candidates running in their area.
They offer a selection of other campaign literature, then hold out a printed 3-by-5 card that looks like a wedding invitation.
“Please take a list of Palestinian martyrs,” they say. “They’ll be referring to that later in the program.”
No two cards are the same, but printed on each, in English and Arabic, are five names of people killed in the Israeli bombings of Gaza. Another set of cards highlights different Native American massacres. The 1622 Jamestown Massacre, for instance, saw 347 settlers of Virginia killed by the Powhatans, while another 500 English Colonists died of starvation.
Meanwhile, on the stage where the Green Party candidate for president would soon appear, a large Palestinian flag stood flanking a green Stein/Ware 2024 sign.
The Green Party platform has 10 key values, highlighting everything from “ecological wisdom” to “personal and global responsibility” to “future focus and sustainability.” In appearances across the Triangle over the past week, however, the candidates for the two highest offices in the country — presidential nominee Jill Stein and her running mate, Butch Ware — appear they are a single-issue party. And it’s probably not the issue you’d think.
Despite its name and the strong ecological slant in its key values, the Green Party has one main focus in the 2024 election — ending the violence in Gaza. Or, as Ware described it in an appearance in Chapel Hill last Tuesday, “Kamala Harris’ Black Girl Magic genocide.” (He also referred to it as her “Girl Boss genocide” later in the same speech.)
As November approaches and early voting is underway, the only green capturing the attention of Green Party candidates is the stripe beneath the black, white and red on the Palestinian flag. In several hours of speeches throughout the Triangle by Green Party officials and candidates, there was no mention of the environment, economy or even the war in Ukraine. Ware, who has said in the past that a school guidance counselor told his mother to get an abortion when she got pregnant with him at age 15, didn’t offer a stance on abortion in his appearances.
For that matter, Green Party candidates barely mentioned Trump, focusing their venom on Harris and the Democrats.
“The policy of voting for the lesser evil over and over again has landed you with the greatest of evils. There is no evil greater than genocide,” Ware said.
Ware also quoted Malcolm X, who said Republicans were wolves that bare their teeth at you. However, liberal foxes try to make it look like they’re smiling at you.
“And Kamala’s fangs drip red,” Ware has said and tweeted.
“Just a few days ago, Kamala Harris went to Detroit, where she’s trying to get the Palestinian vote,” said Green Party local organizer Rania Masri, who served as emcee for the Stein event. She twice pronounced the vice president’s name with an emphasis on the second syllable instead of the first. “She offered notes of concern for the Palestinians (in Gaza and Lebanon). She then followed it along by very clearly saying that these notes of concern don’t reflect any change in U.S. foreign policy toward Israel. So she claims empathy while delivering bombs that literally behead our children and shred our bones.
“The Democrats excel at giving us notes of concern. When we met with Deborah Ross, she actually cried … but refused to sign a ceasefire missive. So I know what we can offer those notes of concern and those crocodile tears from Team Blue. At least Team Red doesn’t offend us by crying.”
Ware also ripped activists Angela Davis and Brittany Packnett Cunningham for supporting Harris, calling Davis a “sellout.”
“Imagine throwing away an entire lifetime of credibility,” he said of Davis.
“For them to start caping for Kamala is a betrayal of the sacred womb that birthed blackness,” he said. “It is a betrayal of mitochondrial Eve herself, the black woman from whom we are all descended.”
Ware also compared Biden unfavorably to Ronald Reagan, who he called “a moral monster.” However, in 1982, Reagan called Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and told him to stop bombing Lebanon.
“Within 24 hours, the missiles stopped flying,” Ware said. “At any point in time, Joseph R. Biden could make the exact same phone call. And they continue to gaslight and play in your face. They tell you, ‘You have 30 days to straighten up your act and take care of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.’ They won’t even call it a genocide. When there are 21 days until the election. Just trust us. We promise if you reelect us, we’ll stop slaughtering children.”
While many pundits have written the Green Party off as a spoiler, attempting to gum up the works for a Harris campaign, Ware’s fiery rhetoric sounds more like a call for burning it all down.
“All empires fall,” he said to loud applause in Chapel Hill. “We witnessed the extinction burst of Nazism, and now the extinction burst of its cousin Zionism, and the extinction burst of the American empire. All empires fall. It’s up to us to determine what will replace it.”
