Why I am voting for Jill Stein/Rudolph Ware and not Kamala Harris: A Response to Lawrence Hamm
Madelyn Hoffman, former Green Party of NJ candidate for U.S. Senate in 2018 and 2020
On October 7, 2024, Lawrence Hamm, chair of People’s Organization for Progress and former Democratic Party candidate for U.S. Senate in New Jersey’s primaries for U.S. Senate announced his endorsement of Kamala Harris/Tim Walz for President/Vice President, also stating that former president Donald Trump had to be defeated and that Donald Trump’s was a failed presidency.
Today, October 10, 2024, I announce my endorsement of Jill Stein/Rudolph Ware for President/Vice President because on principle as a Green, I do not support Donald Trump, but I don’t support Harris/Walz either. There are many reasons, but on the main reason, Hamm and I agree. The ongoing and current U.S.-Israeli genocide of the people of Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, with Iran being their ultimate goal, is just too bloody, too violent, and contains terrible violations against international humanitarian law. At the same time, these military actions are destroying many West Asian families and thousands of women and children (innocent civilians) and, in my opinion, those responsible must not be rewarded with another 4 years in office so that they can continue the genocide and bring the world closer and closer to World War III and a possible nuclear disaster.
It is hard to imagine anything worse than this. In my opinion, the global death and destruction must stop and, as in the words of Palestinian-American Susan Abulhawa, “I’m not going to climb over the corpses of potentially 186,000 Palestinians [and 2000 Lebanese civilians] to vote for either mainstream party.”
And personally, I could never urge Palestinians, Lebanese, Muslims, Palestinian Christians, Syrians, Yemenis, Iraqis and others to vote for their murderers or vote for those who have destroyed their home (in Gaza and the West Bank, for starters). It would be arrogant of me to do so! It would be wrong of me to “sacrifice” those Israel has killed and maimed in order to “save the Democratic Party” or to “save democracy.” As far as I’m concerned, U.S. democracy is taking its last breath. That is, if it ever was truly breathing. Genocide and democracy can’t co-exist.
Lawrence Hamm has been my mentor since I first became involved in politics in 1980. I looked up to him for his political savvy and his commitment to principles of grass roots organizing. But ever since his personal and organizational endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016, and then his subsequent endorsement of Joe Biden and now his endorsement of Kamala Harris, it seems that partisanship has become more important than principle. But Lawrence Hamm is certainly not the only one.
I have been a Green Party candidate more times than I’d care to admit, spanning several decades. After being asked to be Ralph Nader’s vice-presidential running mate for New Jersey in 1996, running for New Jersey governor in 1997, and the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998, I took 20 years off to focus on grass roots organizing for peace. I returned to the electoral arena in 2018, when I ran for U.S. Senate against Bob Menendez. So I know from my own experience how every election cycle, two or four years apart, the Democrats, particularly, would use the same argument.
“This is the most important election of our lifetimes. It’s not the right time to vote third party.”
“I truly support your ideas, but I can’t take the chance that _________ (fill in the blank) will win.”
“Why don’t you work with everybody else to try to get a Democrat elected?”
“Why don’t you run as a Democrat?”
“You know you’re not going to win, so why are you running?”
“You know Jill Stein isn’t going to win, so why is she running?”
Each and every time, as a Green, I’d disagree. I had taken to heart what Ralph Nader said in 1996. He said that the nation’s voters had to stop voting for the lesser of two evils, because every time they did, they were still voting for evil — and the lesser became lesser and lesser and the evil became greater and greater. In 2016, after twenty years or one generation of voters, the two mainstream choices for president were Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the 2 least popular candidates for U.S. president in U.S. history! It was at that moment, I was sure that Nader was right. Today some Democrats still blame him for all that is wrong with the U.S., instead of blaming the corporate duopoly for giving the voters extremely poor choices.
Lawrence Hamm began this journey into the dysfunction of the Democratic Party by being a delegate for Senator Bernie Sanders’ run for U.S. President. Sanders had the support of many Democrats and others who were hungry for a more human-oriented U.S. government. So many of Sanders’ supporters saw quite clearly the way the Democratic Party wrested control of that election by doing everything in its power to block Sanders’ success. Ironically, that year saw huge crowds turn out to hear both Sanders and Trump. Clearly, the nation’s voters were ready for a change. While Sanders and Trump placed the blame on totally different causes, there was a growing movement clamoring for change. But the Democratic Party leadership worked to dilute Sanders’ power, piece by piece. As that happened, the appeal of the Democratic Party waned, as well. This is when many realized that the Democratic Party didn’t believe in democracy.
This brings us to 2024. When campaigning began in late 2023, several months into the U.S.-supported Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, I thought that finally, this would be the issue that would give the Green Party (and other 3rd parties) the opening they needed to gain more support nationally. Genocide, I reasoned, was a deal-breaker. Chris Hedges wrote about genocide as being an issue unlike some others — while forgiveness of student loan debt or a tax proposal were both important issues, genocide was a deeply moral issue. Others reasoned that if genocide wasn’t a red-line for voters, then those voters had no red-line. If loyal Democrats could still vote for the party that was sending billions of dollars to Israel for its genocide and hundreds of weapons shipments to use in its campaigns of death and destruction, what leverage would the voter ever have to stop this dangerous, almost apocalyptic march into WWIII and the potential use of nuclear weapons?
Turns out, I was terribly naive. Turns out many are so frightened by the prospect of another Trump presidency that they are willing to overlook the genocide and make statements like, “Oh, but Trump would be worse.” I really don’t understand how anything can be worse than the on-going genocide, the expansion of Israeli violence and destruction to SEVEN FRONTS(!) with WWIII waiting in the wings. In fact, a few days ago, in a chilling new development, despite concerns about continuing to expand the war in the region, the U.S. has “accepted” Israel’s plans to “retaliate against Iran.” Retaliate? We could list several ways in which Israel has provoked Iran, not the other way around.
Muslim-Americans are showing the average voter something quite different. In several recent polls among Muslims, Stein/Ware is leading both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump by quite a large percentage. The Abandon Biden movement became an Abandon Harris movement. Surely, even though some see some hope that Harris will break with Biden’s policies on Gaza, Ukraine, China, Taiwan and more, what she has said publicly and how she has behaved publicly puts the lie to that. Her refusal now to ban fracking, saying that fracking can be part of the battle to address the climate catastrophe, goes against everything science tells us and also shows her lack of understanding and concern for the climate emergency we’re currently facing.
Returning to the issue of democracy, no one had a chance to vote in an open primary process for the replacement for President Biden. Kamala Harris didn’t win a single delegate when she sought the nomination for president against Joe Biden in 2020. Many who are now voting for her (because she’s “not Trump”) used to criticize her support for Cop Cities and the job she did as a prosecutor in California — refusing to release prisoners from jail because they were needed to provide cheap labor to combat wildfires or flooding. Suddenly, even that is forgiven in order to defeat Trump.
I fear that as a country, the U.S. has lost its way. We see the world organizing itself into BRICS (an organization comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia), to challenge U.S. hegemony. The U.S. has two choices. One, it could change its evil ways in the world. The other is to continue down the road it’s on, leading to its own destruction, taking the rest of the world with it.
I, for one, as well as some members of the Green 13* in New Jersey, including Lily Benavides, Barry Bendar, and Thomas Cannavo, as well as other Green Party candidates around the country, will steer clear of all that, and work to create a greater good, and not continue to vote for a lesser evil. If the Greens win 5% of the vote nationwide, the Green Party will become an official party and continue to provide an ever-growing alternative to the bought and paid for “duopoly/uniparty”. That’s why I refuse to endorse or vote for Harris/Walz and that’s why I continue to stand strongly against war and genocide.
They say “old habits die hard.” I continue to work for a change in the old patterns and for the world many of us, including activists like Lawrence Hamm, would truly like to see, even though they delay (and even destroy) that change by pulling the lever for one of the two evils. This action keeps the U.S. and the world on the wrong road, and keeps the “uni-party” on life-support.
*NJ’s Green 13, the Green Party of NJ‘s US Senate and Congressional Slate that is committed to an end to the genocide in Palestine.
