"How has Stein fared as a leader? By AOC’s perfectly reasonable standard, she’s done abysmally. As of July 2024, a mere 143 officeholders in the United States are affiliated with the Green Party. None of them are in statewide or federal offices. In fact, no Green Party candidate has ever won federal office. And Stein’s reign has been a period of indisputable decline, during which time the party’s membership—which peaked in 2004 at 319,000 registered members—has fallen to 234,000 today.

This meager coalition can’t possibly kick-start a legitimate political movement, capable of organizing voters and advancing ideas outside of perennial electoral events. It’s just large enough, however, to spoil the work of those who put in this kind of work."

  • LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    https://youtu.be/VbFmicUTb_k?si=KWic5pGj9STRmw4j

    https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/12/specials/johnson-rightsadd.html

    For, with a country as with a person, “What is man profited if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

    “All men are created equal.” “Government by consent of the governed.” “Give me liberty or give me death.”

    And those are not just clever words, and those are not just empty theories.

    In their name Americans have fought and died for two centuries and tonight around the world they stand there as guardians of our liberty risking their lives.

    Those words are promised to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man. This dignity cannot be found in a man’s possessions. It cannot be found in his power or in his position. It really rests on his right to be treated as a man equal in opportunity to all others.

    It says that he shall share in freedom. He shall choose his leaders, educate his children, provide for his family according to his ability and his merits as a human being.

    To apply any other test, to deny a man his hopes because of his color or race or his religion or the place of his birth is not only to do injustice. It is to deny America and to dishonor the dead who gave their lives for American freedom.

    Our fathers believed that if this noble view of the rights of man was to flourish it must be rooted in democracy. The most basic right of all was the right to choose your own leaders.

    The history of this country in large measure is the history of expansion of that right to all of our people. Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument:

    every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.