Jill Stein, sitting second from left, attended a panel discussion in Fort Worth with local environmental activists. Photo by Karl Thibodeaux.
Jill Stein, who is vying to be named the Green Party’s presidential candidate in 2016, swung through North Texas on a state-wide tour last week.
Stein, a physician by training, was the Green Party presidential nominee in the 2012 race, in which she received 0.36 percent of the popular vote, according to Aljazeera.com.
On Thursday, she attended a police brutality conference in Dallas. Then she headed to Arlington for a tour of gas drilling sites on Friday. She ended the day with a panel discussion on gas drilling at First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church in Fort Worth. She was joined on the panel by Gary Stuard, an organizer for Systems Change, Not Climate Change; Sheila Achuff, founder of Frackfree Krum and Ranjana Bhandari and Harriet Irby of Liveable Arlington.
Local speakers recounted their stories living with fracking and convincing their cities to regulate it. Stein commended North Texas activists for standing up to fracking in Denton, Dallas and now Arlington.
“Your courage is inspirational. It’s outrageous that the community is being poisoned. We don’t need a study to tell us [fracking] isn’t safe.”
Stein said her goal is to move the country toward 100 percent renewables by 2030 with a Green New Deal.
“It only took six months after Pearl Harbor for the country to convert to a wartime economy. Can we do the same thing for renewables in 15 years? Of course we can,” she said.
“I’m a medical doctor. Now I’m practicing political medicine.”