 So, it's really a great honor to be here and to benefit from the work that you've done and the vision that you have about how we make this world a place of justice and peace and dignity for all of us. So just a big thank you for all of that. And specifically, I wanted to say a few words about the recount that we have just completed now in three states in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. I want to say a few words about that recount and what the recount says about our election system in general and what the crisis in our elections says more generally about the crisis in our democracy, which is very much the fight that is at our doorstep right now today and gets back to the kinds of practical actions that we've been discussing today. So I'll just say a few remarks and then we can open it up to discussion, comments, questions, and so on. So first, on the recount, we identified three states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, that all had particular red flags. So I was approached by an election integrity coalition about a week before Thanksgiving and they were looking into whether or not we really had a legal case. And I only heard from them with the thumbs up on Monday before Thanksgiving. And the first deadline was Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. So by the time we did the FEC compliance and all that to make sure that we had a dedicated fund so that there would be no question we were fundraising for the recount and only for the recount. This is not for my vacation home somewhere in the Caribbean or something like that. This was a recount fund. By the time we had our paperwork in order, it was Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving weekend. So we were not terribly optimistic that we were going to be able to raise $2.4 million, which in two days, which was the fee that we had to pay in Wisconsin on Friday. But the long and the short is all we did was put out a press release that we were going to seek confirmation that this was a vote we could trust in three critical states. We just put out a press release and we put up a web page to receive the funding and it took on a life of its own because I think distrust, untrust, cynicism about the election runs very high. As Donald Trump himself said, he thought it was a rigged election. As Bernie Sanders said, it's a rigged economy. We're sort of living in the age of the rigged and who's paying the price? You notice the 99%, it's the everyday people who are being thrown under the bus. So why in the world would people have paid attention to this when we had an opportunity to withdraw into our own little private spheres to meet with our families over Thanksgiving? No, we the American people stood up and within about six hours we had blown through the first fee, which was $2.4 million. And within about 24 hours or so we had raised enough that we could begin to move ahead in all three states. It was absolutely incredible. And it seemed to me like we the American people were saying we want something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving so we are going to be what we are thankful for. We standing up for the democracy we deserve. And I have to say since then just being out there in the world and being at the airport in Atlanta, so many people are tuned into this and I usually say what does it mean to you? And for some people it's the integrity of the vote. For other people it's just fighting back that we need a way for us everyday people who are being kind of locked out here of a future and people are feeling this on so many fronts, not only immigrant rights a generation locked into debt, college debt for those who don't qualify for free tuition and there aren't very many who do this is a generation in crisis, these are workers in crisis who don't have the jobs that we need. We also deserve to vote without fear. Without fear that your vote is mistakenly going to help someone that you may be very much opposed to. So it turns out there is a voting system that would enable you to vote for the greater good not for the lesser evil which is kind of the deal that so many people feel like they're forced to make. You feel like if you vote for the candidate you believe in your candidate may not win and then you may inadvertently help the greater evil win. So this voting system was actually just adopted by the state of Maine. It already exists in many cities around the country and in countries around the world. It's called ranked choice voting. It lets you rank your choices so you don't have to go into the voting booth and kind of make a gamble based on you know trade-offs. Instead you can actually bring your values into the voting booth so you would put your first choice first maybe it's an underdog but it's a candidate that has that actually stands up for immigrant rights as human rights for a welcoming path to citizenship for healthcare for college as human rights extended to all residents of the country. You could vote number one for the candidate you believe in knowing that if that candidate loses your vote is automatically reassigned to your number two choice and then you can even list a third choice if you want it. So it ensures that your vote will support the candidate that you most support and that you are not going to be splitting the vote you're not going to divide the vote you're not going to be spoiling the election in any way. And just for the record I want to go on record here that if you look at green votes in this election most green voters would not have come out to vote if they couldn't have voted green we know this from a variety of polls also from exit polls so it's just not true that green votes would have translated to democratic party votes in fact of those people 61 percent of greens would have stayed home of those who would have come out over one third would have voted for Donald Trump perhaps as a protest vote against the democrats or what I don't know but it's just not true simple rules do not apply voters are complex we're wearing a number of issues here and so greens would have not sort of combined with democratic votes the number of green votes that would have contributed to Hillary Clinton would not have made a difference in any state so any blaming or finger pointing going on here is entirely misguided in terms of the numbers but in terms of the broader concept it is very misguided to think that we should just have two official state political parties and be like what Russia or Iran democracy requires many voices and many choices democracy requires vigorous opposition that's where real debate happens so rather than suppressing opposition voices which is very dangerous for democracy we need to be fighting together for ranked choice voting to ensure that we can actually stand up for what it is that we want for health care for everyone as a human right for a right to free public higher education which by the way pays for itself many times over there is no doubt about that it should be funded completely right now and we bailed out the friggin crooks on wall street who crashed the economy it's time to bail out a generation of young people holding student loan debt that just cannot be paid back if we could come up with the trillions to bail out wall street we can come up with 1.3 trillion to bail out young people so um and last final two two last final reforms and the electoral college a holdover from the days of slavery we need to have a direct popular vote we would have a different outcome in this election and finally we need to get the big money out of politics this has been going on for a long time we need to have public financing in my home state in massachusetts we actually passed a public financing for elections we passed it as a voter referendum and i'm sorry to report that our legislature then repealed this voter referendum which had passed by a two to one margin and it was repealed by a democratic legislature which to me said that perhaps the real change we need is not going to happen under the political establishment as we know it under either wings of it um and that is what made me a confirmed green when i saw this happen 15 16 years ago um so at any rate getting big money out of politics is really critical if we are going to get the people back in we can do this the people want to do this it should be part of our broader agenda and just as a footnote by reclaiming the public airwaves which belong to us we the people which have been given away essentially free to very large corporations who are not fulfilling their public responsibility to educate the public on critical matters of our future like our elections uh we can make public financing affordable by requiring free airtime from the public airwaves and those who are in possession of those public airwaves big corporations the big media needs to provide free public airtime for qualified candidates whether it's at the national level or at the local level we need to have a public which is fully informed and empowered this is one of the cornerstones of democracy so that in turn enables us because the price tag will come down so dramatically once you have free communications and free public education free debates free and open debates the price tag for political campaigns comes way down uh and makes it possible then for us as taxpayers to actually have publicly funded elections so that they are not effectively privatized and sold out to the highest bidder uh the greatest democracy that money can buy is not a democracy at all it needs to be a democracy of by and for we the people so with that let me uh just announce two dates for you to keep in mind um we will be part of a broad coalition for occupy the inauguration on the 20th uh because in my view democracy is not being served by the current administration and we could have a longer discussion about that if you're interested but I think there are very principled reasons for us to register uh our our distrust and our distress at the way that this administration is rolling forward um and uh that will be on the 20th of january in washington dc and I presume that um uh events and protests are also being organized at the local level uh and we are hoping and will announce soon to hold a conference the following day about how we continue to build this broad movement that we really need right now we need to dig in on the practical things that we can do right now in our communities and we've heard many of them discussed here today but we also cannot afford to be divided if we are divided we are conquered and the more we can join together in a broad coalition for people planet and peace over profit the more unstoppable we are in the words of alice walker the biggest way people give up power is by not knowing we have it to start with we have the power this is kind of the hail mary moment whether you are looking at immigrant rights a generation locked in debt a climate which is in terminal meltdown right now that needs to be stopped by really a substantive action by our economy which continues to unravel uh we are in a situation right now that uh really calls on all of us to stand up for our deeply held beliefs in democracy human rights justice and sustainability the minute we stand together we are absolutely unstoppable and the minute we stand up with the courage demonstrated by the likes of the dreamers by the likes of uh the standing rock zoo and uh indigenous people and uh black and brown people all over the country and all over the world for whom these battles are not new for whom this is a very old battle uh this is the time for us to follow your lead and take courage from the courage that you have shown for decades and for centuries you have been kind of the canary in the mine shaft we are all now in that mine shaft it's time for us to stand up and work together one last date i want to mention and this is february 25th this is tentative to be confirmed but we are looking to hold a voting justice conference this one probably in philadelphia a voting justice conference to help build a coalition to work on all of those issues that i mentioned are absolutely critical we need to fight on each of those issues alone but we also need to be a broad coalition working together so that we can in fact seize the power that we have in the in this absolutely critical moment for us to stand tall and stand together so again thank you all so much for the leadership that you have shown and are continuing to show i really look forward to continue to work with you uh over the coming months and years thank you so much for your question over here yeah jelstein uh could run at the midterm elections as a senator from messachusetts that's an interesting question um which has not you know we have not yet even debriefed from the uh because we rolled right over we thought we were going to do a deep and start to put together our strategy but and then we we took up the call for the recount and which really only stopped the day before i came out here so we'll see you know i feel like you know i'm in this as a mother and and as a medical doctor for too long i studied what was going on and what i studied was this you know epidemic of asthma and diabetes and all this stuff that is uh very much downstream of the exploitation of people and our our natural environment and our water and our food and all that it's all been kind of co-opted to make a big profit for very few people and it's making us all sick whether it's our food system our transportation system our energy system uh poverty in and of itself you know we are very sick as a society right now and i felt like for too long i was documenting that and studying that and it just became intolerable and so you know i'm in a position as a mother that i realize all of our kids now are on the same boat and none of them are going to make it uh at the rate that we're going so i feel like uh i'm i i joined the ranks of the mothers on fire and the fathers on fire and the sisters and brothers on fire that we are here to do everything that we can until our last breath and then even after that you know that there will be no stopping us because you know we are here to create an america and a world that works for all of us either it works for all of us or it works for none of us so effectively the recount was shut down at every turn um uh it it uh it went forward for three days in michigan before the court the state court shut it down why did they shut it down they shut it down saying that i did not have standing basically because i wasn't the runner up had hillary clinton stepped forward had the democratic party stepped forward there could have been a recount but they did not and they usually don't um they seem you know to be concerned about a smooth transition of power and that is a concern but i think many of us would say it's not the smooth transition of power it's the legitimate transition of power that counts it was it never got started in pennsylvania for the same reasons it went forward in in wisconsin but not where it most counted in the black and brown communities around um milwaukee so it was effectively stopped it was a broken recount that reflects a broken election system and you know it was a success because it answered our question is this a voting system we can trust and it gave us a resounding no it's up to us to create a voting system we can trust clinton campaign stepped into the recount i also believe that trump's campaign tried to block it were they involved in blocking it can you share that with us they did um trumps campaign his super PACs and the republican party all filed lawsuits in various states to slow the recount down to push it right up against the deadline for the electoral college uh and to make it very expensive and to basically prevent voters from having a right to a verified vote which is why this should be built into the process let me mention quickly growing out of the recount in 2004 some very important things happened those recounts were also effectively shut down but they did expose real critical problems including with the voting technology so it was out of that that a reform movement for voting integrity was born and the state of new mexico's because of the lawsuits that were filed they actually got a legal mandate to the legislature to fix the broken system and out of that they passed exactly the laws that are needed they got rid of the electronic machines they instituted automatic audits of paper ballots and they created automatic recounts when the election was very close so it is an example of a success story and how we can reduplicate that so that is one of the things that we are working on with groups in each of those states and with election voting justice advocates around the country to ensure that we come out of this taking some real critical steps forward and that we work with our state legislatures in order to do that. Judy and then Dr. Stein first of all welcomed to Texas and San Antonio and actually to south Texas my husband and I are coming in from Eagle Pass, Maverick County which actually we still use paper ballots because we're in rural America except that and also for you to come to south Texas with the under the auspices of southwest voter which is a long-standing organization that many of us have been involved in frankly for for numerous years and working to get more Latinos Mexican Americans originally and now the broader scope of more Latinos engaged in politics. What I'm curious about and I will also state to IMA Lifetime Democrat been very involved in the Democratic Party but having said that have always been watched what the Green Party has done to bring out the important issues regarding environment and so one more point which is we are the state that is one of the largest non-voting Latino states. I think we are the largest non-voting Latino population states meaning we have registered but not uh and so okay well but larger larger having said all that how can we frankly work together? I'm a proponent of environmental support all of those types of issues and so I come more from that stance admittedly but appreciate what you've been doing and also thank you for working on the recount issue just for frankly exposure to the larger issues. Thank you and I think there are lots of ways for us to work together and um you know the the the Bernie cracks I think are kind of a good example of many people who are very sympathetic to a green agenda. Many some of the Bernie cracks have come over some are still you know in kind of in their own political island right now some are back inside the Democratic Party. I think we are in a state of political realignment right now and the more we are talking to each other the better the more we're talking to each other on a principled basis the better. I share a lot of sympathies with Jonathan Ryan who spoke before from Raisa's that we are in a crisis moment right now and that crisis um you know was uh was enabled by both political parties that have both been captured by big money and that we need to fight that capture and for those who want to stay inside the party and keep fighting it good luck you know more power to you um different people have reached their limit at different points but I think it's really important the most that we can do to enable you to fight for change inside the Democratic Party is establish an alternative to the Democratic Party to really force it to you know fish or cut bait so I think there are lots of ways we can collaborate and that passing rank choice voting enables us to do this in a way that uh you know takes the the real fear out of this process and really opens up the dialogue so that as parties we can um compete with each other in a way that a healthy democracy relies on fear should not be what drives our votes it should be our values that drive our votes and for us to collaborate on rank choice voting I think would be absolutely phenomenal and you know would really advance all the issues that we share inside of uh all the parties thank you I'm uh Vanessa Sanchez and fellow the native San Antonio and I'm a part of several grassroots organizations here one political reason the other one is that I am the breath of the line and I've had my limit with the democrats so um thank you for being there during the dem exit because we really needed you and we still need you um but I wanted to ask about your fight for decriminalizing marijuana and uh you can just touch on that and how we can continue to fight on a local basis on state basis before it gets over to the national great on that issue in particular please yeah okay great yes okay so just in uh in uh deference to my my uh my flight at 130 uh this will be the last question but I hope this will be you know the opening of the dialogue and that our organizations will be very closely working together um because I really do believe that the struggle of of the Latino community the the Mexican-American community you know it really is kind of the epics battle that is being fought now by everyone that this battle has generalized the battle for human rights the battle for immigrants we are in the age of of refugees right now 60 million and rising from war poverty and climate change and those things are not getting better in fact they are getting worse so it's really important that we come together and we not only fight for immigrant rights and human rights uh and for an end of this refugee crisis and an end of the things that are causing the crisis we need that big coalition in order to fight this battle for really what kind of world we're going to have on the issue of drugs you know it's it's very clear and I can say this as a medical doctor that that marijuana is a substance which is dangerous because it's illegal it's not illegal because of some inherent dangerousness in fact marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol and tobacco which are completely legal so um you know the numbers of states now that are allowing either legal marijuana or um or recreational legal medical marijuana or recreational marijuana is growing by leaps and bounds my own home state in Massachusetts just passed uh legal recreational marijuana it's now legal to grow your own marijuana and I speak I'm not a user I've never been a user I'm just one of those boring t-totaler type people but um I think it's very important that marijuana not be used as an excuse to throw black and brown people in jail which is mainly what the war on drugs is about I think it's very important that our uh drug enforcement agency use science and the minute it uses science then marijuana and hemp come off the list of of restricted and scheduled drugs um and that uh you know that that the people who've been wrongly incarcerated for non-violent uh use of a substance that they in fact be restored to their full uh freedom and citizenship and that the um uh the criminal record be stricken from the record uh I think this has been a very unnecessary and tragic uh component of of our history and one that we need to put behind us as quickly as possible the experience of the states that have legalized you know have shown that that the fear mongering about this just doesn't take place uh there is not an epidemic of child use or or automobile crashes and things like that um this is actually a far less dangerous substance than um than alcohol and tobacco thank you so with that