A Friend's Death and Jill Stein's Arrest

Dear Mr. President,

A close friend died today. She was an energetic, vibrant woman I had the good fortune to know the last eight years of her life. She believed in democracy, that right would always prevail over injustice and that Obama would eventually do the right thing. We argued over that and it caused a rift between us but our bond of friendship was too strong for a disagreement over politics and politicians to cause a permanent split and the rift healed over time although we were never as close as we had been. Her death from pancreatic cancer was so sudden and unexpected that I am still in shock. I never had an opportunity to ask if she still had faith in you, if she still intended to vote for you on November 7. I suspect you would have gotten her vote since she adamantly refused to recognize the decline of democracy in America, the rise of militarism and the police state we now live in and the ways in which you’ve contributed to that. She would not even consider that you are, in fact, a protector of the 1% and a war criminal, someone who commits crimes against humanity every Tuesday in the Situation Room of the White House. I wonder what she would have thought of last night’s debate between you and Mitt strutting the stage, blowing smoke and getting in each other’s face to show who had the biggest cojones. She probably would have breathed a sigh of relief that you were back in form, unaware of what was happening in the background. I didn’t watch last night’s debate. Instead, I watched the video of Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, Green Party candidates for president and vice-president, getting arrested when they tried to step onto the campus of Hofstra University, the venue for last night’s debate. They were both cited for disorderly conduct and whisked off to a police warehouse far from Hofstra, handcuffed to metal chairs and denied their right to make a phone call until 10:30 pm, well after the debate was over. Jill Stein is a bona fide presidential candidate. Her campaign receives federal matching funds. She is on the ballot in almost every state and yet she is denied her right to participate in the debates and ignored by the mainstream media which is owned by plutocrats in thrall to Republicrats. This is not democracy, Mr. President, but it is the way politics is played today, all smoke and mirrors, secrets and lies, spin and shadows and backroom deals. I mourn my friend who died today, but I miss democracy and the country I grew up in even more.