CNN hosted a Green Party town hall last night, giving presidential nominee Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka an unprecedented opportunity to reach American voters who are unhappy with the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
"I will have trouble sleeping at night if Donald Trump is elected," Stein said. "I will also have trouble sleeping at night if Hillary Clinton is elected. And as despicable as Donald Trump's words are, I find Hillary Clinton's actions and track record is very troubling."
Stein has been polling at around 5 percent, however a new Economist/YouGov poll showed support for Stein has grown in recent weeks, with 23 percent of voters now saying they "might consider voting for" her.
Throughout the event, the Green Party ticket focused on appealing to millennials, specifically young Sanders supporters, thanking them for the hard work they put into his campaign.
“Bernie did everything right, and his supporters did everything right,” Stein said. “Bernie himself said it’s a movement; it’s not a man.”
Stein proceeded to target this demographic in two major ways: explaining her plan for student debt relief and providing an answer to what her running mate called a "system of oppression" in regard to race.
“We found a way to bailout Wall Street, the guys who crashed the economy. We need to bailout a younger generation that is held hostage in this un-payable student debt,” Stein said. “As a country, we can decide to spend money on ourselves, and in particular, we can decide to spend money on our younger generation who currently does not have a future.”
According to Stein, her student debt bailout would act as a stimulus package to put a whole generation to work. The difference between the Wall Street bailout and what Stein and Baraka are calling for is that the banks eventually paid back their loans. Under the Green Party’s plan, the Federal Reserve would buy student debt and then declare it “null and void.”
Near the end of the town hall, the ticket addressed racism in the United States, calling the Black Lives Matter movement a necessary response to the police shootings of African-Americans.
"A war is being waged against black people," Baraka, who is African-American, said. “In the larger economy, we have become the problem people that du Bois talked about. The way you deal with a problem people now: you police them, you incarcerate them, you kill them."
The duo suggested combatting police violence by instituting civilian review boards so that “communities are in charge of their police,” making sure that each police command has access to independent investigators whenever a death is caused by police officers, and creating a “truth and reconciliation commission” to understand and fight racism.