Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein made a direct appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters - and the Vermont Senator himself - during a Monday rally near the Democratic National Convention (DNC).
“Forget the lesser evil, fight for the greater good,” Stein said, referring to her Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton while the crowd chanted “Jill, not Hill!”
“We are the revolution,” she added.
In response to the DNC’s apology to Bernie Sanders for the emails that caused chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down this week, Stein said: “They did much more than say bad things. They sabotaged a revolutionary campaign.”
She later told RT in an interview that her campaign’s fundraising efforts have skyrocketed since Sanders endorsed Clinton ahead of the DNC.
READ MORE: Donations to Green candidate Jill Stein skyrocket after Sanders endorses Clinton
The medical doctor also said she would step down as the Green Party’s candidate if Sanders wanted to run on that ticket.
However, Dr Cornel West – a Bernie backer and former member of the DNC’s platform committee who went on to endorse Stein over Clinton after he was disillusioned by the process – told RT that he was disappointed by Sanders’ decision to endorse the former secretary of state.
The Jill Stein rally of hundreds of people spilled out of a large tent set up in the so-called “Free Speech Zone” in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, located next to the convention venue. A ferocious thunderstorm forced Stein and several supporters to a safety area under a freeway overpass.
Stein used the opportunity to make a second speech, this time with a bullhorn, for those waiting out the storm.
A recent poll taken after last week’s Republican Convention shows Stein in fourth place behind Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson with three percent of the vote, according to a RealClearPolitics aggregator.
She requires 15 percent to be included in the upcoming debates. Stein and her 2012 running mate Cheri Honkala were detained when trying to debate Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in 2012.
“I think our arrest and holding in a blacksite was just one piece of evidence of the many ways we are not a democracy,” Stein told RT. “We basically silence political opposition and we keep people off the ballot, out of the debates, and out of the media. The kind of collusion that you saw revealed in the emails that were released reveal what’s going on here with the corporate press, the Hillary campaign, and the DNC. So if that was going on with Bernie Sanders, might there also be something going on [with] other political opponents? We are a very inconvenient truth, as another woman who is actually a progressive candidate.”
The Greens will hold their convention in Houston, Texas next weekend, where Stein is expected to officially receive the nomination. Although she has yet to pick a running mate, West said he would not accept an offer if extended by Stein, since that’s “not his calling.”
Speaking during a live Periscope after Bernie Sanders’ speech, one of his delegates from New Mexico said she is now backing Stein over Sanders, while another is still undecided and will consider backing the Green Party. Neither of them said they would back Trump.