PRESS RELEASE from The Georgia Green Party
http://www.GeorgiaGreenParty.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

Dr. Jill Stein Visits Georgia
Green Party Presidential Candidate Campaigns in Atlanta

Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party's 2012 Presidential Candidate will begin her campaign swing through Georgia Friday morning with a press conference on the West steps (Washington Street side) of the Georgia State Capitol, Friday morning at 10 AM.  Her two day visit is filled with events  providing the voting public an opportunity to meet her and to weigh their options for this year's General Election.

"This week's defeat of the one-percenters' transit plan at our expense shows that Georgia's political life is neither people-proof or democracy-proof," said Bruce Dixon, Co-Chair of the Georgia Green Party, which is hosting this tour.  "We hope voters will continue to critically weigh their options and will come out to meet a candidate ready to address real issues and work in their interests.   Greens offer an option to those sick of puppets financed by the banksters who tanked our economy and and fund a billion-dollar ad-fest passing for a presidential campaign."

Dr. Stein expects to visit with families of some of Georgia's nearly 60,000 prisoners.  With one in thirteen (more than any other state) Georgia adults in prison, on bail, probation, work release or other forms of correctional or court supervision, the state has yet to shake its founding reputation as a penal colony.

Georgia Greens hope to introduce their candidate to members of Georgia's immigrant and undocumented communities who are struggling against HB-187, 287(g) agreements between local law enforcement and Federal immigration officials, the nation's largest immigrant detention center in Stewart County and an ongoing wave of family-shattering deportations.

A meeting is in the works with those who worked with and alongside the Georgia Green Party in opposing T-SPLOST, not out of generalized objection to so-called "big government" and taxation, but out of the conviction that transit and other economic development planning should be done in public with full and transparent citizen participation; and that it ought to be funded without reliance on regressive sales taxes.

Dr. Stein will visit local urban agriculture projects, confer with local health professionals, and drop in on homeless shelters and community groups struggling against the tide of foreclosures that state and federal authorities have done nothing to stem.  In fact, before boarding her on her Atlanta bound flight, the Stein campaign is working this morning to bond the Presidential candidate and her running mate out of a Philadelphia jail following their arrest yesterday at the Fannie-Mae officeswhere they participated in a peaceful sit-in intent on preventing the eviction of home-owners in that city.

A medical doctor by training, Dr. Stein has built a reputation advocating policies to prevent illness and promote wellness.  She will confer with opponents to the construction of Georgia Power's deadly new nuclear plants in Burke County Georgia.  An epidemic of cancer rages in a mostly black town which already hosts two reactors known to have contaminated well water and to have degraded the Savannah River. State and federal officials refuse to test the air, water, soil, fish, wildlife or people of the Shell Bluff community for radiation.

Dr. Stein will also visit House District 57 stretching from Atlanta's West End through to the Morningside community on the DeKalb border, where the Georgia Green Party's candidate Kwabena Nkromo is winding up a petition drive to get on the ballot for state representative in the November 2012 election.

"Nkromo, Stein and Georgia Greens face the nation's most anti-democratic and unfair ballot access laws explicitly crafted to restrict the choices of Georgia voters to limited options provided by the corporate parties," said Dixon.  Candidates of the corporate parties access the ballot by paying a filing fee, while those of
emerging political parties labor under onerous signature collection requirements, twenty thousand and more for congressional candidates, and nearly sixty thousand for candidates who would appear on statewide ballots.  The Georgia Green Party is a plaintiff in ongoing litigation aimed at lifting these barriers to voter choices.

Many of the events on Dr. Stein's calendar are open to the public, who are encouraged to watch the state party's website for developing details.

Members of the media wishing to interview Dr. Stein, one-on-one are urged to call the Party, using x3 to schedule an appropriate time.

-- 30 --