This week, US Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was requested to comply with a document search by the US Senate Intelligence Committee, the latest twist in a mushrooming Russiagate narrative seeking evidence that the Russian government interfered in last year's US election somehow.
Stein's major misdeed — besides, of course, daring to challenge Clinton — was to attend an RT-funded dinner in Russia in November 2015. Stein is accused of allowing Moscow to fund her travel there, a charge she denies.
"I paid my own way to Moscow. They [the Russian government] did not pay for my hotel or expenses and I have the receipts to prove it," Stein told Alternet.
Baraka, who is also the national organizer for Black Alliance for Peace, told By Any Means Necessary's hosts Eugene Puryear and Sean Blackmon that the Senate investigation actually sheds light on hypocrisy in the Democratic National Committee.
"You go to the various urban environments and you see the destitution that black working class people are facing and you see that the obvious reality is that those urban environments are run by corporate Democrats, many of whom are black Democrats. And the neoliberal order is unable to address the needs of these people and more and more people become critical of the system and come to the conclusion that this very system itself cannot work for the people," Baraka explained.
"The targeting of the Green Party — these are all preemptive moves by the DNC to divert the American people's attention from the real source of the problems and the contradictions within the DNC. Jill Stein's statement was pointing to the inherent issues within the so-called democratic process in this country where money rules and corruption has been legitimized."
Rather than attacking those who point out its shortcomings, the DNC should do some introspection "and provide explanations to why their systems are dysfunctional," Baraka said.
"The majority of the American people have no faith in either one of the American parties. They have no faith in Congress as a whole," he added.
Stein released a statement Tuesday saying that while her campaign "strongly supports legitimate inquiry into any illegal activity," it also "caution[s] against the politicization, sensationalism and collapse of journalistic standards that has plagued media coverage of the investigation."
"In the current climate of attacks on our civil liberties, with the emergence of censorship in social media and the press, criminalization of protest, militarization of police and massive expansion of the surveillance state, we must guard against the potential for these investigations to be used to intimidate and silence principled opposition to the political establishment," the statement reads.
In a interview with Alternet, Stein described the investigation into the Green Party as evidence of a "new McCarthyism, which is the flip side of a military madness that is stronger than ever in this country."
"This is the continuing focus of empire and austerity and the assault on democracy that goes with it. The silver lining is we will get a chance at the microphone. A lot of people will be screaming at us but some people will hear us."
Baraka suggests that it is time for progressive and radical political movements to harness the power of grassroots organizing to appeal to the many politically disaffected Americans.
