Green Party candidate Jill Stein picks Pro-Palestinian scholar Butch Ware as running mate

Jill Stein and Butch Ware. Photos: AFP; Butch Ware / Instagram

Green Party 2024 presidential candidate Dr Jill Stein selected Butch Ware, a historian of West Africa at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as her vice presidential running mate.

“I'm so grateful to have Butch with us, with his amazing powerful voice and to be in this together as a Muslim African-American and as a Jewish white woman, this is like a team made in heaven,” said Dr Stein at an online rally on Friday night.

Dr Stein, an activist for the Palestinian cause, was expected to pick an Arab American as her vice presidential running mate. Other prospective candidates included Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee national executive director Abed Ayoub and Noura Erakat, a Palestinian-American activist and human rights lawyer.

“We had wonderful candidates but because we had always centred genocide, we really wanted a leading voice who is very directly connected with the genocide,” said Dr Stein.

“I feel like I've learned so much just in my conversations with him [Mr Ware] and watching his material over the course of this last week because genocide is very much in focus … imperialism and colonialism are very much in focus.”

The Stein campaign described Mr Ware as "an activist, dedicated educator and honoured historian whose work specialises in empire, colonialism, genocide and revolution".

He taught at the University of Michigan for 10 years and earned his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.

“I am a scholar and I am a teacher. I've studied revolutionary movements and struggles. But know this that if I am called into a fight, the fight for the struggle of freedom in our time, I am not going to back down from that fight,” Mr Ware said after the announcement. He added that he would help to win over votes in the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.

In Michigan, the Arab-American vote carries significant weight and is credited with helping US President Joe Biden win the state during the 2020 presidential election.

Since the start of the war, Arab Americans in Michigan have protested the policies of President Joe Biden's administration on the Israel-Gaza war and vowed not to support his administration in this election.

Dr Stein is expected to win over Arab-American voters who traditionally voted for the Democratic party and are angered by Israel-Gaza war that has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.

Jinan Deena, a Palestinian American who lives in Washington, told The National she is voting for Dr Stein in November and doesn't think Vice President Kamala Harris is different from Mr Biden in terms of her stance on Israel's war on Gaza.

“She is literally part of the administration that supported this genocide,” she said.

A poll conducted by the ADC found that Dr Stein is more popular among Arab-American voters than Ms Harris.

According to the poll, Dr Stein had more than 45 per cent support from members of the community surveyed, compared to the 27.5 per cent Ms Harris attracted.

“As Gaza goes, we all go, and it is so absolutely critical that we mobilise and that we not be silenced,” said Dr Stein.