OPINION: I’m voting Green in the presidential race. Here’s why.

I wish Democratic candidate Kamala Harris well in the remaining days of this turbulent presidential campaign and hope with all my heart that she defeats Donald Trump and prevents him from returning to power and wrecking our democracy. But I’m voting for the Green Party presidential ticket this election, and I wish to explain why.

First and foremost, the Green Party more closely aligns with my own values and philosophies than either of our nation’s major political parties, and I’m greatly impressed by what I’ve learned about its presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Butch Ware.

Second, Alaska’s ranked choice voting system allows me to make the Greens my No. 1 choice and the Democrats No. 2. When the Green Party gets bumped out during the early rounds of vote tabulation (as it almost certainly will), the Democratic team of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will then get my “back-up” vote, so no harm done to that pair.

Third, ranked choice vote or not, in the deep-red, pro-Donald Trump state of Alaska, I can “vote my conscience” and not be concerned I’m harming the election chances of Harris and Walz.

And yet, truth be told, I have misgivings about the Democrats and would only reluctantly support them even if living in a swing state, and then only for the reason of defeating Donald Trump, who presents a grave danger to our democracy, our country.

My decision to vote Green during this presidential election cycle has to a large degree been informed by the independent, progressive “Democracy Now!” team. DN has become one of my go-to sources to better understand what’s happening in our nation and the world. It presents the news through a much different lens than mainstream corporate media and even PBS (another of my important news sources, along with the local daily newspaper).

Spearheaded by host and executive director Amy Goodman, a longtime, award-winning and highly regarded journalist, DN probes deeply into social and environmental justice issues, and the show’s guests often present minority or marginalized perspectives, yet viewpoints that are also knowledgeable and authoritative.

One of the ongoing humanitarian crises that DN has covered extensively in the year that I’ve been paying attention to is Israel’s criminal military assault on Gaza (and, more recently, Lebanon).

Through the testimonies of a long line of experts — from historians to medical professionals (many of them Americans or other “Westerners” who have spent time in Gaza during the past year), to humanitarian aid workers, former members of the Biden administration who resigned over its Israel-Gaza policy, on-the-ground journalists, authors, and more — Goodman and her team have presented overwhelming evidence that not only has Israel committed war-crime atrocities under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, but that the United States, led by President Joe Biden, has been a partner in these war crimes.

I will note here that I already opposed our nation’s unwavering support of Israel’s horrific assault on Gaza before being introduced to this in-depth reporting and analysis. But the program has deepened my understanding of what’s happening there, while increasing my heartbreak at the ongoing tragedies and my exasperation and disgust with the Biden administration and more generally our country’s politics.

Biden’s yearlong complicity and his hypocritical statements about Israel’s genocidal actions are to me unforgivable. And so far, Kamala Harris hasn’t shown any substantial breaks with Biden’s philosophies and actions. I fear that she too will continue our country’s unapologetic political and military support of Israel — a country, it can be argued, that under Netanyahu’s leadership has become a rogue state, even a terrorist state.

This leads me to a recent edition of DN, in which Goodman and co-host Juan Gonzalez interviewed the Green Party presidential and VP candidates, Stein and Ware.

Some background on the two: entering a presidential race for a third time with the Green Party, Stein is among other things a Harvard-educated doctor, a pioneering environmental health advocate, and an activist who has worked to heal many of our culture’s ills and “revitalize democracy.” Ware is an activist and professor at UC Santa Barbara, where he teaches African and Islamic courses, while “specializing in the history of empire, colonialism, genocide and revolution.”

Stein and Ware emphasize that they present alternative solutions to numerous crises that Americans — especially lower-income “working class” citizens — face and which both the Democrats and Republicans have failed to adequately address those solutions, ranging from “Medicare for All, to free public higher education, to rent control across the country, to 16 million units of so-called social housing (to better meet housing needs and address homelessness), cutting the military budget and, above all, ending the genocidal war in Gaza ... that the American people vehemently object to.”

The Green Party also has a much different take on immigration and border security than either Trump or Harris and rightly points out that many of our nation’s international policies have contributed greatly to our country’s immigration “crisis.” Those policies need to change if we’re to reach a more sane and humane solution and true immigration reform.

There’s also the existential crisis of climate change, and the need to take more concrete steps to address that crisis, including and especially the need to shift from fossil fuels to green energy technologies and do so far more quickly and completely than the Biden administration (and Congress) seems willing.

Though I am not a member of the Green Party, I believe it needs to be a larger part of our national political and cultural conversation. Its leaders and ideals offer hope and a more progressive, humane and eco-friendly alternative to the Democratic-Republican “duopoly.”

As Stein noted in the Democracy Now! interview, “The American people are calling for other options ... You know democracy is about competition. The American people are begging for other options. They are entitled to know who those options are.”

Now that I better understand the option they represent, Stein and Ware have my vote, no question or hesitation about it.

Anchorage nature writer and wildlife/wildlands advocate Bill Sherwonit is a widely published essayist and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Living with Wildness: An Alaskan Odyssey” and “Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaska’s Wildlife.”

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