UpFront

Does voting third party mean a Donald Trump victory?

We ask Jill Stein and debate the approach of the Black Lives Matter movement with Shaun King and Barbara Reynolds.

In this week’s UpFront, we ask US Green Party candidate Jill Stein if she thinks a vote for Green is a vote for Donald Trump.

In the Reality Check, Mehdi Hasan highlights the role a hawkish Hillary Clinton played after the 2009 Honduran coup.

And in the Arena, we debate the approach of the Black Lives Matter movement with activist and writer Shaun King and columnist and 1960s civil rights activist Barbara Reynolds.

Headliner – The US election: Do third parties matter?

With the US presidential election less than a month and half away, some are calling it a vote for the lesser of two evils. Many young progressive American voters within the Democratic Party are unhappy with their nominee, Hillary Clinton, and are instead turning to third parties.

But will a vote for a third party candidate help Republican nominee Donald Trump get elected?

In this week’s Headliner, Mehdi Hasan asks Green Party candidate Jill Stein about her party’s platform and if she thinks a vote for Green is a wasted vote.

Stein, who also ran as the Green Party presidential candidate in 2012, says a voter should “absolutely not” vote for Clinton to stop Trump in a swing state.

“Donald Trump is not different enough from Hillary Clinton”, Stein says.

The Green Party candidate adds that she would “rather go down fighting” than “commit suicide by voting for either political party”.

Reality Check: Hillary Clinton the hawk, and the Honduran coup

It’s well known where a Hawkish Hillary Clinton stood on regime change in Iraq and Libya, but what often gets forgotten is that she threw her support behind the 2009 Honduran coup that ousted democratically elected Manuel Zelaya.

In this week’s Reality Check, Mehdi Hasan highlights how Clinton backed regime change in the Latin American country.

Arena – Black Lives Matter: What has the movement achieved?

The killing of an unarmed black man by police in the US city of El Cajon on Tuesday led to series of protests throughout the city. The incident followed other recent police shootings of black men in the cities of Tulsa and Charlotte, which has brought hundreds to the streets in a call for police reform and to combat police violence against black Americans.

Often at the forefront of such demonstrations is the Black Lives Matter movement, which grew from Facebook post in 2013, to a trending hashtag, to a global movement, and has galvanised support across the world in its efforts to expose what it calls institutionalised racism within US police forces.

Now more than three years after the movement started, what has Black Lives Matter achieved? And does it use the right approach?

In this week’s Arena, we debate the tactics of the movement with BLM activist and writer Shaun King and columnist and 1960s activist Barbara Reynolds, who is critical of the protesters’ approach.

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