Watch this embedded playlist, featuring a series of clips of the Stein/Honkala arrest and their requests to peacefully enter the debate site:

Here's the latest from the campaign:

Now free, Stein, Honkala pledge to ramp up fight for open debates

Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala are now free from police custody after eight hours handcuffed to a metal chair in a remote police warehouse on Long Island. The Green Party presidential and vice-presidential candidates were arrested earlier today as they attempted to enter the grounds of today's presidential debate organized by the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD).

News of the incident spread quickly around the world via media coverage carried on ABC, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Democracy Now!, and many other channels, as well as via social media, trending on Twitter, for example, as far away as Egypt.

On her release, Dr. Stein said that, "It was painful but symbolic to be handcuffed for all those hours, because that what the Commission on Presidential Debates has essentially done to American democracy." Stein and Honkala were eventually released into the cold at 10:30pm. Police provided no advance notice of the release to campaign lawyers and staff, and did not allow the two candidates to make any phone calls.

Cheri Honkala called her incarceration, "extremely uncomfortable, but standard for what so many Americans face on a daily basis in our corrections system." Added Stein Campaign Manager Ben Manski, "These arrests and this treatment are outrageous and disprortionate; who do the police think they are protecting here?"

Read more...