When I last saw Jill Stein, she stood amid a throng of Bernie Sanders supporters still reeling from that news that, just beyond the 9-foot gates blocking them off from Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center, Bernie had lost the democratic party primary.

In an era when political speeches are choreographed down to the last insipid detail, Stein forewent the lectern to stump amongst the crowd of more than a hundred, dispensing fiery straight talk like a modern-day revivalist preacher about how the political establishment was rotten to to the core.

Just as striking was the police presence nearby — lines of riot-ready officers stood eyeing the crowd, while helicopters looped low in the night sky.

Now was the time to jump ship, she argued to us, hoping to capitalize on the disenchantment of Bernie loyalists pissed off at the Dems for a lot of things but especially recent revelations proving what they’d long suspected: the DNC rigged the primary for Hilary Clinton.

That an even more massive crowd followed Stein as left the scene, complete with people dropping their Bernie signs for Jill signs (including me), made it seem like the third party breakthrough she’d promised was possible. Probable, even.

Alas, it wasn’t long before reality hit.

The days and weeks that followed were sobering, as the mainstream media went to work. They attacked everything from Jill’s view on vaccines (she questions how they’re scheduled but doesn’t argue against them outright, as critics claim) to her supposed status as a Ralph Nader-type spoiler (a myth that ignores the fact that George Bush II was elected by vote counting hanky-panky by his brother’s administration in Florida and the Supreme Court fiat that followed).

In a clear case of outright censure, PBS to cut out part of a Stein response involving TPP and Clinton’s transition team during an interview on NewsHour, essentially making her sound like she didn’t know what she was talking about to the prime-time audience.

With all this in mind, as well as a Jill Stein bumper sticker atop the two Bernie ones I had bought back in the good old days, I drove to Milwaukee after work Thursday to see Jill and get a sense of what the movement was looking like now that Hilary’s ascension seemed imminent.

Once inside the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, though, it turned out the marquee speaker would not be present — Stein was at home in Massachusetts recovering from a pneumonia-induced infection, which she had been battling on-and-off for the last two weeks, result of a flurry of campaigning events across the country.

Disappointed, I stayed nonetheless, as did a sizable crowd of about a hundred. A local world music ensemble sung and danced with maracas, drums, and bass, before an array of green party organizers took the stage to speak about the campaign and the important advocacy battles being waged, from DAPL resistance at Standing Rock to the bombing of Yemen by the US.-backed Saudi coalition. Stein’s surrogate and Green Party activist YahNe Ndgo headlined the event, as she did earlier in the day at a rally in Madison.

Five is the magic number. With five percent of the vote, the party would get matching funds from the government as well as ballot access in 2020.

So while the third party renaissance with the presidency to boot might not happen this year, the campaign is focusing on the long game, local green party organizer Molly Katzfey told me.

It’s looking tough, though: a recent poll pegs Jill’s support at 2 percent, while here in Wisconsin it’s roughly the  same, with an Oct 12 Marquette poll putting Stein at only 3 percent among voters in the Badger state.

Even at the event, not everyone was prepared to cast a ballot for the greens. Jared Scholz, a local patent attorney, likes what they’re doing but has already made his mind to vote Clinton. “It’s crappy,” he said of the current electoral situation, but the “reality is it’s a two-party system.”

Ahh. I despaired a bit and moved closer to the lectern, hoping to find more stalwart Stein supporters. I found a few, including Nick Reetz, a U-W political science major, who batted away any suggestion that a vote for Jill is a vote for Trump, or that the party should neglect presidential races and start locally.

“They’re intimidation tactics that are used to silence people’s voices,” he said shrugging.

Case in point against the local strategy: On Wednesday, the Green Party candidate for Maryland’s Senate, Dr. Margaret Flowers, was yanked off the stage by police when she tried to crash a debate between the Republican and Democratic candidates, though she’s on the ballot and polling at 5%.

Like Stein, Flowers (and all of us, really) is the victim of the Catch-22 set up by the two- party duopoly: You can’t debate if you’re not at 15% in the polls, and you can’t poll at 15% if you’re not in the debates.

And the debates we’ve gotten from Trump and Clinton? Embarrassing, said Caroline Thanig, a Stein supporter and groundskeeper at a local Department of National Resources park. Like they’re five year’s old attacking each other, opined Ryan Rufer, a U-W architecture student.

By going presidential, the party gets the national limelight it needs to make a dent in the system. And this year, tens of thousands of former Bernie supporters are going green. They have hope. The stakes are too high not to.