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Howie Hawkins 2020
July 11, 2020

Nomination Speech

I want to start by acknowledging and thanking all the Greens who have persisted, through some negativity, but particularly through the difficult circumstances of this Covid pandemic, to conduct our Green primaries and this convention.

You’re volunteers. You’ve worked so hard. You should be proud of yourselves.

I want to thank my campaign team. I’ve never been part of a campaign with so many people stepping up to volunteer and work so hard and so well.

And thank you to Angela Walker for stepping up to be my running mate. Angela will be a great messenger for the Green Party.

And thank you to the over 4,000 campaign contributors who this week qualified our campaign for federal primary matching funds. 

We’ll soon have another $200,000 that we’ll plow back into ballot access to get the Green Party on all 52 ballots – the 50 states, DC, and the advisory vote in Guam.

I’m honored and humbled by your votes for me in the primaries. I will do my best to live up to your hopes and expectations.

And now the Green Party moves forward, standing on the shoulders of Jill Stein, and her running mates, Cheri Honkala and Ajamu Baraka. 

They brought the Green Party to another level in 2012 and again 2016.

Jill used to say, “We have to vote like our lives depend on it, because they do.”

That is even more true today, as we face a host of life-or-death issues.

The Covid pandemic shows us that the two governing parties are presiding over a failed state.

With 4% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s Covid infections. We are on pace to have a quarter of a million Covid deaths by the election.

Trump has just given up. Covid won. Trump is a loser.

But where the hell is Joe Biden? He lives within commuter distance of the White House press corps. He can command their attention. He should be holding news conferences and pounding away at what we need now – a test, trace, and isolate program to suppress the virus, like most other organized countries around the world.

The silence of Biden, and the political leadership of both major parties, on demanding an emergency test, trace, and isolate program is complicity in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

The failure of the two-party corporate state is why the Green Party now has to step into this political vacuum and advance real solutions to the life-or-death issues we face.

Like the centuries-old pandemic of racism and police brutality we are now protesting in the streets.
Reforms to policing techniques are not enough. When the police police themselves, they get away with murder. We demand community control of the police. 

Defunding the police is not enough. We demand defunding the military, too. Only then will we have enough resources to invest in the jobs, housing, schools, health care, and public services that are needed in racially-oppressed communities that been segregated, discriminated against, and exploited for generations, right up to present day.

The climate meltdown is a life-or-death issue. Jill Stein put the Green New Deal, the signature issue of the Green Party in the 2010s, on to the national agenda.

But the Democrats have taken the slogan and watered down the content.

We are here to campaign for the full-strength Green New Deal, for zero-to-negative carbon emissions and 100% clean energy by 2030.

Our ecosocialist Green New Deal will create 38 million jobs. In the midst of this Covid economic depression, we now need the Green New Deal for economic recovery as well as climate recovery.
Inequality is killing us. After 50 years of stagnant wages and growing economic inequality, working class life expectancy is going down.

We will enact an Economic Bill of Rights to end poverty and economic despair, including a job guarantee, a guaranteed income above poverty, and Medicare for All.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved its Doomsday Clock the closest it’s ever been to midnight

We will take peace initiatives: a 75% cut in military spending, withdrawal from the endless wars, pledge no first use of nuclear weapons, and disarm to a minimum credible deterrent.

And on the basis of those tension-reducing peace initiatives, we will go to the other eight nuclear powers to negotiate mutual and complete nuclear disarmament. We will go there with the support of the 122 non-nuclear nations who agreed to the text of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons three years ago.

The International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons received the Nobel Peace Prize for that achievement, but hardly anybody in this country even knows that.

None of the major party candidates have talked about this issue. It should be a top campaign issue and we’ll make it one.

These are life-or-death issues. The two-party corporate state has failed. It’s time for the Green Party to provide the real solutions. 

Our lives depend on it. We’re running out of time. And real solution can’t wait.

So let us now unite, and support our Green candidates, up and down the ballot, with all we’ve got to give.

Thank you.
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Howie Hawkins 2020
July 9, 2020

Hawkins/Walker Campaign Achieves Federal Matching Funds

(Syracuse, NY – July 9, 2020) Today the Green Party’s Hawkins/Walker campaign achieved federal primary matching funds, which means that all donations to the campaign will be matched by the federal government.

Federal law requires that campaigns raised $5,000 in 20 states in increments of up to $250 per individual. Today, Virginia became the 20th state and put the campaign over the top. Donations will qualify for matching funds up to the last day of the Republican Convention, August 27.

Matching funds must be spent for primary activities, including ballot access petitioning. For the general election, there are public campaign grants for parties that received over 5% of the popular vote in the previous election, which the Green Party did not do in 2016. The campaign will have to raise funds separately for the fall general election. No other campaign in 2020 has qualified for matching funds. The Democrats and Republicans reject matching funds because they can raise more money from the millionaires and billionaires who they represent, and no other third-party has achieved matching funds.

The campaign has raised nearly $220,000, from more than 4,000 people in more than 7,000 donations.

Hawkins/Walker plans to use the matching funds to get on the ballot in 50 states and Washington, DC by hiring ballot access petitioners. This is especially difficult during the COVID crisis. Attached are pictures of Hawkins/Walker petitioners gathering signatures. Hawkins/Walker will use much of the matching funds to hire petitioners.

Howie Hawkins said, “One of our goals is to build the Green Party into a party that wins thousands of state and local elections in every election cycle. The Hawkins/Walker campaign is focused on not only putting forward a positive agenda that confronts the multiple crises that the two governing parties have failed to solve, but on building the political power to put those policies in place.”

The Green Party of the United States holds its nominating convention this weekend. Hawkins has won 58 percent of the delegates in the Green primaries and is the presumptive nominee. Hawkins/Walker will hold a press conference on Sunday at 11 am, the day after the nomination to discuss the plans for the General Election, the policies they advocate, and the goals of the campaign.

Contact us if you have more questions about attending the press conference which will be held on Zoom.

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Howie Hawkins 2020
May 5, 2020

Howie Hawkins Selects Angela Walker, Veteran Labor and Racial Justice Activist, as Running Mate for Vice President

(May 5, 2020, Syracuse, NY) – Howie Hawkins, the front runner for the Green Party presidential nomination, named Angela Walker to be his running mate Tuesday, choosing a veteran labor and racial justice activist who has twice previously run for office as an independent socialist.

Hawkins will introduce Walker to the public on Tuesday night via a live video broadcast on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch. Reporters will be able to ask questions on the YouTube comment stream.

Hawkins, 67, decided that Walker, 46, has the qualifications, experience, and rapport with him to make a strong team. The ticket offers two workers for the White House. Walker is a truck driver in Florence, South Carolina. Hawkins is a retired Teamster in Syracuse, New York.

“I’ve known Angela since 2014. She knows the issues. She speaks with a clarity and conviction that people understand and believe. She has the experience as a worker, a black woman, a union leader, and a movement organizer to connect with the working-class, minority, and young voters our campaign wants to mobilize. She was my first choice and I’m so glad she accepted,” Hawkins said.

“How could I not say yes to running? The Green Party is in a great position to amplify the people’s power, and we’ve got to encourage people to use their power. If not now, when? I believe the Green Party can deliver this message to millions of Americans, and I am honored to be running with Howie to bring about necessary change,” Walker said.

Walker has been an activist since she successfully organized students get black history classes into the curriculum at her Bay View High School in Milwaukee. As a public transit bus driver and Legislative Director of her Amalgamated Transit Workers (ATU) local in Milwaukee, she was a leader in her union’s participation in the Wisconsin Uprising against union busting in the first half of 2011 and in the Occupy movement in the fall of that year.

In 2014, Walker challenged incumbent David Clarke, a conservative Democrat and Fox News regular, for Milwaukee County Sheriff. Walker received 20% of the vote for running as an independent socialist and Black Lives Matter activist on a platform of fighting crime by fighting poverty. In 2016, she was the vice presidential candidate of the Socialist Party USA.

Hawkins is already the 2020 presidential nominee of the Socialist Party USA, which is expected to accept his choice of Walker for vice president.

Links

Howie Hawkins: Angela Walker for Vice President!

Angela Walker: Acceptance Statement

Videos and Articles About Angela Walker

Angela for Sheriff, October 4, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-agRFh54aU

Dan LaBotz, “Angela Walker, “Free Range Socialist,” Runs for Sheriff in Milwaukee,” June 18, 2014, New Politics, https://newpol.org/angela-walker-free-range-socialist-runs-sheriff-milwaukee/ 

Tracey Pollock, “A Socialist for Sheriff,” Urban Milwaukee, June 18, 2014, https://urbanmilwaukee.com/2014/06/18/a-socialist-for-sheriff/

Keith Mann, “Socialist Angela Walker Wins 20% in Milwaukee Sheriff Race,” November 7, 2014, https://solidarity-us.org/p4303/

“Milwaukee All-Star: Activist Angela Walker,” On Milwaukee, March 29, 2015, https://onmilwaukee.com/living/articles/allstarwalker.html

Jae Carico, “Interview With Socialist Party USA Vice Presidential Candidate Angela, The Fifth Column, June 18, 2016, https://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2016/06/interview-with-socialist-party-usa-vice-presidential-candidate-angela-walker/

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May 5, 2020

Angela Walker for Vice President: Why I’m Running

My name is Angela Walker, and I am pleased to have been asked by Howie Hawkins to be his running mate for the Green Party Presidential Campaign, 2020. At this very pivotal time in our history, all of the inequalities of the capitalist system of this country have been brutally exposed. We need sustainable solutions that are able to be implemented now, through the Coronavirus pandemic and beyond. Howie’s platform addresses the changes that need to be made, from paying a monthly income to all adults and children to calling a moratorium on utility shutoffs, evictions and foreclosures. Those are measures that would provide needed relief to so many at a time of financial instability and uncertainty. Going forward, Howie proposes a living wage for all workers, Medicare For All as a community-controlled national health service, and an Ecosocialist Green New Deal that would rebuild and strengthen the infrastructure of this country while supporting the welfare of workers and our planet.

In my own life, I’ve supported programs and infrastructure that are good for both people and the Earth. I’ve fought against the privatization of public schools, for the expansion of public transit access and funding, and against state violence against Black and Brown people. I oppose factory farming of animals for both ethical and environmental reasons. It is my deep feeling that the exploitation and mistreatment of human beings and animals is inseparable from the exploitation and misuse of the Earth. In order to properly address human and animal rights, we must end the systems that harm our shared planet.

I am a passionate believer in what people can do to create a just and thriving world, one that honors the needs of human beings and the Earth. We have always known and are seeing in unbearable detail that these things will not and cannot happen under a capitalist system. In this time of rising grief, anger and mistrust, we need a way forward that is completely doable and will benefit those who need help the most. People also need to be reminded of how powerful they really are, and that the failed capitalist system that is responsible for their suffering is not something they have to continue to endure. I firmly believe in Howie Hawkins’ platform, I believe in the power of people who have finally had enough of the status quo, I believe that the Green Party is positioned to bring this message to millions of Americans. I am honored to be running with Howie to bring about necessary change.

In Solidarity and Faith,
Angela

Howie Hawkins 2020
March 20, 2020

Howie Hawkins Green Presidential Campaign Publishes Book:
The Case for an Independent Left Party: From the Bottom Up

(SYRACUSE, NY, March 20, 2020) The Howie Hawkins Green presidential campaign has published an ebook: The Case for an Independent Left Party: From the Bottom Up.

With former Vice President Joe Biden now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, many supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders are looking for another progressive option.

This has resulted in a #NeverBiden movement developing and more people leaving the Democratic Party. Since 2010 a majority of voters in the United States have wanted a third party, according to Gallup. People understand the two parties represent millionaires and billionaires, as they are funded by big business interests. They want a party for the people.

This groundbreaking book by Howie Hawkins, a co-founder of the Green Party and longtime socialist, makes the case for an independent left party.

The United States is the only major industrial country without a major working-class party of the left. Insurgent progressive third parties were a major force in American politics and set the reform agenda from the 1830s until the 1930s. Hawkins argues the failure to consolidate a working-class party is not only due to often-cited electoral barriers, such as onerous ballot access laws and the absence of proportional representation of parties.

Rather, the failure to build a viable left party is also due to not building a party from the ground up that is organized as a well-funded, dues-paying membership party, with local branches where members have a voice and power in a grassroots-democratic party structure.

Hawkins says the party can be built from the bottom up by organizing the working-class majority to speak and act independently for itself in political education, social movements, and election campaigns.

The book comes at a time of unique opportunities for building a left party that puts the interests of the people first. Hawkins in 2010 was the first US candidate to run on the Green New Deal and is now running for president, calling for an ecosocialist Green New Deal. The current economic collapse and the failure to respond to COVID-19 are highlighting flaws in the US healthcare system and economy. Hawkins has been addressing these issues, putting forward the Hawkins Healthcare Plan that includes improved Medicare for All as a community-controlled national health service and advocates for economic democracy and increased worker rights.

The book is free with donations to the Hawkins campaign and available at: https://howiehawkins.us/donate-to-get-a-copy-of-the-case-for-an-independent-left-party/.

Author Bio:
Howie Hawkins is a co-founder of the Green Party in the US and a 2020 Green Party presidential candidate. He was the first US candidate to campaign for a Green New Deal in 2010. Howie became active in “The Movement” for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area. From the start, he’s been committed to independent working-class politics for a democratic, socialist, and ecological society. Outside of electoral politics, Howie has been a constant organizer in peace, justice, union, and environmental campaigns. His writing has appeared in “Against the Current,” “Black Agenda Report,” “CounterPunch,” “Green Politics,” “International Socialist Review,” “Labor Notes,” “Z Magazine,” and other publications. He is the editor of, and a contributor to, Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate (Haymarket Books, 2006).

Howie Hawkins 2020
Oct. 28, 2019

Howie Hawkins Wins Socialist Party USA Nomination, Green Candidate Seeks To Build Left Unity With Multiple Nominations

Howie Hawkins, who is seeking the nomination of the Green Party won the nomination of the Socialist Party of the United States this weekend. This is one step toward building a left unity campaign to effectively challenge the Democrats and Republicans.

On Saturday, October 26 in Newark, NJ Hawkins won the nomination of the Socialist Party of the United States. Hawkins was one of two candidates to seek the Socialist Party’s nomination. Hawkins won with 65 percent of the vote. Hawkins was also endorsed by Solidarity, a socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization.

“I’m honored to receive the nomination of the Socialist Party USA on the 100th anniversary of the last presidential run of socialist icon, Eugene Debs. The Socialist Party USA is the inheritor of the great tradition of Debsian socialism today, which includes working-class political independence from the capitalist duopoly parties and socialism as social ownership and democratic administration of the major means of production,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins said the Socialist Party USA nomination is part of his campaign strategy of uniting the independent left to present a strong challenge to the corporate duopoly.

“We want to unite the many against the few, the working-class majority against the superrich elite,” Hawkins said. “We need solidarity and cooperation in order to maximize our vote and make the public, the media, and the politicians hear and deal with our demands.”

Hawkins, who is a co-founder of the Green Party, will be seeking nominations from multiple parties that range from progressive to socialist. In addition to the Green Party and Socialist Party USA nominations, Hawkins will be seeking the nominations of state-level independent progressive parties with ballot lines, including the Peace and Freedom Party of California, the Progressive Party of Oregon, the Citizens and Labor parties of South Carolina, and the Liberty Union and Progressive parties in Vermont. Liberty Union was the first party with whom Senator Bernie Sanders ran for office. He ran for US Senate (1972,1974) and governor (1972, 1976) on the Liberty Union ballot line in Vermont.

Hawkins is a member of both the Green Party of New York State and the Socialist Party USA. He has run several election campaigns on the Green ballot line with the endorsement of the Socialist Party.

Cooperation among independent progressive parties is nothing new for the Green Party. It led to the merger of the DC Green Party and the DC Statehood Party into the DC Statehood Green Party in 1999. It led to the merger of the Green Party of Massachusetts and the Rainbow Party of Massachusetts into the Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts in 2002. It led to the affiliation of the Mountain Party of West Virginia with the Green Party of the United States in 2007.

In 2008, Cynthia McKinney running as a Green and Ralph Nader running as an independent both sought the nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party. Nader won the Peace and Freedom nomination as well as the nominations of other parties in different states. In 2016, Green candidate Jill Stein also sought the Peace and Freedom Party nomination, explaining that “I want to help foster solidarity and build a unified movement to oppose the two parties of the wealthy and their corporations.”

Greens and Socialists have worked together in other elections. On October 8 this year, Josh Bradley, also a dual member of the Socialist Party USA and the North Carolina Green Party and endorsed by both, won 10.4% of the vote in a three-way race for the Raleigh city council.

Explaining the Unity Campaign, Hawkins said, “The platforms and perspectives of these independent progressive parties may differ on some details, but we all stand for economic, racial, and environmental justice, social equality, anti-imperialism, emergency climate and ecology action, and an end to mass surveillance, mass incarceration, and the persecution of immigrants and refugees.”

The centerpiece of the Hawkins campaign is the Ecosocialist Green New Deal, which includes a Green Economy Reconstruction Program and an Economic Bill of Rights. This program includes eliminating greenhouse gas emissions and building a 100% clean energy system by 2030, which requires reconstructing all economic sectors for ecological sustainability, not just electric power production, but also agriculture, manufacturing, buildings, and transportation. It also includes dramatically shrinking the US military, which is the largest carbon polluter on the planet, and transitioning to a peace economy. Implementing the Green New Deal will require ecosocialism—social ownership in key sectors in order to democratically plan the rapid reconstruction of all economic sectors for ecological sustainability.

Hawkins said that the “democratic socialism” of Democrats like Bernie Sanders is really the old-fashioned liberalism of the New Deal, which depends on progressive taxation of the capitalist economy to fund progressive social programs. “Until we democratize wealth and the economy through social ownership and democratic planning, the concentrated economic power of the billionaire class will be expressed as concentrated political power that will undermine progressive social programs. We need economic democracy, not just progressive taxation,” Hawkins said.

Currently, the Green Party has ballot access in 21 states, including the District of Columbia. Hawkins is working with state and local parties as well as the Green Party of the United States’ Ballot Access to Committee to be on the ballot in all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Guam. See Hawkins 2020 Green Party Ballot Access.

If Hawkins wins the Green nomination he will appear on the ballot as a Green in all states where the party is on the ballot. In states that allow candidates to have more than one party nomination, he will appear on the ballot identified by all the ballot-qualified parties that nominated him. Oregon, South Carolina, and Vermont are fusion states where candidates may be on the ballot identified as the nominee of more than one party. Fusion is also permitted on the presidential ballot in California.

Last week the Hawkins campaign made public its third-quarter fundraising results and announced it is on track to qualify for the Federal Matching Funds program, where the government will double campaign donations of up to $250 per donor. The campaign intends to use these funds to build the party and build a ballot-access drive to place the Green Party on the ballot in every state.

“We intend to honor the legacy of Eugene Debs on this 100th anniversary of his last run for office by running a strong unified challenge on behalf of the people against the corporate duopoly of Democrats and Republicans,” said Hawkins. “We believe we will be the first socialist campaign since Debs’ 1920 campaign to win a million votes for socialism in 100 years.”

Howie Hawkins 2020
May 29, 2019

Howie Hawkins Announces Campaign for Green Party Nomination for President

Releases Budget for an Ecosocialist Green New Deal 
 
Howie Hawkins announced in Brooklyn today that he is seeking the Green Party nomination for president.

Hawkins was a co-founder of the Green Party in 1984 and the first US candidate to campaign for a Green New Deal when he ran for governor of New York in 2010. He has three times polled enough votes to give the Green Party ballot status in New York, finishing third each time. He has also ran for US Senate against Hillary Clinton in 2006 and for local office many times in Syracuse, New York, where he has polled between 35% and 48% in his last four races. A retired Teamster, he has been an activist for civil rights, peace, unions, and the environment since the 1960s.

The centerpiece of Hawkins’ campaign for president is an ecosocialist Green New Deal. He is calling upon the nation to declare a climate emergency and mobilize a crash program to convert the economy to 100% clean renewable energy with zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. He said that will require social ownership and democratic planning of key sectors, including energy and railroads.

“The climate crisis is an existential threat to humanity. Real solutions can’t wait. We need World War II scale mobilization to address this threat. It requires an immediate nationwide ban on fracking and new fossil fuel projects. Instead we must mobilize our capital and knowhow for rapidly building out a clean energy system. It will create millions of jobs and build economic prosperity as well as climate protection,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins’ announcement comes on the heels of a surge in votes for Green parties in the elections for European Parliament over the weekend. “The European Greens campaigned for a Green New Deal of climate action, social protections, and strengthened democracy. The Green New Deal is the program of hope that we can rally around to beat the ultra-right’s program of fear based on racism, xenophobia, religious bigotry, fact-free irrationalism, and authoritarianism. It’s how we beat the politics of Trumpism,” Hawkins said.

During his announcement, Hawkins released a blueprint and budget for an ecosocialist Green New Deal that he intends to advance as the standard against which the presidential campaign debate on the Green New Deal should be measured.

The budget covers a broad range of economic and environmental policies and programs, with their costs, the jobs created, and the sources of funding. The bottom line numbers show nearly 23 million new jobs created, including nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs, by investing about $2 trillion a year in reconstructing the energy and other productive systems for ecological sustainability over the next 20 years. A multi-layered web presentation of the budget that provides documentation and background information is on Hawkins’ campaign website at howiehawkins.us.

“It is great that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Sunrise Movement succeeded in putting the Green New Deal into the national spotlight. Unfortunately, they took the brand but watered down the content. Then the Democratic leadership shot it down anyway. Our full ecosocialist Green New Deal is what is needed to avert a climate catastrophe and to reverse the growing economic and racial inequality in the United States,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins noted that the failure of the Democrats’ Green New Deal to ban fracking and all new fossil fuel infrastructure means their program fails to address the climate crisis. “New fracking wells and pipelines, fracked-gas power plants, and fracked-oil transportation means the country will be locked into another 40 years of fossil fuel dependence and greenhouse gas emissions. That leads to a climate holocaust,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins’ Green New Deal: An Economic Bill of Rights and a Green Economy Reconstruction Program
 
Hawkins said his ecological Green New Deal encompasses both an Economic Bill of Rights and a Green Economy Reconstruction Program.

The Economic Bill of Rights covers a job guarantee, a guaranteed income above poverty, a $20 minimum wage, Medicare for All, homes for all through public housing and universal rent control, and tuition-free public education from pre-K through college.

The Green Economy Reconstruction Program will rebuild all sectors of production for ecological sustainability. Its headline goal is 100% greenhouse gas reductions and clean renewable energy by 2030 to avert dangerous climate change. It recognizes that 100% by 2030 is not possible without reconstructing all productive sectors for sustainability, from agriculture and manufacturing to transportation, waste management, urban infrastructure, and habitat restoration.

Hawkins’ Green New Deal intends to rebuild American manufacturing from its machine tool core out to the manufacturing of intermediate and consumer goods.

“We want to build clean zero-waste Green New Deal factories in every congressional district,” Hawkins said. “We are going to revive the economies of the Rust Belt, inner cities, and rural America by developing public enterprises and worker cooperatives to do this work. We will link the Green New Deal factories to the larger economy through publicly-owned and democratically-planned systems for renewable energy, universal broadband, and electrified rail transportation.”

Hawkins said an ecosocialist approach is mandatory in order to quickly develop and coordinate the manufacturing enterprises needed for ecological conversion of the economy.

“Exxon and the Koch Brothers are not going to reinvest their fossil fuel profits in renewables. Big Oil must be nationalized. Just as the federal government took over or built a quarter of US manufacturing capacity during World War II in order to turn industry on a dime to build the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ that defeated the Nazis, we need to take the same kind of positive government action in order to defeat climate change,” Hawkins said.

“We will do one important thing differently this time,” Hawkins added. “We will spread the wealth created through this program by turning the industries we build over to the workers as worker-owned cooperatives instead of giving them away to the superrich and their giant corporations as the US did after World War II.”

Hawkins said a primary goal of his campaign will be to build up the Green Party. He announced a 50-state organizing plan to ensure the Green Party is on the ballot in all 50 states and Washington, DC. He said ballot access is the prerequisite for building the party from the bottom up. Statewide ballot qualification is required for local Green candidates for municipal, county, state legislative, and US House seats to simply be on the ballot.

“The United States cannot credibly influence other countries to promote democracy and human rights until it sets a good example. Ballot access laws in the United States are the most restrictive by far of any electoral democracy in the world. American progressives need to take up the fight against party suppression as part of the fight against voter suppression,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins also called for other major pro-democracy reforms, including a ranked-choice popular vote for president and proportional representation in Congress.

The Hawkins campaign will hire organizers to support Green Party local chapters, down-ticket Green candidates, and expanding the party base, particularly among low voting sectors of the working class, youth, and people of color.

Hawkins also outlined a range of other policies he will campaign for, including the demilitarization of US foreign policy, seeking the abolition of nuclear weapons, reparations for African Americans, the legalization of marijuana and a decriminalization and harm reduction approach to other drugs, and amnesty for immigrants and open borders on the model of the European Union.

Hawkins explained that it is necessary for the Green Party to run a strong presidential candidacy in 2020 because “the Democrats and Republicans do not represent us. They are not providing real solutions to the problems we face. The capitalist parties do not represent the working class majority. The Democrats hesitate to impeach Trump despite his obvious record of crimes and corruption. They join with Trump in supporting a coup and possible military attack against Venezuela. Both parties support a continually expanding war budget for a global military empire. Both parties have done nothing for the last 45 years to stem the increasing economic and racial inequality.”

“We have real solutions—and real solutions can’t wait until after 2020. The climate crisis won’t wait. The crises so many working people face every month to pay for groceries, rent, utilities, medical bills, and tuition and student loans can’t wait either. If the Greens don’t run, our solutions will not be raised,” Hawkins said.

After making his announcement in Brooklyn, Hawkins headed off on a 10-day barnstorming tour that will take him to campaign events in Virginia North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Missouri, and Ohio.
April 3, 2019

HOWIE HAWKINS, “ORIGINAL GREEN NEW DEALER”, ANNOUNCES EXPLORATORY COMMITTEE FOR GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION

Howie Hawkins, a co-founder of the Green Party who was the first US candidate to run on the Green New Deal in 2010, announced today he has started an exploratory campaign for the nomination for president from the Green Party of the United States. See “Should I Run?”

Hawkins is responding to a “Draft Hawkins” movement among members of the Green Party. See Draft Howie Hawkins letter. The exploratory committee will examine whether Hawkins has enough support not only to win the nomination but to also run a strong campaign that builds the Green Party into a viable political party for the next decade.

If he decides to run, Hawkins would promote an ecosocialist Green New Deal as a centerpiece of his campaign. The Green Party became an ecosocialist party in 2016. An Ecosocialist Green New Deal would be an intensive Green Economy Reconstruction Program that will seek 100% clean energy by 2030 as climate science says is essential to avert catastrophic climate change.

Hawkins’ Green New Deal would convert not just the energy system, but also the agricultural, manufacturing, buildings, transportation, waste management, and military systems, as well as restoring the productivity of ecosystems at the foundation of the human economy.

“Averting climate disaster requires a major mobilization of resources and the transformation of the economy to put the protection of the planet and necessities of the people before profits,” said Hawkins. “The transition to an ecosocialist Green New Deal will also include an Economic Bill of Rights and an end to squandering resources on militarism and imperialism.”

Hawkins’ Economic Bill of Rights includes a job and income guarantee, national improved Medicare for all, free education from pre-K through college, and homes-for-all through public housing and rent control.

Hawkins’ plan is ecosocialist because it entails social ownership of key industries including Wall Street banks, major oil companies, and power utilities among them. Economic planning will be required to implement new green industrial policies for every economic sector from buildings to transportation, as well as management of waste and agriculture.

Hawkins said, “These programs can be paid for by cuts to the largest carbon polluter on the planet, the military, as well as more progressive taxation of income, wealth, and estates, and ecological taxes, including a carbon tax and a land value tax. Public banks can provide low-cost financing for long-term capital investments.” He pledged to provide detailed budgeting for the Ecosocialist Green New Deal if he decides to run.

“By empowering racially-oppressed communities with community ownership and control of public housing, schools, police, and businesses, the Green Economy Reconstruction Program will free communities of color from being subject to the decisions of racist employers, bankers, landlords, real estate agents, lawyers, judges, police, parole boards, and other gatekeepers,” Hawkins said.

“Sixty-five years after Brown v. Board of Education and 50 years after the Fair Housing Act, it is long past time to vigorously enforce the anti-discrimination laws already on the books. It is time to strengthen these laws in order to reverse the growing resegregation of housing and schools and the mass incarceration of people of color. The Green New Deal must include affirmative action programs to fully include communities of color in the new jobs, housing, public transportation, and business opportunities the Green New Deal will create.”

Hawkins blasted President Trump for failing to provide needed hurricane relief aid to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. “These islands need the Green New Deal right now. The federal government should be solarizing their power and rebuilding their economies. 400 years of so many racists like Trump in power is why we need to enact HR 40 for a Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans,” Hawkins said.

Hawkins is a retired Teamster who is 66 years old. He has been an economic justice, anti-racism, and environmental activist who has opposed US imperialism his entire life. He is a three-time Green Party candidate for governor of New York who won 5% of the vote 2014, the highest return for a progressive third party candidate in NY in 100 years. He was a co-founder of the Green Party in the United States in 1984. Hawkins lives in Syracuse, NY.

His website is HowieHawkins.us and more information including photos, detailed bios, writings and more can be found at howie2020.us/press-kit. Note to media: the website will be viewable on Tuesday, April 2nd at 11:59pm ET.

DRAFT HOWIE HAWKINS TO RUN FOR THE GREEN PARTY 2020 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION

(Note: This letter was written by Greens and progressive allies who want to see Howie step forward and run for president in 2020.  Click here to read his response.)

We urge Howie Hawkins to seek the Green Party of the United States nomination for president. The 2020 election is going to be a challenging campaign that requires someone with the breadth of experience and understanding that Howie has shown throughout a lifetime of political activism.

Howie is well positioned to be the candidate who will help build the Green Party into a strong opposition party able to mobilize the mass movement necessary to confront the crises we will face over the next decade. He has a long history of political activism since his youth when he was repelled by the racism of both major parties in 1964. While California Republicans successfully backed a referendum to repeal the then recently enacted Rumford Fair Housing Act, the Democratic National Convention seated the all-white segregationist Mississippi delegation instead of the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party led by Fannie Lou Hamer. From then on, Howie has supported independent left parties—Peace and Freedom (1968), People’s (1972, 1976), Citizens (1980), and Green (1984–present)—and organized in movements for peace, justice, labor, the environment, and democratic socialism.

Howie was a co-founder of the Green Party in 1984 and has been active in the Greens ever since, including running for New York governor three times, campaigns that maintained the New York party’s ballot access for many years. In his campaigns for local office and governor of New York, Howie has proven to be a formidable candidate. He received the highest percentage support for a left third-party candidate for governor of New York in 100 years. When debating Governor Andrew Cuomo and other challengers, he has repeatedly demonstrated deep knowledge of the issues and the ability to communicate them clearly and persuasively.

Howie’s campaigns have cemented the Green Party of New York State’s ballot position, thereby giving the New York electorate not just a choice, not just a place to vote their values, but also a place to build power. Today, New York has a fracking ban because the significant Green vote meant Governor Cuomo could not take the votes of the anti-fracking movement for granted. Greens change things. Even better, Howie has been able to impact New York politics in this way through his commitment to true unity via legitimate, progressive constituency representation and working-class unification, demonstrated in his recruitment of very progressive running mates of color. Howie’s idea of “us” is “every one of us.”

To fight the climate emergency, growing inequality, and endless wars, we need a people’s party independent of the two capitalist parties, and Howie has the political vision and experience to advance such a party—a Green party grounded in an ecosocialist program of ecological sustainability, economic democracy, and global solidarity among working people. He has been active in socialist movements for decades, working with various organizations and parties that want to take control of the economy out of the hands of the tiny capitalist class and place it in the hands of everyday working people.

Howie’s ecosocialist program is especially evident in the Green Party’s Green New Deal—the real Green New Deal—and he is the ideal candidate to make the distinction in 2020 between a real ecosocialist Green New Deal and what the Democrats are offering. Howie was the first candidate to run on a fully developed Green New Deal platform, in 2010, combining the economic human right to jobs, income, housing, health care, and education with reconstructing the economy for climate safety and ecological sustainability.

The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the 1966 Freedom Budget, and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign all called for an Economic Bill of Rights that would take FDR’s 1944 Economic Bill of Rights and implement it in a way that ended racial discrimination in education, employment, and housing. The Green Party’s Green New Deal uplifts the aims of those efforts and will also nationalize energy industries and create public utilities to transition to green energy at the local level.

The reality is that to confront climate change and the socioeconomic crises of inequality and insecurity, we must fully transform our political and economic systems. While some Democrats are using the label “Green New Deal” for their inherently capitalist program, they will not advocate the transformational changes that are imperative to stop the continuity of US militarism, racial oppression, structural poverty, or ecological and economic degradation advanced by their party and the Republicans. Unlike the Greens, the Democrats and Republicans will not fight for the creation of worker-owned community cooperatives that give workers control of their workplace; nor will they fight to end our reliance on dangerously pollutive nuclear energy as part of a transition to a carbon-free and nuclear-free energy economy.

In particular, neither of the capitalist parties have a plan to relieve the misery of Puerto Ricans since hurricanes Irma and Maria, and over a year since Maria, the acute crisis manifests as a test tube of the worst of environmental disaster, austerity policy, and residual colonial neglect.

No politician from either of the two major parties is discussing how the US must transform our foreign policy and join the community of nations. A Howie Hawkins Green Party presidential campaign will put on the national political agenda how the US must evolve into a global partner that respects the inalienable right of sovereignty and self-determination of all peoples, foreign and domestic. Notably, a Hawkins campaign would demand an immediate no-first-strike nuclear weapons policy and vigorous negotiations for global nuclear weapons abolition.

We see the only solution is to build an independent, ecosocialist party that builds power around the issues facing the working class, and to spearhead this in a campaign that represents a convergence of the social movements today, from the effort to bring police under community control, to the push for more public and affordable housing, to the call to raise minimum wages to a true living wage, to arresting climate change now. These are all issues that have been the core of Howie Hawkins’s lifelong activism, and Americans deserve a candidate and a party that are solid on the real system change we need.

For all these reasons, we urge Howie Hawkins to seek the nomination of the Green Party for president of the United States. We urge him to build a strong team that reflects the values he has shown throughout his life: political independence, economic transformation, racial and social justice, and a dramatic shift in foreign policy away from militarism and imperialism. We also urge him to reach out to other independent left political organizations to build solidarity against the corporate duopoly at this critical time in history. We are confident in Howie’s ability to achieve these objectives and urge him to run.

In Solidarity,

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