Howie Hawkins
Howard Gresham Hawkins (born December 8, 1952) is an American trade unionist and environmental activist from New York. A co-founder of the Green
Party of the United States, Hawkins is the party's presidential
nominee in the 2020
presidential election. His primary campaign issues include enacting
an eco-socialist version
of the Green New Deal, which he first proposed in 2010, and
building a viable, independent working-class political and social movement in
opposition to the Democratic and Republican parties and capitalism in general.[3]
Hawkins has played leading roles in anti-war,[4] anti-nuclear,[5] and pro-worker movements since the
1960s. Hawkins is a retired teamster and
construction worker; from 2001 until his retirement in 2017, Hawkins worked the
night shift unloading trucks for UPS.[6][7]
Hawkins has run for various offices on
twenty-four occasions, all unsuccessfully.[8] He was New York's Green Party candidate
for the U.S.
Senatein 2006. In 2010, Hawkins ran as the Green Party's candidate
for Governor
of New York, which restored ballot status for the party when it
received more than the necessary 50,000 votes. In 2014, Hawkins ran again for
the same office and received five percent of the vote. Hawkins ran for Mayor of
Syracuse in 2017 and received four percent (about 1,000) of
votes. He then ran a third time for Governor of New York
in 2018 but received less than two percent of the vote.
Early
life and career[
Hawkins[9][10] was born in San Francisco, California, in 1952, and raised in nearby San Mateo, California.[11] He grew up in a diverse neighborhood
in the city near the Bayshore Freeway, which had seen a large influx of
migrants from the southern United States,
both black and white: Hawkins has explained his southern-inflected accent as
being a result of this.[12] His father was an attorney who was a
football and wrestling student-athlete at the University of Chicago and
served in the counter-intelligence unit for the U.S. Army's Manhattan Project during World War II.[9][10] He became politically active at the
age of 12, when he saw how the multiracial Mississippi
Freedom Democratic Party was denied recognition at the 1964 Democratic Convention.[11] According to Hawkins he was drafted
in June 1972, at the age of 19, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, despite
his previous anti-war activism.
However, he states that he was never ordered back to active duty after
completing bootcamp.[5] In 1972, Hawkins campaigned for Bernie Sanders, then the Liberty Union Party candidate
for senateand governor.[13][14] In 1973, Hawkins joined Socialist Party USA,
a membership which has continued to the present day.[1] In 1976, Hawkins was one of the
co-founders of the Clamshell Alliance which
was an anti-nuclear power organization aimed at stopping its use in New England.[13]
Hawkins attended Dartmouth College, but never earned a degree.[12]
Green Party[edit]
In the 1980s Hawkins joined the green movement. In 1988, he and Murray Bookchin founded the Left Green Network
"as a radical alternative to U.S. Green liberals", based around the
principles of social ecology and libertarian municipalism.[15] In the early 1990s a press conference
was held in Washington, D.C., that featured Charles Betz, Joni Whitmore, Hilda
Mason, and Howie Hawkins to announce the formation of the Greens/Green Party USA.[16] Later in December 1999, Mike Feinsteinand Hawkins wrote the Plan for a Single
National Green Party which was the plan to organize the ASGP and GPUSA into
a single Green
Party.[17] A perennial candidate,
Hawkins ran in multiple New York Senate and House races.[18] In 2010 he
surpassed the 50,000 vote requirement to stay on the ballot in the
gubernatorial election and four
years later he received enough to move the Green Party line to
Row D as he had taken one-third more than the Working Families Party and
twice as much as the Independence
Party.[19] However, in 2018 he
lost 80,000 votes, but retained ballot access and was only lowered one row down
to Row E.[20]
In 2012 Hawkins
was approached over the possibility of running for the Green Party nomination,
but declined due to his employment commitments at UPS forcing
him to campaign for offices in New York at most and would interfere with a
national campaign.[21] Following Hawkins' retirement he was
approached again to run by a draft movement with a public letter addressed to
him that was signed by former Green vice presidential nominees Cheri Honkala and Ajamu Baraka, former Green mayoral candidate
and Ralph Nader's 2008 running mate Matt Gonzalez, and other prominent Green Party
members.[22]
Hawkins was accidentally listed on ballots
in Minnesota as the Green Party candidate for vice president, along with Jill Steinfor president in the 2016
general election. Although Ajamu Baraka was Stein's running mate on the
party's national ticket, Hawkins was inadvertently placed on the Minnesota
ballot due to the party using him as a stand-in before the vice-presidential
candidate was chosen.[23] With Hawkins listed, the Green Party
ticket for President of the United States in Minnesota received
nearly 37,000 votes statewide, an increase of 0.82% from the party's previous
result in 2012.
Political positions[edit]
In 1993, Hawkins favored anarcho-communism as well as libertarian municipalism,
as the "best way of integrating worker's control and community control in
a process of social change that ultimately yields in a marketless, moneyless,
stateless cooperative commonwealth".[24] Hawkins is also a member of the Industrial
Workers of the World.[25]
Hawkins disagrees with the
"party-within-the-party" approach to the Democratic
Party advocated by organizations such as the Democratic
Socialists of America or by individuals such as Bernie Sanders.[26] Instead, he believes that socialists
should create an independent left-wing party.[26]
Hawkins became the first politician to
include the Green New Deal in
their election platform when he ran for Governor of New York in 2010.[27] Hawkins supports the Green Party's
version of the Green New Deal that would serve as a transitional plan to a one
hundred percent clean, renewable energy by 2030 utilizing a carbon tax, jobs guarantee, free college, single-payer healthcare and
a focus on using public programs.[28][29]
New York politics[edit]
Hawkins was the Green Party of New York's
candidate for the United
States Senate in the state of New York. Hawkins received 55,469
votes in the November 2006 election (during which Hillary Clinton was
re-elected), for 1.2% of the total votes cast.[30]
In 2008, Hawkins ran for the United
States House of Representatives in New
York's 25th congressional district on the Green Populist line.
Hawkins won 9,483 votes, losing to Democrat Dan Maffei.[31]
Hawkins' Gubernatorial Performance
In May 2010, Hawkins was nominated to run
for Governor
of New York as the Green Party candidate. His campaign was also
supported by the Socialist Party of New York.[32]
Hawkins was critical of his Democratic
opponent, Andrew Cuomo,
and challenged him to participate in public forums with the other gubernatorial
candidates. In a New York Daily News interview,
Hawkins expressed his concerns with some of Cuomo's positions:
... he [Cuomo] wants to solve the state
budget crisis by cutting spending such as for state workers and schools. He
ignores that the root cause of the problem is not spending but the huge tax
cuts for the wealthy that began when he was helping his father as Governor.
Instead of spending caps, we need the wealthy and Wall Street to pay their fair
share.[33]
On November 2, 2010, Hawkins received
nearly 60,000 votes (1.3%), allowing the Green Party of New York to be listed
on the ballot for the next four years.[34][35]
In December 2010, Hawkins was named
co-chair of the newly recognized Green Party of New York.[36]
Hawkins announced his candidacy for 4th
District Common Councilor in Syracuse in September 2011, running as a Green
Party candidate.[37][38] His opponent was a Democrat, Khalid
Bey. Hawkins received endorsements from the Syracuse Post Standard, UNITE HERE
Local 150, and the Greater Syracuse Labor Council.[39][40] Hawkins planned to sponsor
resolutions for state tax code reforms to require more from the state's
wealthiest, and to share more revenues with cities. He also supported the
establishment of a municipal development bank to provide financing for local
cooperative businesses and a 0.4% "commuter tax" on the incomes of
suburbanites working in the city.[41] Hawkins lost the election to Bey.[42]
On May 20, 2013, Hawkins announced that he
would again run for 4th District Common Councilor in Syracuse. His opponent was
incumbent Democrat Khalid
Bey.[43] On October 16, 2013, Hawkins
published a fiscal position paper with mayoral candidate Kevin Bott focused on
a new scaled local income tax, and the role of the state in the fiscal crisis
in Syracuse. Bott and Hawkins point out that New York revenue sharing with its
biggest cities has decreased from the teens to just about one percent since the
1970s.[44][45] Hawkins lost the election to Democrat Bey
by a vote of 1,471 to 995.[46]
On April 9, 2014, Hawkins announced his
second candidacy for Governor
of New York at the LCA Pressroom in Albany, New York. His campaign positions included a
"Green New Deal"
platform, a "Clean Money" system for public financing of elections,
ending New York's role in the national Common Core standards, and a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour from the
then-current $8 an hour in New York.[47] Hawkins' running mate for Lt. Governor was New York City educator and
union activist Brian Jones.[48] Hawkins and the Green Party received
184,419 votes (4.8% of the vote), which moved the Green Party up
to the fourth line on state ballots for the next four years (surpassing the
Working Families and Independence parties).[49]
In 2015, Hawkins ran for Syracuse City Auditor against incumbent Marty Masterpole.
Hawkins noted that Masterpole had filed only two financial audits, and
criticized him for auditing city skating rinks and golf courses while the city
suffered from high poverty, failing infrastructure and struggling schools.[50] Former District 2 city councilor Pat
Hogan suggested to Hawkins that he should run for auditor, stating, "I'm
not turning Green ... I am more concerned about the city than the party. The
auditor is supposed to be a watchdog on
the city budgets and Marty isn't doing any watching. There's a dearth of
independence in city government."[51] Hawkins lost the election, winning 35
percent of the vote.[52]
In 2017, Hawkins ran for Mayor of Syracuse
as a Green Party candidate to replace outgoing mayor Stephanie Miner. One of
his central campaign points was to restore the Erie Canal through Downtown Syracuse to help
aide in the revitalization of the neighborhood, with the belief that 'Cities
that capitalize on their waterways tend to have more vibrant downtowns[53]'. Hawkins won 4.1% of the vote (excluding
write-ins) and lost to independent Ben Walsh (54,4%, excluding write-ins),[54] the first independent in the city's
history.
On April 12, 2018, Hawkins announced his
third run for Governor
of New York on the Green Party line. Hawkins and running mate
Jia Lee received 95,716 votes (1.7%).[55]
2020
presidential campaign[edit]
Main article: Howie
Hawkins 2020 presidential campaign
Background[edit]
In 2012 Hawkins
was approached over the possibility of running for the Green Party nomination,
but declined due to his employment commitments at UPS forcing
him to campaign for offices in New York at most and would interfere with a
national campaign.[56]
However, following Hawkins' retirement he
was approached again to run by a draft movement with a public letter addressed
to him that was signed by former Green vice presidential nominees Cheri Honkala and Ajamu Baraka, former Green mayoral candidate
and Nader's 2008 running mate Matt Gonzalez, and other prominent Green Party
members.[57]
Campaign[edit]
On April 3, 2019, Hawkins announced that he
was forming an exploratory committee to
prepare for a potential candidacy for the Green Party 2020 presidential
nomination and later Hawkins formally launched his campaign on
May 28, 2019, in Brooklyn, New York.[58][59][60]
On August 23, 2019, the Hawkins campaign
announced they had met the requisite federal
matching funds for California and New York.[61] The campaign must receive $5,000 from
residents, with no more than $250 counted for each contribution, in at least 20
states to qualify for the funds. Only his campaign and Steve Bullock's applied
for primary season matching funds.[62]
On October 26, 2019, Hawkins won the nomination
of the Socialist Party USA in his effort to unite smaller left-wing parties
together.[63] In November, Hawkins won the
nomination of Solidarity.[64][65]
On May 5th, 2020, Hawkins officially
selected Angela Walker as
his running mate.[66]
On July 11, 2020, Hawkins was officially
chosen as the Green Party's nominee for the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
His platform includes the Green New Deal (funded in part by cuts to
military spending), Medicare for All, a federal jobs guarantee, a $20
minimum wage and a guaranteed minimum income.[27]
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