Howie Hawkins: A Green New Deal for New York

Shamako Noble of the People’s Tribune interviewed Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for Governor of New York at the recent Green Party national gathering.
Shamako Noble: Why did you decide to run for Governor?
Howie Hawkins: The Green Party asked me. I ran in 2010 and received 60,000 votes. That was enough to get a ballot line, and that was our first goal. The second goal was to move the debate, which we did in 2010. We got the ban fracking issue on the agenda, and also progressive tax reform, revitalizing the public sector, and a bottom up, wage-led development policy. The third goal was to build the Green Party at the grass roots, so we have more local organizations across the state, and the fourth goal was to get 5% of the vote. That would be the biggest vote for an independent left party in New York history. We are already at 6% in the polls right now and we think we can go much higher.
A quarter of the voters out there are looking for an independent candidate, and if we can win their votes, then we can replace the Republicans as the second party and the alternative to the Democrat, Gov. Cuomo. Gov. Cuomo’s corruption is a national and even international issue now, so that changes the ballgame.
SN: What are your feelings about the Green Party nationally moving forward at this time?
HH: I am very encouraged. I came here because our campaign is really national. It can really open the door for Greens to have a similar impact elsewhere. We are running on a Green New Deal for New York. We are talking about the economic human right to jobs with a living wage, to good education, affordable housing, affordable transit, and a public health care system. We call it a Green New Deal because we have got to get to 100% clean energy fast if we are going to avoid catastrophic climate change, and that is a full employment program.
SN: Please talk about the “Socialist-Green Alliance” that was one of the workshops where you spoke.
HH: We talked about Kshama Sawant’s victory in Seattle. The Greens supported her in Seattle, and she came to the Left Forum in New York and did a fundraiser for me, so we already have a Green-Socialist Alliance. The attempt of human to dominate human extends into nature as well and creates our environmental problems. What we need is a social system that harmonizes with nature on the basis of reharmonizing human with human. We need to be organizers, not just mobilizers. It is less important what our name or label or program is, but to stand with working people speaking and acting for themselves. As Eugene Debs used to say, if a Moses comes along and could lead you into the promised land, then somebody else could come along and lead you out. After the election we need to get people involved in organizing our local Green Party groups, so we can be active between elections as well as during elections.
My web site is howiehawkins.org