We, the undersigned New York State labor union members, support Howie Hawkins and Brian Jones in their Green Party campaign to be the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of New York.

Environmental, financial and political crises have left working people falling further and further behind, even as corporate America rakes in record profits. But measures taken in response by those elected to power have made things worse, not better.

Taxpayer bailouts for the Wall Street rich combined with reductions in public programs are not the answer. Wars and environmental catastrophe menace us even as job losses continue. We have suffered progressively unaffordable costs of living in the face of a real decline in our benefits and wages as the rate of unionization bumps along a record lows.

With the state and the nation plainly headed in the wrong direction, we need a strong labor movement more than ever. But where is the voice of working people in the elections?

We support Hawkins and Jones because labor has no voice when it is ever more difficult to tell the difference between the Democratic and the Republican Parties. A prime example: Andrew Cuomo's austerity policy for New York State.

Andrew Cuomo caps state spending while rejecting higher taxes on the rich. His anti-worker, anti- environment, anti-democratic record is unacceptable. It is scarcely different from his Republican opponent, Rob Astorino.

Working people must have a voice in the November elections, independent of the Republicans and Democrats.

Hawkins and Jones, a Teamster and a Teacher, can help us find our voice. Because they are rank and file unionists, union members who know what it means to be workers, they understand workers' concerns in a way that the professional politicians never can and never will.

It is time to support our own, workers who understand our problems and issues and who will fight with us.

Please join us in the Labor Committee for Hawkins and Jones.

Original Signatories* (add you name to the form below):

Jonathan Flanders, IAM LL 1145

Mary Finneran, Coxsackie-Athens Teachers' Assoc.

Herb Hennings, PEF/TALC President

Mike Keenan, PEF/TALC Treasurer

Pat Pafundi, PEF

Joe Lombardo, CSEA

Fran Hyde, Troy Teachers Union

Daniel Kelly, CSEA 690

Sean Collins, SEIU Local 200United

Trudy Quaif, retired PEF

Jeff Wyatt, SEIU Local 200United

Sue Dubois, (NYS PEF retiree)

Fred Pfeiffer, Solidarity Committee of the Capital District

Sam Caquias, NYSNA

Daniel Kelly, CSEA Local 690

*organizations listed do not imply endorsement