Politico New York Energy: February 25, 2019

HAWKINS EYES PRESIDENTIAL RUN — POLITICO’s Marie J. French: Howie Hawkins, after his third gubernatorial run in New York and retiring from his job loading trucks, has bowed to what he called an "underground 'Draft Howie'" movement and is working to form an exploratory committee for a potential 2020 presidential campaign. "It took me a couple months to get my head around the idea of doing it," Hawkins said on Friday. "I've run so many times and it's not like I'm looking to run — it's people asking me to run." Hawkins is a Green Party stalwart, a self-described "eco-socialist" and helped develop an aggressive Green New Deal before Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ever ran for elected office. He said the focus for his campaign would be similar to what he's worked on in New York: building up local Green Party membership and training organizers, pushing eco-socialist policies into the debate and preparing a "political home" for progressives disillusioned with the Democratic Party. "Our assumption is Democrats are going to get power back on the national level but they're going to disappoint progressives," Hawkins told POLITICO. "Hopefully, we'll build a political home so when they're ready to come, we're ready for them and able to incorporate them and their energy. That's why it's so important for the Green Party to get better organized." Read more here.

Popular Resistance: February 24, 2019

Currently the Democrats two marquee issues in the 2020 elections came from the Greens — Medicare for all and the Green New Deal.  The Green New Deal began to be developed a decade by the Global Greens and the first candidate to run on a full-fledged Green New Deal was Howie Hawkins in New York. Jill Stein ran on the issue in both her presidential campaigns as have many Green Party candidates throughout the country. See New Republic Gives Green Party Credit for the Green New Deal.  It has now been introduced by Democrats, in a weakened form, and continues to be pushed by people’s movements and the Green Party.

This week, Hawkins has told the media he is setting up an exploratory committee to seek the Green Party presidential nomination.  See Hawkins Announces He Is Building An Exploratory Committee. He looks forward to differentiating the Green New Deal of the Green Party with the weaker version the Democrats are considering. With regard to single payer healthcare, improved Medicare for all, this was an issue put on the electoral agenda by Greens in the 2000 campaign of Ralph Nader and has been part of the Green Party platform since it became a national party in 2000.

Independent Political Report: February 23, 2019

Nation of Change: February 25, 2019

The New Republic, February 22, 2019

Hawkins, a 66-year-old Green Party member from New York, says he was the first American political candidate to run on the promise of a Green New Deal. During his run for governor in 2010, he proposed a plan to fight climate change “with the same urgency, speed, and commitment of resources that our country demonstrated in converting to war production for the mobilization for World War II.” To reduce New York’s carbon emissions to net zero over ten years, Hawkins’s plan would “devote resources to and create jobs in renewable energy, public transit and organic agriculture,” the New York Times reported. And those resources would come from progressive tax reform, including massive taxes on the rich.

Popular Resistance: February 18, 2019

Howie Hawkins, one of the founders of the Green Party and the first candidate to campaign on a Green New Deal, describes, in From The Bottom Up: The Case For An Independent Left Party, how Trumpism is weakening as its rhetoric of economic populism has turned into extreme reactionary Republicanism for the millionaires and billionaires. He explains that Democrats are not the answer either, as “they won’t replace austerity capitalism and militaristic imperialism to which the Democratic Party is committed.”

The result, writes Hawkins, is we must commit ourselves “to build an independent, membership-based working-class party.” Even the New Deal-type reforms of Bernie Sanders “do not end the oppression, alienation, and disempowerment of working people” and do not stop “capitalism’s competitive drive for mindless growth that is devouring the environment and roasting the planet.” 

Hawkins urges an ecosocialist party that creates economic democracy, i.e. social ownership of the means of production for democratic planning and allocation of economic surpluses as well as confronting the climate crisis. He explains socialism is a “movement of the working class acting for itself, independently, for its own freedom.”

Albany Times Union: February 14, 2018

Houston Chronicle: February 14, 2018

Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Green New Deal is not the eco-socialist approach the Green Party has had in mind in gubernatorial and presidential campaigns since 2010. The Greens' version is an economic justice program like the original New Deal. It aims to revitalize the public sector in order to secure universal economic rights to a living-wage job, an adequate income, decent housing, comprehensive health care, and a good education. It includes public job and income guarantees, expanded public housing, improved Medicare for all, and free public education from pre-K through college. It's a Green New Deal because it would also build a zero-carbon, 100 percent clean energy economy by 2030 to provide the economic stimulus and sustainable foundation for economic rights for all.

Cuomo's Green New Deal is limited to energy policy. Its headline goal of 100 percent clean electricity by 2040 covers only 20 percent of New York's carbon emissions. To eliminate the other 80 percent of emissions in the transportation, buildings, industrial, and agricultural sectors, Cuomo defers indefinitely to a study by the Climate Action Council he has had since he took office in 2011. Cuomo's 2040 goal cannot even happen because he supports new fracked-gas power plants that will emit greenhouse gases well beyond 2040.

Kheeler in the Morning, WIBX (950 am, Utica): February 14, 2019

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Howie Hawkins is a member of the Green Party from Syracuse. He is on this morning to try and make the case for The Green New Deal.

Hudson Mohawk Magazine, WOOC 105.3. FM (Sanctuary for Independent Media Sanctuary, Troy): February 12, 2019

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Urban CNY: February 12, 2019

Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Governor in 2018, submitted testimony to today to a legislative hearing on climate policy.

“Climate science indicates that industrial states like New York must build out a 100% decarbonized clean energy economy by 2030 if the world is to preserve a climate that remains safe for human civilization. The climate clock is ticking down. Strong climate legislation must pass this year,” Hawkins said.

Political New York Energy: February 12, 2108

By Marie J. French

In what appears to be a historic first, the state Senate will hold a series of hearings on human-caused climate change starting today. Among those scheduled to testify are NYSERDA president and CEO Alicia Barton, Environmental Advocates of New York’s Peter Iwanowicz, The Business Council’s Darren Suarez, other business representatives, environmental and community activists, clean energy developers, economists and scientists. The focus will be on the Climate and Community Protection Act, which has passed the Assembly three times. But some advocates will also likely push Democratic lawmakers who now hold commanding majorities in both chambers to go even further. The CCPA sets a goal of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 while another proposal with backing from Howie Hawkins, Food and Water Watch and others sets a 2030 target.

Looming over the hearing, and likely to be part of the discussion, is Cuomo’s lack of interest in the CCPA or other legislation setting hard goals for reducing emissions across the economy. The governor and his allies are worried about costs and the “how” of getting to such goals. Cuomo said on Monday he backs the ultimate goal of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)'s "Green New Deal" proposal to eliminate carbon emissions, but indicated concerns about how best to achieve such an ambitious target. Ocasio-Cortez's framework calls for a 10-year wholesale economic shift to achieve that target. "I would support a national framework that was feasible," Cuomo said. "Everybody wants to get to the same goal. The question is how you do it. ... The problem has always been the how, not the goal. I get the goal. Zero carbon emissions, yes. How?"

Howie Hawkins gets the credit he deserves for the "Green New Deal."