Daily Gazette (Schenectady): January 16, 2018

The idea has been around for a while -- Howie Hawkins, a three-time gubernatorial candidate with the state Green Party's endorsement, has been calling for a Green New Deal since 2010. 

In a recent op-ed, Hawkins criticized Cuomo's Green New Deal for not going far enough, writing, "The reality is that electricity accounts for only about 20 percent of New York's carbon emissions. We must also zero out the other 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation, buildings, industrial, commercial and agricultural sectors." 

Mark Dunlea, a Rensselaer County resident who ran for state Comptroller on the Green Party line, told me that the state needs to move faster on climate change. 

One bill that stands a much stronger chance of reaching the governor's desk now that the Senate is controlled by Democrats is the Climate and Community Protection Act, which would require the state to generate half its electricity with renewables by 2030, and eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 

"That's not sufficient," Dunlea said. 

The real question, Dunlea said, is whether "new York can go 100 percent renewable by 2030. If we try for 2030, maybe we hit 2039." 

The Green Party’s 2018 candidate for governor, Howie Hawkins, issued the statement below in response to  Governor Cuomo’s State of the State and Budget address today.

Returning to his campaign’s slogan of “Demand More,” Hawkins said that while progressives should celebrate the social reforms Cuomo rolled out and are likely to pass the state legislature with both houses now with Democratic majorities, progressives should not be satisfied with Cuomo’s conservative economic policies with respect to public services, fiscal policies, energy policy, and economic development.

“Progressives must demand more,” he said.

Hawkins also took Cuomo to task for watering down the Green New Deal that the Green Party has long advocated. Instead of the comprehensive economic justice and climate action program the Greens advocate, Hawkins said Cuomo was using the slogan to market a narrow goal for renewable electric power that is not sufficient to address the climate emergency or the economic problems many New Yorkers face.

CounterPunch: January 15, 2019

... listen to this recent episode of Clearing the Fog podcast featuring an interview with Howie Hawkins. On Thursday, January 17 at 8 pm EST there will be a National Conference Call featuring Hawkins elaborating on the Green New Deal. You can register here.

Gotham Gazette: January 14, 2019

By Howie Hawkins

In outlining his agenda for the first 100 days of his third term, Governor Cuomo said in December he would launch a Green New Deal. I have been calling for a Green New Deal since 2010 in three Green Party gubernatorial campaigns against him.

Cuomo has already nominally adopted a number of my platform planks, including the fracking ban, marriage equality, a $15 minimum wage, tuition-free public college, paid family leave, and legalization of marijuana. Unfortunately, the implementation of some of these measures fall short of full realization and the same appears to be true for what will be Cuomo’s Green New Deal.

The Green Party’s Green New Deal would fulfill the full promise of the original New Deal as articulated by President Franklin Roosevelt in his last State of the Union address in 1944 when he called upon Congress to enact a second, economic bill of rights, including the rights to a job, an adequate income, decent housing, comprehensive health care, and a good education. What makes it a Green New Deal is that the rapid build out of a 100% clean energy system would provide the sustainable economic foundation for the realization of economic human rights for all.

Black Agenda Report: January 10, 2018

By Bruce Dixon

There’s a lot of talk lately about the Green New Deal. The phrase was first used in the US by Howie Hawkins , the Green party candidate for governor in New York state in 2010, 2014 and 2018.

Howie says he stole it from the European Greens who’d been intrigued by the old American New Deal of the 1930s under Franklin Roosevelt. European Greens wanted to regulate the banking sector, something we can't seem to do here. They wanted to raise wages, to shorten working weeks, to stimulate the econony with massive infrastructure upgrades and repair, and to pay for the whole thing with higher taxes on the rich, all of that straight out of the playbook of the 1930s, plus putting the economies of their countries on a path to zero emisions . Their vision included giving away, not selling but giving away the new green technologies enabling such a transition to the global south as reparations. Altogether it was a really ambitious and humane extension upon the old New Deal.

Howie Hawkins stole the slogan and the idea back from the European Greens. Some American Greens said that’s Democrat stuff, Howie, you don’t want that, to which he replied that it ws stuff rank and file Democrats still wanted but that Democratic politicians being who and what they are, had never been willing or able to deliver.

San Francisco Bay View: January 10, 2018

In 2008, a Green New Deal was adopted by the United Nations Environment Program and the German Green Party. The Green New Deal was a central part of the platform of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein in 2012 and 2016. Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for governor of New York in 2014 and 2018 did the same.

Gotham Gazette: January 4, 2018

In a previous interview with Gotham Gazette, three-time Green Party gubernatorial candidate Howie Hawkins -- who has been running on a Green New Deal for New York since the 2010 race -- suggested that it would take “a World War II-scale mobilization” to prevent catastrophic damage from climate change. “During World War II we nationalized 25 percent of manufacturing in this country to make sure we could turn on a dime to make the weapons we used to beat the Nazis. The private investor-owned utilities and energy companies, they haven't led the way to clean energy, so we may need more public ownership,” Hawkins suggested.

Clearing the Fog Radio Show: January 1, 2019

Popular Resistance: January 1, 2019

Audio

The Green New Deal, a plan to transform the economy to one based on clean, renewable energy sources and other measures to adapt to the climate crisis and protect human rights, gained widespread attention in 2018. We speak with Howie Hawkins from New York, who brought the concept of the Green New Deal to the United States, about what the plan involves, where it is now and what it will take to win it. Hawkins, a long time activist, unionist and political candidate, also puts this struggle in the context of political history and the role of third parties.

Popular Resistance: December 23, 2018

By Howie Hawkins

This article originally appeared in International Socialist Review, No. 115, Winter 2017-2018.

If the 13.2 million votes received by self-styled “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries accomplished nothing else positive, it put the questions of socialism and independent working-class politics up for public discussion. I have been critical of Sanders’s socialism because his policy platform was New Deal liberalism, not socialism. More importantly, by entering the Democratic Party, Sanders broke with the socialist principle of independent working-class political action.¹ He became the “sheepdog” herding progressives, who had the option of voting for the Green ticket of Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka in the general election, back into a party run by the billionaire class he professes to oppose.² Nevertheless, the broad liberal to radical American left is now discussing what socialism is and debating whether the Left should be inside or outside the Democratic Party—or both inside and outside. These are good discussions to have.

WOOC, Independent Media Sanctuary, Troy: December 20, 2018

Audio

Howie Hawkins first began promoting a Green New Deal when he ran for Governor in NYS in 2010. He discusses the origins of the GND, including efforts in Europe in 2006, and analyzes the present Green New Deal proposals by Cong. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gov. Cuomo. With Mark Dunlea of WOOC.