For immediate release: July 30, 2018

Hawkins Says Nixon’s Support for Mayor Bloomberg’s Policies is Shocking

Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Governor, said he was shocked that Cynthia Nixon told the NY Times she would not be running for Governor if Michael Bloomberg was the incumbent.

“Michael Bloomberg promoted the corporatization of the NYC school system, promoted racial discrimination by the NYC police department through stop-and-frisk, and presided over the gentrification of the city making it unaffordable for working-class New Yorkers. He did nothing to fix the growing problems with public housing and the city subway system as they continued to deteriorate,” said Hawkins.

Mayor Bloomberg publicly defended the growing income inequality in the city, saying “That’s not a measure of something we should be ashamed of.” Bloomberg defended driving up housing prices to make them unaffordable for many, saying it was a good way to bring in new investment.

Hawkins said it was especially startling to hear of Nixon’s support for Bloomberg in light of his education policies. “Bloomberg’s education policies are indistinguishable from that of Cuomo,” Hawkins noted.

As mayor, Bloomberg pushed for and got mayoral control of the schools, which undermined accountability to the parents and community. He appointed Joel Klein chancellor, who closed one hundred public schools and opened scores of charters, co-locating many in public schools

During Bloomberg’s tenure, high-stakes testing results were used as justification for privatization into charters and for evaluating teachers in order to attack them. Bloomberg publicly attacked the teachers’ union as standing in the way of education reform and undercut teacher tenure. He promoted merit pay for teachers based on standardized tests and in 2011 proposed laying off as many as 15,000 NYC teachers to balance the city budget using merit instead of seniority in the layoffs.

Bloomberg also brutalized progressives and activists that are purported to be Nixon’s base, directing a raid that evicted the founding Occupy encampment at Zuccotti Park and illegally arresting and detaining over a thousand non-violent protesters in a “Guantanamo on the Hudson” during the 2004 Republican National Convention. The latter cost the city $18 million dollars to settle lawsuits for civil rights violations.

Nixon also gave the maximum allowed contribution to support Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders’ progressive challenge in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.