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.

Politico New York: December 17, 2018

There's also a Green New Deal in New York, with support from the Green Party and advocacy groups. Those include broader economic goals to boost employment and income equality along with targeting 100 percent renewables across the economy by 2030.

New York State Board of Elections: December 14, 2018

The New York State Board of Elections posted the certified election results on December 14, 2018 after counting all the absentee and other paper ballots and canvassing the voting machines. You can see the county and statewide results here.

Our final vote total was 103,946. In 2014, we received 184,419 votes.

The biggest drop offs were liberal college areas (St. Lawrence, Tompkins, Ulster counties), where Cuomo seems to have got the anti-Trump Democratic vote, and the capital district, where public employees had given us the most votes in 2010.

Our smallest drop-off upstate was in the Buffalo area, where local Greens organized several good events and we received the Buffalo Teachers Federation endorsement. Our drop-off was also much smaller in Orange County, home to our Attorney General candidate, Michael Sussman.

In the New York City area, we almost maintained our 2010 vote in Brooklyn and actually got slightly higher votes in the Bronx and Queens. The rest of the metro area declined roughly proportionately with our overall decline.

Common Dreams: December 13, 2018

Popular Resistance: December 14, 2018

WASHINGTON - The Green Party of the United States is urging Congress and state legislatures to adopt a Green New Deal (GND) to respond to the climate emergency while committing to a full employment, sustainable economy.

Howie Hawkins' Green Party campaign for Governor in New York in 2010 was the first time a comprehensive Green New Deal agenda was promoted in the United States. It was based on a call for a Green New Deal in Europe developed a few years previously by the European Greens and others. The GND was a central focus of Jill Stein's two Green Party presidential campaigns in 2012 and 2016.

Green Party members and supporters participated in the December 10 national day of action by the Sunrise movement and others to urge Congress to adopt the Green New Deal resolution supported by Congresswomen-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and others. While many candidates in 2018 used the phrase the Green New Deal to highlight that a transition to renewable energy would help create living wage jobs, AOC's proposal for a plan for 100% clean energy by 2030, single payer health care and other economic measures comes much closer to the GND developed by the Green Party. What is still left out is the necessity of degrowing the Military Industrial Complex and termination of its imperial agenda.

America's Work Force Radio: December 12, 2018

Audio

Howie Hawkins, Green Party candidate for New York governor, discussed the Green New Deal during his Dec. 12 appearance on America’s Work Force Radio.

Hawkins, who finished third in New York’s governor’s race, described his vision of the Green New Deal, which includes items such as revitalizing the public sector through the investment in cleaner energy, improved infrastructure and mass transit. He talked about using the distribution of wealth, which he labeled as shared prosperity through progressive tax reforms, to fund schools and public services. Hawkins promoted the New York OFF Fossil Fuels Act, which is an effort to force the use of renewable energy, in an attempt to make New York the national leader in renewable energy.