From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Howie Hawkins | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born | Howard Gresham Hawkins December 8, 1952 (age 67) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Political party | Green |
| Other political affiliations | Socialist (affiliated)[1] |
| Education | Dartmouth College |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | United States |
| Branch/service | United States Marine Corps |
| This article is part of a series about Howie Hawkins |
|---|
| Political positionsCareerElectoral historyGreen New DealGubernational campaignsNew York 201020142018Presidential campaign2020 endorsementsprimariesPolitical party affiliationsGreen Party of the United StatesSocialist Party USA |
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Howard Gresham Hawkins (born December 8, 1952) is an American trade unionist and activist from New York. A co-founder of the Green Party of the United States, Hawkins is seeking the party’s nomination for President in 2020. His primary campaign issues include enacting an eco-socialist Green New Deal, which he first proposed in 2010, and building a viable, independent working-class political and social movement in opposition to the Democratic and Republican parties and capitalism in general.[2]
Hawkins has played leading roles in anti-war,[3] anti-nuclear,[4] and pro-worker movements since the 1960s. Hawkins is a retired teamster and construction worker; from 2001 until his retirement in 2017, Hawkins worked the night shift unloading trucks for UPS.[5][6]
Hawkins has run for office on several occasions, all unsuccessfully. He was New York’s Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2006. In 2010, Hawkins ran as the Green Party’s candidate for Governor of New York, which restored ballot status for the party when it received more than the necessary 50,000 votes. In 2014, Hawkins ran again for the same office and received five percent of the vote. Hawkins ran a third time for Governor of New York in 2018, and ran for Mayor of Syracuse in 2017.
Early life and career
Howard Gresham Hawkins[7][8] was born in San Francisco, California, in 1952, and raised in nearby San Mateo.[9] His father was an attorney who was a football and wrestling student-athlete at the University of Chicago and served in the counter-intelligence unit for the U.S. Army‘s Manhattan Project during World War II.[7][8] He became politically active at the age of 12, when he saw how the multiracial Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was denied recognition at the 1964 Democratic Convention.[9] According to Hawkins he was drafted in June 1972, at the age of 19, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, despite his previous anti-war activism. However, he states he was never ordered into active duty.[4] In 1972, Hawkins campaigned for the Liberty Union Party candidate Bernie Sanders for the senate and governor.[10]
Green Party
In the 1980s Hawkins joined the green movement. In 1988, he and Murray Bookchin founded the Left Green Network “as a radical alternative to U.S. Green liberals”, based around the principles of social ecology and libertarian municipalism.[11] In the early 1990s a press conference was held in Washington, D.C., that featured Charles Betz, Joni Whitmore, Hilda Mason, and Howie Hawkins to announce the formation of the Greens/Green Party USA.[12] Later in December 1999, Mike Feinstein and Hawkins wrote the Plan for a Single National Green Party which was the plan to organize the ASGP and GPUSA into a single Green Party.[13] A perennial candidate, Hawkins ran in multiple New York Senate and House races.[14] In 2010 he surpassed the 50,000 vote requirement to stay on the ballot in the gubernatorial election and four years later he received enough to move the Green Party line to Row D as he had taken one-third more than the Working Families Party and twice as much as the Independence Party.[15] However, in 2018 he lost 80,000 votes, but retained ballot access and was only lowered one row down to Row E.[16]
In 2012 Hawkins was approached over the possibility of running for the Green Party nomination, but declined due to his employment commitments at UPS forcing him to campaign for offices in New York at most and would interfere with a national campaign.[17] Following Hawkins’ retirement he was approached again to run by a draft movement with a public letter addressed to him that was signed by former Green vice presidential nominees Cheri Honkala and Ajamu Baraka, former Green mayoral candidate and Ralph Nader‘s 2008 running mate Matt Gonzalez, and other prominent Green Party members.[18]
Hawkins was accidentally listed on ballots in Minnesota as the Green Party candidate for Vice President, along with Jill Stein for President in the 2016 general election. Although Ajamu Baraka was Stein’s running mate on the party’s national ticket, Hawkins was inadvertently placed on the Minnesota ballot due to the party using him as a stand-in before the vice-presidential candidate was chosen.[19] With Hawkins listed, the Green Party ticket for President of the United States in Minnesota received nearly 37,000 votes statewide, an increase of 0.82% from the party’s previous result in 2012.
