On May 15th the Green Party of New York met in Albany to nominate
candidates for statewide office. The Greens nominated Howie Hawkins for
Governor, Gloria Mattera for Lieutenant Governor, Colia Clark and
Cecile Lawrence for US Senate, and Julia Willebrand for Comptroller, as
well as a number of candidates for state legislature.
Howie Hawkins, the Green candidate for Governor of New York, has
been an organizer in movements for peace, justice, labor, the
environment, and independent politics since the late 1960s. Hawkins is
running on a Green platform with planks including: Progressive Taxes;
Reform Albany; Full Employment; Health Care for All; Clean Energy (ban
hydrofracking, support public power); Good Schools for All Communities;
Economic Democracy for Economic Renewal (establish a state bank);
Sustainable Green Economy; Organic Food and Agriculture; Affordable
Housing; Retirement Security; Workers Rights; Fair Elections
(proportional representation, instant runoff voting, public campaign
financing); End the "War on Drugs"; Reproductive Freedom; Gay Marriage;
Peace (recall the NY national guard); Criminal Justice Reform (abolish
the death penalty); Regional Planning; and Local Government and
Grassroots Democracy. Emerging details can be found at HowieHawkins.com/2010.
At his website, Hawkins elaborates on why he is running and his campaign goals:
The basic issue in this campaign is:
Will our state government be for the people, or continue to serve the
super-rich and the giant corporations?
We are running because we are on the side of the people.
We are running - we, not me - because I cannot win the goals of our
campaign alone. I will not have the tens of millions of dollars for
media advertising that the corporate-financed Democratic and Republican
candidates will have. But organized people can beat organized money...
We are running to offer a real alternative to the two-party system
of corporate rule. The Democrats have replaced the Republicans in the
State House and the Governor's Mansion, and in Congress and the White
House, but little has changed. The two-party system is a very
sophisticated scheme for presenting the illusion of real choice when
both major parties are funded by the same corporate, financial, and
real estate interests. Whether the A Team of Republicans or the B Team
of Democrats are in the majority, it is still corporate power dictating
policy.
The ongoing Wall Street bailout is the greatest transfer of wealth
in world history. If our schools were banks, they would have been
bailed out. Instead the creditor class of wealthy elites is making the
borrower class of working and middle class taxpayers pay for the whole
bailout for their bad investments through higher taxes, lower wages and
benefits, and cuts in public services. The catastrophic destruction of
our climate and oceans is accelerating, but the incumbent fossil fuel
and nuclear corporations still capture far more government subsidies
than clean, renewable energy. Whether it is job creation, health care,
housing, or the environment, the government sides with the corporate
vested interests against the broad public interest.
The progressives and independents who voted the Republicans out and
the Democrats in are now taken for granted by the Democrats in power,
because these voters have no where else to take their votes. We are
running to give these voters a place to go.
50,000 Votes Wins a Green Party Ballot Line
One key goal of our campaign is to build the Green Party as a
powerful, well-organized alternative to the corporate state's two-party
system. With 50,000+ votes for the Green gubernatorial ticket - a very
achievable goal - the Green Party wins a permanent ballot line and
reasonable ballot petitioning requirements for the next four years,
enabling us to contest elections at every level as we continue to build
our movement. We are building this campaign county by county to leave
in place a grassroots party organization that can carry on the movement
for our policy platform after the November 2 election.
Putting Our Solutions into Public Debate
A second goal of our campaign is to move the policy debate in New
York. We are going to present before the public - and make the mass
media and corporate candidates deal with - our platform of solutions to
the problems we face: progressive taxation and revenue sharing, fully
funded schools, full employment, single-payer health care, renewable
energy, a state bank to finance a sustainable green economic revival,
clean government, proportional representation, and more.
Building Independent Power
We won't be completely satisfied unless we win the office. But if
that turns out to be beyond our reach in this election, every vote we
win and every person we recruit to the movement builds our power. Our
power is based on our political independence from the corporate
interests and their political representatives in both corporate
parties. Our votes cannot be taken for granted. We will make the
politicians and the policy debate in the media and in our communities
deal with our solutions. We will lay the foundation for winning future
elections.
Gloria Mattera, a Brooklyn health care worker and activist who ran
for Brooklyn Borough President in 2005 to oppose the incumbent's abuse
of eminent domain to benefit private corporations, received the party's
nomination for lieutenant governor.
Colia Clark, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement who worked with
Medgar Evers and SNCC, was nominated as the Green candidate for the US
Senate seat currently held by Charles Schumer. Immigration reform will
be a key focus of the Clark candidacy.
"As US Senator from New York, I will
work tirelessly with my colleagues in the Senate and on Capitol Hill to
address the failing economy, failing schools, failing infrastructure,
crisis in energy, health care, food production and other areas of the
USA socio-political economy," said Ms. Clark.
"The right of immigrants to live, work and have their families visit
is a human right. NAFTA, CAFTA, Project Hope and other infringements on
the right of workers in other nations is unacceptable and as Senator
from NYS I will work on all fronts to cancel these hideous instruments
of corporate power," added Clark.
Clark said she was strongly opposed to Sen. Schumer's proposal to
require a new social security card that includes bio-metric information
like finger prints for every U.S. citizen. Clarke compared this to the
slave passes that Africans in USA enslavement carried up to 1865.
"The right to privacy, the right to move about the nation freely
without police intrusion is quickly becoming an endangered right. Any
remnant of slave pass laws/ Apartheid pass laws must be challenged and
defeated in the interest of freedom for NYS and the nation," Clark
added.
Cecile Lawrence, a resident of Apalachin in Tioga County who has
been active in the movement against hydrofracking and other health
issues, will run for the Senate seat to fill out the term of Hillary
Clinton.
Lawrence said that "We need to end the
U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan now and return the troops home
in early 2011. The U.S. must cease its drive for empire and domination
of the planet including the embeddedness of its military forces with
corporations whose drive for access to the resources of other countries
lead to the destruction of their environmental and socio-economic
health. Corporations must be stripped of the artificial personhood
granted them by an accident of the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting not in
human personhood but in god-like status, since they never get sick, and
can never die. Reform Wall Street, getting rid of the practices that
led to the idea of 'too big to fail."
Active in the fight against hydrofracking for natural gas in the
Southern Tier, Lawrence added that "the focus of my campaign will be on
health in all forms, the health of individuals, the health of the soil,
air and water, the health of all life forms, the health of society.
This goal cannot be met without the elimination of for-profit health
insurance companies, the complete renovation of our food system, which
has led to astronomical rates of obesity nationwide, and the
elimination of this country's attitude of control over other countries."
"We need to cancel all subsidies to CAFO's (concentrated animal
feeding operations) and rapidly phase out their existence nationwide.
Transfer those subsidies to the development of small scale organic,
permaculture, or biodynamic methods of farming at the state level. We
should transfer all current federal subsidies to coal, gas, oil and
nuclear to the development and installation of solar, small-scale wind
farms disconnected from each other, ground source heat pumps and yet to
be invented methods. We must ban all offshore drilling for gas and oil
in U.S. waters," stated Lawrence.
Julia Willebrand, a long time environmental leader from Manhattan,
was nominated to run for State Comptroller, a position she received
117,908 votes for 4 years ago.
Other candidates petitioning to be on the Green Party ballot include
Anthony Gronowicz (NY-7) and Hank Bardel (NY-13) for US House of
Representatives, John Reynolds for State Senate (NY-33), and 5
candidates for State Assembly: Walter Nestler (NY-76), Carl Lundgren
(NY-82), Trevor Archer (NY-83), Daniel Zuger (NY-85), and Mike Donelly
(NY-119).
Like all Green Party candidates, the New York Green Party's 2010
candidates pledge not to accept money from corporations and
corporate-sponsored PACs.
You can learn more about the Green Party of New York's 2010 campaigns and how you can get involved at the GPNY website, http://www.gpny.org/ .
