On Saturday afternoon, Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins will speak in Townsend Park in Albany. Hawkins is running a national race this year, but he’s no stranger to New York state politics — running for governor in the last three elections. Hawkins says the goal of this year’s campaign is to raise the progressive party’s profile and earn future ballot slots. But does Hawkins’ presence in the race hamper efforts to unseat President Trump? Hawkins discussed that and more with WAMC’s Ian Pickus.
Why are you running for president?
Well, the immediate reason is a lot of Greens across the country asked me to. And as I looked at it and decided to do it, it's to address life or death issues we're facing. The climate crisis, which is not being addressed, the fact that inequality is growing and working class life expectancies are in decline. So we need an Economic Bill of Rights, the job guarantee and income guarantee; Medicare For All so that people at least have a floor underneath them; and then we have this new nuclear arms race that has pushed the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to move their doomsday clock the closest it's ever been to midnight. This should be a top campaign issue and none of the presidential candidates have talked about it. We're calling for peace initiatives to reduce tensions and get nuclear disarmament negotiations going. So that's what got me in and now we’ve got the COVID pandemic, where the way I look at it, the two governing parties are presiding over a failed state. They have failed to test, contact trace, and quarantine the infected so we can suppress community spread of the virus and go back to work and school safely. New York's done a better job than most states, but it's, you know, the epidemic is raging like never before right now. And then, this centuries-old pandemic of racism, which people of color have understood, but now seeing it on TV with these police murders, a lot of white people have come out. So that's a whole other area of, you know, a life or death issue. So that's why I'm in it, to, you know, raise real solutions to these problems as well as secure ballot lines for the Green Party. If the Green Party is going to become a major party in this country it’s got to build it from the bottom up. We have over 100 elected officials around the country, we won 1,200 races over our history. But we should be electing thousands to local offices as we go into the 2020’s, and from there to state legislatures and congress. So getting ballot lines is a major objective of the presidential campaign. And here in New York, they just made it a lot more difficult. They tripled the number of votes we need to stay on the ballot. So that's a big concern here in New York for us.
There's a lot for us to dig into there and we'll get back to some of those issues in a second. You mentioned the national conversation about race that we're having in the country right now. You're an older white man, what makes you the right person to lead that discussion, especially on the left?
Well, the fight against racism, the fight for civil rights, is what got me into politics as a teenager. I have Asian cousins in Hawaii and now with the families they’ve married into, Pacific Islanders. Coming up in the 50’s when Japanese were coming back into my neighborhood from internment camps, you know, racism was palpable. So I was concerned about civil rights and saw both parties opposing or dragging their feet in 1964. So that's where I got into it. I've been involved in this my whole life, you know, from civil rights, then anti-apartheid movement in the 70’s and 80’s, and police reform. We've been working on that here in Syracuse for 30 years. So I, you know, I have a record of being active on it. I am very concerned about it and we need some white people speaking up too.
Tell me a little bit about your running mate Howie, Angela Walker.
Well, Angela Walker is somebody I've known since 2014, when she was an Independent Socialist candidate for the Sheriff of Milwaukee, running against David Walker, who many have probably seen on Fox News. He's a black guy who wears a cowboy hat. He loves Donald Trump, and was saying, as sheriff, don't call 911 - Get a gun. And so the labor movement, and the black community in Milwaukee, asked her to run and she got 20% of the vote. I met her that year because I was running for governor in New York and we were on a panel together on independent politics out in Chicago. And again, on the same subject the next year, so I got to know her then, and she has a background. She got her local transit workers union involved, amid the Wisconsin uprising, to defend public employees rights to collective bargaining. And because of that activity, and then she got a union involved in an occupy movement in Milwaukee. Because of that, that's why they, you know, drafted her to run against this crazy sheriff. So I've stayed in touch with her since then. And when I thought about who a vice president candidate should be, she’s someone with a long history of fighting on labor and racial justice issues. She's a clear speaker, she speaks with conviction. She's Great messenger and she was my first choice. And she said yes. So I'm really happy about it. She's right now a dump truck driver in Florence, South Carolina. I'm a former teamster. So we're running to workers for the White House and maybe that's what we need up in there to have a government that's more responsive to what most people need.
In a different interview, you said that you were hoping to get to 5% in this election, in terms of a national result. But you're going to be on the ballot. I mean, it's a one vote, you know, one person situation here. So I think it's a fair question - What qualifies you to be president?
I've been involved in these issues. I know the public policy background. Unlike Trump, I'm smart enough to know I don't know everything. So I know that I've got to appoint good people to the positions. And, you know, the role of the president is to provide a leadership in terms of values and policy direction and I think I can do that. I think I can do it better than a lot of these, you know, corporate frankly, corporate crooks like Trump, or just flunkies like most of them have been. They're dependent on their donors. You know, we don't take money from the corporate interest. We want to represent the regular people. So I think that makes me qualified. So people's government should be regular people providing the leadership.
If you were in the White House right now, you mentioned that you see this as a failed state in terms of the coronavirus response, what specifically would you be doing differently?
Well, I would use the Defense Production Act to get the testing scaled up, get the contact tracers out there; provide the leadership in terms of speaking out to tell people, because a lot of people aren't responding to the contact tracers, and say you’ve got to do this. It's, you know, it's in all our interest, it’s a matter of public health. And then, if people have been exposed to the virus, they should be quarantined until we know whether they got sick or they didn't. And that's the way most organized societies around the world have suppressed the virus much more effectively enough. We are 4% of the world's population, we’ve got a quarter of the world's COVID death. That's just because the federal government hasn't stepped up and they've said, you know, states - you take care of it. And the states end up bidding up the costs of personal protective equipment and medical equipment. Because there's no plan, there's no coordination. So that'd be the first thing. The Defense Production Act provides the authority to get this program implemented at the federal level, and then provide, you know, the verbal leadership that ought to be coming from the president.
I'm sorry to interrupt but does the Green's policy of cutting funding to the military square with your idea to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up the American response to the coronavirus pandemic? Can you do both at the same time?
Oh, sure. The military has so much capacity. I mean, we want to cut it by 75%. We will still have the world's largest military budget and we'll still have plenty of people that, you know, you could have the military do the logistics on this program; you could outsource it to a company like UPS I used to work for - they are about logistics. I mean, we have the capacity to do this and, you know, a huge military budget is not a prerequisite to doing it.
What about calls locally to defend police departments? Where are you on that question?
Well, I think we need to redirect resources and reimagine how we do public safety. You could totally defund police departments and it still won't be enough money to deal with the problems we ask police officers to deal with. That's really not what they should be doing. You know, like vagrancy charges for the homeless instead of finding them a home; or charging people who are addicted with drug crimes instead of getting them medical treatment, drug treatment; or dealing with a mental health crises with officers who come with a badge and a gun, but not the knowledge of how to handle that. That leads to a lot of tragedy. I believe we'll need the police to do what we think they're doing, which is to deal with violent crime, but that's only about 5% of what they do. And serious property crimes like burglaries and carjacking and so forth, that's maybe another 12 to 13%. So they need to do that better, because they only clear cases in about 25% of those crimes with an arrest. And the worst statistic is that 60% of victims of those crimes, don't even report them to the police because they don't trust them. A lot of people think well, if I talked to the police, they may charge me because I was at the scene of the crime, even if I was the victim or I was a witness. So we got to get the police to do what they should be doing better and then redirect resources. Now there's not enough money in the police department to house the homeless and treat the addicted, so we need to have a federal program to invest in jobs and businesses and homes and schools and health care in racially oppressed communities that have been impoverished by generations of segregation and discrimination and exploitation. So that's more than defunding the police. That's a new commitment to uplift in these communities. So that that's the way we look at that. The other thing is, there's a lot of talk about changing use of force policies, which is fine, but as long as the police can police themselves through internal affairs, they're going to cover up their crimes. I mean, they had a ban on chokeholds in New York City since 1993 and Eric Garner was still suffocated to death. So we need community control of the police, not just citizen review boards or civilian review boards that are appointed by the politicians and you know, make recommendations and maybe have some hearings. We need police commissions that are elected by the people or even selected by a lot like juries, and they should have the power to hire and fire the police chiefs, oversee the policies, and investigate and discipline officers independently of the department. And that is a structural change so the police work for us, and not just themselves. So those are some of our responses to that. The other thing is, we’ve got to end the war on drugs. I mean, marijuana should just be legalized, taxed and regulated. It is less harmful than alcohol and tobacco, which we do that with. And then the hard drugs, instead of giving people criminal charges, we should do like Portugal does, we give an appearance ticket to meet with the doctor, a social worker and a lawyer to look at your situation and see how they can help. Do you need drug treatment? Do you need a job? Do you need counseling? Are you using the drugs that deal with other issues? In Portugal, they instituted this in 2001, deaths from overdoses have virtually disappeared. They don't have the spread of HIV because of drug use. They hardly have any street related drug crimes and actually fewer people are using the hard drugs. So I think that the decriminalization approach to the other drugs is what we need, particularly in this opioid pandemic, which is taking so many lives. Because people who may get addicted, because they got, you know, a painkiller or an opioid from a doctor and then they get addicted and then next thing you know, they're on the street getting heroin, maybe laced with fentanyl, and they end up dying. So, instead of being afraid, you know, to go get help, because you got an illicit drug and it could be a criminal charge, it should be decriminalized so people can get the help.
Let me ask you about some political questions. Howie, how important is it to you to see Donald Trump defeated?
Oh, I think we’ve got to get rid of this guy, no doubt. And as far as New York goes, I mean, he's been consistently down to Biden, by 25% or more, from the early spring, you know, up to the latest poll. So, you know, the question here for progressives is how are you going to vote against Donald Trump? Are you going to settle for Biden, who if you're a progressive, you're for Medicare For All; you're for a real Green New Deal; you want to tax the rich to fund social services and environmental protection; you want a job guarantee so everybody willing and able to work can get a job. And Biden is opposed to all those things. So you vote for Biden, you get lost in the sauce, they don't know you want those things, you will get taken for granted as a progressive. You vote for the Green Party, that vote speaks loud and clear for those programs. So that would be my argument to people in New York. You know, Trump is toast in New York. The question is, how are you going to vote against him?
What about what about swing states? I mean, we know how close the election was in the old rust belt in 2016. We don't need to re-litigate that election, but a vote in Wisconsin or Michigan is worth a lot more this year than it is in New York in all likelihood.
And sure it is but you know, the Greens are not why Clinton lost Michigan. For example, there were 75,000 ballots in Detroit, mostly black people who vote Democratic, that were not counted, because the Republican Secretary of State put broken scanners in many of those precincts in Detroit. And so when the election was over, a lot of those votes were not counted. They couldn't go through the scanners. It wasn't the Democrats that sued to haven them counted, it was the Green Party. And when we got to court our argument was, well you didn't count all the ballots. The Republican Secretary of State was saying, well, there's a discrepancy between the number of ballots and the number that were scanned so there's something fishy going on here, we shouldn't count them. And we're saying that's exactly why we should count them. And the Clinton lawyers were present. And so the judge turned to them, even though they hadn't filed any paperwork to be part of the case and said, well, do you have anything to say? And they said, oh no, we're just observing. So they didn't fight to get them counted. That would have, you know the margin was 10,000 votes - that's 75,000 votes, most of which would have gone to Clinton, and then they turn around and blame us for Clinton losing Michigan, which is absurd. I mean, the other thing to say about that is 61% of Jill Stein voters, our candidate in 2016, according to the exit polls, would not have come out to vote if she wasn't on the ballot. And you look at the numbers in every one of those close states, the Stein voters, there wouldn't have been enough switching to Clinton if she was off the ballot, to put Clinton over the top.
But I guess the question is, I mean, why do you want to make it that close? If 4 out of 10 Stein voters would have voted for Clinton, she really could have used those votes.
Yeah, well, for us, every state is a battleground, because the Democrats are not taking up issues like you know, take Ohio and Pennsylvania, where they're fracking the hell out of those states and the Democrats won't touch that issue. In fact, Biden's platform, he doesn't say it in this many words, but it's for fracking, and to get to the natural gas, the gas fired power plants, and then he says he's gonna do carbon capture and sequestration, which is not going to happen unless the federal government subsidizes a demonstration project because it's not economical. So the Greens want to fight fracking. And as one friend of mine said, to ask us to stand down in those states is to basically make those states sacrifice zones. And we're not going to do that there's so many issues, from foreign policy and the bloated military budget and coos and endless wars, to affordable housing. We're always up against the Democratic machines in the cities fighting for affordable housing. So one objective is to get a ballot line in those states so our Greens can run in local races for city council and school boards and so forth, and begin, you know, fighting for these changes. So, you know, people will make up their own mind, you know, in terms of what a strategic vote might mean, in these battleground states when the time comes, and I'm not going to scold or shame anybody if you're in a state like that and they figure they’ve got to vote for Biden to get rid of Trump. Although I disagree, but you know, I understand. But it's not right to ask us to just stand down. Because we're bringing issues to life or death issues, real solutions that are not being talked about. I mean, the things we're talking about have majority support, Medicare For All, Joe Biden’s opposed to that. The Green New Deal, he doesn't even mention it. His climate policy is worse than, you know, then Clinton's was in 2016.
Isn't the Democratic Party moving closer to where you are, though, on issues? Especially those two issues?
I don't think so. They're going for, you know, the public option on the ACA or Obamacare, which leaves all the private insurance companies in place and all that overhead, which is about 30% of our health care dollar. Because, you know, doctors and their staff got to figure out well, is this procedure or treatment covered in this policy, they gotta look that up and they gotta bill the company, sometimes the company resists and that's where you get all this overhead. So they have not moved our way, you know, Biden was adamantly opposed to Medicare For All. Now, even Bernie Sanders has compromised. He said, Okay, I'll accept Medicare for all 55 and older, and we'll stick with the ACA with a public option. That doesn't, you know, realize the savings that Medicare For All would have to cover everybody for every medically necessary service.
Isn't it a legislative math problem, though? I mean, they barely had the votes, they had it down to one vote to get the ACA done, let alone something much more expansive. And probably if the Democrats are in control next year, it'll be something very similar to that equation.
Well, you know, our job as Greens is not to compromise on behalf of Democrats, but to say what the real solution is. And I've heard that argument here in New York. Oh, if the Democrats just get the senate then we'll get the New York health bill passed, the single payer plan for New York State. And they did get the Democrats as the majority in the Senate. And then the assembly wouldn’t pass it as they had for the previous 20 years. And we've had a similar scenario where the Democrats had both houses in the governorship in Hawaii, California, Vermont, and now New York. I'm not going to wait for the Democrats to do it. I think they're, you know, very committed to working with the private health insurance industry. That's what Obama and Biden did the first time around. Health insurance executives helped write that bill. And it was really a bill that came from the Republicans. It was Romney care. It's really the old Nixon plan. And so, you know, I don't think that's an accurate reading, where the Democrats are at, and even more so on climate action. I mean, they took the rhetoric, you know, that was a signature issue of the Green Party. I was the first candidate in this country to run on it in 2010, running for governor in New York, and then Jill Stein, or president’s candidate picked it up. Her theme in both campaigns, 2012 and 2016, was A Green New Deal for America. It sort of went viral. When the sunrise movement and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sat in Pelosi’s office, and we thought great, but then when the non-binding resolution got to the House and Senate, it was diluted, they took away the ban on fracking and new fossil fuel infrastructure. And they extended the deadline to zero-out carbon emissions, from 2030 to 2050, which is really too late in terms of the climate science. I mean, that International Panel on Climate Change report to keep us at 1.5 degrees Celsius rise or less, gave a carbon budget of 420 Giga tons carbon is all we can release and we're emitting 42 Giga tons of carbon per year. That was three years ago. We’ve got seven years left on a budget, and we’ve got no action. And the Democratic platform doesn't deal with that, let alone the Republicans. So you know, Trump calls climate change a hoax, but the Democrats are acting as if it's a hoax. We are not getting the Green New Deal any more than we're getting the Medicare For All from the Democrats. That's just I think the way it is. If you really look at it.
Is it fair to say that most Americans are closer to the middle? You know, the Democrats have won the popular vote a couple of times in the past 20 years in a presidential race without winning the White House, but they haven't, you know, they haven't bumped up the Green Party to over 5% yet. What accounts for that?
Well, I think it's this environment of negative partisanship. I mean, very few people vote for their party because they like it. They vote for their Democrats or the Republicans because they're afraid of the other side. So the faith in our institutions, I mean, you just go across the board, Congress, presidency, the media is at an all-time low. So it's a very negative environment. So people aren't optimistic that you know, you can make a positive vote for the Green Party and it will make a difference. I think that's the kind of political environment we're up against. On the other hand, you know, a Green vote is a positive vote. And then you look at the public opinion polling. Yeah, people call themselves a middle of the road, I'm a moderate, or I'm a conservative or I'm a liberal, but then you get down to the concrete issues. Do you think we should have public funded health care system for everybody? Or Medicare for all? That always gets a strong majority. Should everybody willing and able to work be able to get a job that's provided by the public sector if they can't get one in the private sector? Again, majority support. A Green New Deal. I mean, after that sit-in in Pelosi’s office. Three weeks later, over 80% of American people said, yeah, we want that, including 64% of Republicans. So I think you get beyond the labels and you get down to the concrete issues and the Greens are with the majority of people. I mean, I've worked with people who are members of the Conservative Party in New York, who are in it for cultural reasons, but when we had a campaign for public power in New York, you know, some of these people were working with us, and many of them support Medicare For All. So I think looking at the labels that people describe themselves, is not the best way to look at it look at it. Look at what they say on particular issues, and I think the Greens are better representing them than the two major parties.
In terms of your candidacy, though. I mean, does your position in the race, does it make it more or less likely that that Trump is reelected do you think?
I think we bring more people out to the polls. And, you know, the majority of our people wouldn't be voting if we weren't in the race. So I think we moved the political spectrum back. I think, you know, our criticisms of Trump are stronger than the Democrats. You know, I think they should have impeached Trump. I mean, they say now we’ve got to get rid of Trump, they could have got rid of him by impeachment, if they had done it in a way that mobilized public opinion. Trump is, you know, all the crimes he's committed, it's a mile long rap sheet. He's openly urging, you know, law enforcement to violate the law, particularly on immigration. And you look at all the things he's done gutting federal agencies, basically not faithfully executing laws. So there could have been an impeachment case mobilized that would have shown the people how he's hurting workers and consumers and the environment, and law and order and mobilize that. But Pelosi didn't want to do that. She held it back. And so, you know, Trump's still in there, because I think the Democrats failed to really fight him. You know, when I look at the Democrats, I see accommodation to the right. I see what Bill Clinton called triangulation. And that just emboldens the right, so the whole spectrum just keeps moving to the right. The Democrats, because there's not a strong independent left, you know, keep going for voters they see in the middle. And then Republicans move a little further to the right and the whole things going to the right.
