Howie Hawkins For President 2020 Thread

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With the Democrats failing to push an even mildly "progressive" candidate and the Republicans falling in line behind their present racist incumbent - its time to look at the Third Party choice - Howie Hawkins running for President with the Green Party:

Good time to introduce Howie Hawkins and his running mate, Angela Walker.

Hawkins:
Howie Hawkins is the original Green New Dealer, the first US candidate to campaign for a Green New Deal in 2010.

He is also one of the original Greens in the United States, having participated in the first national meeting to organize a US Green Party in St. Paul, Minnesota in August 1984.

Howie became active in “The Movement” for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam in the 1960s as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area. Repelled by the racism and warmongering he saw in both major parties, he asked, “Where is my party?”

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From the start, he was committed to independent working-class politics for a democratic, socialist, and ecological society. He supported the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968, the People’s Party in 1972 and 1976, and the Citizens Party in 1980. Since that first national meeting in 1984, Howie has been a Green Party organizer.

As the Green Party’s candidate for governor of New York in 2010, 2014, and 2018, each time he received enough votes to qualify the Green Party for a ballot line for the next four years. In 2014, he received 5 percent of the vote, the most for an independent progressive party candidates for governor in New York history except for Socialist candidates who received 5.7% in 1918 and 5.6% in 1920.

As a Green Party candidate many times for local office in Syracuse, his vote grew from 3% for at-large councilor in 1993 to 48% for a district council seat in 2011. In 2015, he received 35% of the citywide vote for city auditor.

Outside of electoral politics, Howie has been a constant organizer in peace, justice, union, and environmental campaigns.

When his draft number was called in 1972, Howie enlisted in the Marine Corps while continuing to organize against the Vietnam War. He remains a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War as well as a member of the American Legion Dunbar Post 1642 in Syracuse.

After studying at Dartmouth College, Howie worked in construction in New England in the 1970s and 1980s. He helped organize a worker cooperative that specialized in energy efficiency and solar and wind installations.

When the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs, A. Philip Randolph, Helen Keller, and Norman Thomas re-established itself as an independent party in 1973, Howie joined and remains a member. He is also a member of Solidarity, which promotes “socialism from below” and international solidarity because the fight for freedom against all dictators and imperialisms is worldwide and indivisible.

Howie was a co-founder of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was also a leader in the anti-apartheid divestment movement to end US corporate investment in the racist system of oppression and labor exploitation in South Africa.

Howie moved to Syracuse in 1991 to develop cooperatives for CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives that promoted cooperative ownership, democratic control, and ecological sustainability in the local economy.

From 2001 to 2018, he worked as a Teamster unloading trucks at UPS. Now retired, he remains a supporter of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, US Labor Against the War, the Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare, the Labor Network for Sustainability, and the Labor Notes network. Howie’s articles on politics, economics, and environmental issues have appeared in Against the Current, Black Agenda Report, CounterPunch, Green Politics, International Socialist Review, Labor Notes, New Politics, Peace and Democracy News, Roll Call, Society and Nature, Z Magazine, and other publications. He is the editor of, and a contributor to, Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate (Haymarket Books, 2006).
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Angela Walker

Angela Walker is an independent socialist who describes herself as “a Fred Hampton, Assata Shakur socialist.” She was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a working-class Black family. She learned early that though money was necessary to live in this society, it was less important than integrity, cooperation, and dignity. This upbringing shaped the activist and organizer she later became.

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Angela attended Bay View High School in Milwaukee, graduating in 1992. She and a group of Black students petitioned for and received an African American history class at their predominantly White school. Angela became a member of the Army Reserve in August 1992, and began classes at the Milwaukee Area Technical College in 1993, after the birth of her daughter. In late 1993, Angela and her daughter, Epiphany, relocated to Jacksonville, Florida.

While living in Florida, Angela attended the University of North Florida. She began as an education major with the intention of becoming a special education teacher. She decided later to change her major to history, a subject she remains passionate about today. The need for extra income in college led Angela to take a job driving a school bus in 2001, and she left college to drive full time because she loved the work.

The first mass mobilization Angela attended was during the demand for the recount of ballots in the 2000 Florida election. She joined a contingent of people who traveled to Tallahassee, Florida to protest widespread discrepancies with the ballots in the election. That experience marked the first of many protests she would attend, and illustrated the power of people coming together to stand up for their rights. In subsequent years, Angela would participate in actions against the war in Iraq in New York and Washington, DC while a driver for Greyhound Lines.

In 2009, she returned to her home city and began work with the Milwaukee County Transit System. In 2011, newly elected Wisconsin governor Scott Walker launched an attack on unions from the state capitol, Madison. Thousands of union workers and their supporters occupied the Capitol building and grounds in protest. Angela, a member of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998, was among the protesters. As a result of her involvement in the protests, the then-president of her union local appointed her Legislative Director for the local.

As Legislative Director, Angela served for two years. During this time, she helped make the union part of the Occupy Wisconsin and Occupy the Hood movements, she marched with union officers in support of striking Palermo’s Pizza workers, and participated in actions with the Fight for 15, postal workers, educators, healthcare workers and striking machinists in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. She helped organize efforts to inform transit riders about proposed cuts to service and transit access, and assist in securing the necessary funding for the transit system. Angela fought for basic funding for the Milwaukee County Transit System by speaking at state legislative hearings, advocating for working families.

In 2014, Angela was approached by Rick Kissell, a lifelong socialist and friend, to run as an independent socialist against the cowboy-hatted incumbent, Sheriff David Clarke. The campaign served as a platform to discuss the root causes of crime in Milwaukee, which included the incarceration of people for nonviolent marijuana offenses, the reduction of access to adequate healthcare, un- and underemployment in the inner city, blighted neighborhoods created by foreclosures, and the pervasive systemic racism at the core of these issues. The campaign earned twenty percent of the vote in the election and got the attention of the Left across the country.

Angela went to work for Wisconsin Jobs Now in 2015, as Community Campaigns Coordinator for the organization. Her work focused primarily on resistance to the privatization of public schools in Milwaukee. During her time with the organization, she was approached by Emidio “Mimi” Soltysik of the Socialist Party USA about running for Vice President of the United States. She agreed to be Mimi’s running mate for the 2016 election. Despite SPUSA’s limited ballot access on the continental United States, the Soltysik/Walker ticket did well in Guam, garnering four percent of the vote there. When Wisconsin Jobs Now folded in late 2016, Angela moved to South Carolina to regroup and reconsider her relationship to activism and politics.

Initially, on arrival in South Carolina, Angela worked as a substitute teacher at the secondary education level. During the summer break of 2017, she began work as a dump truck driver and continues that work presently. When Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins asked her about being his running mate for the 2020 presidential election, Angela stated “how could I say no?”.

Angela Walker is the mother of one, and the grandmother of five. She is a fierce advocate for the rights of Black, Brown and Indigenous people, the LGBTQIA community, Labor, and the Earth itself.
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Recent info:
Hawkins/Walker call for federal prosecution of Ahmaud Arbery killers
"Arbery was murdered two months ago. The shooters, who have ties to the local police and district attorney, have not been arrested. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is only now getting involved because a video of the murder has surfaced. Federal authorities should intervene now because it is obvious that no justice has or will come from Brunswick and Georgia law enforcement. They are riddled with racism and conflicts of interest," said Hawkins, a candidate for the Green Party presidential primary who is leading in that party's primaries.

Hawkins' choice for vice president, Angela Walker of Florence, South Carolina, said, "Ahmaud Arbery was a young, Black man who went out for a run and whose life was stolen by white vigilantes. We know who he is now because of this unconscionable act, and as we are considering the weight of his death, I hope that we will also consider his humanity. He was a son, much loved by his family. He was a beloved member of his community. And he was a life that mattered. A universe lost."

"We are living in a time where the violence that took Ahmaud's life is on display for exactly what it is: racist terrorism," Walker continued. "And we have to acknowledge that this is an ongoing and agonizing reality for Black, Brown and Indigenous people in this country. We must be honest about the violence against these communities that goes to the core of this country, and we have to be fearless in owning and ending it. It is past time. We in the Green Party mourn with the family of Ahmaud Arbery and vow to continue our fight for a world where all are safe."

Hawkins has long called for federal prosecution when the civil rights of people are violated by local law enforcement because local district attorneys and state attorneys general work too closely on a daily basis with local and state law enforcement to be impartial. Since the 1990s, his local Green Party in Syracuse, New York has called for a Jonny Gammage Law to require federal prosecution in such cases. The proposed law is named after Jonny Gammage, a Syracuse resident who was beaten and suffocated to death in a routine traffic stop by suburban Pittsburgh police. Gammage was visiting his cousin, Ray Seals, who was a defensive tackle for the Pittsburg Steelers at the time. None of the police officers in the case were convicted of any crime. The Clinton administration's Department of Justice refused to pursue a civil rights action in the case.
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FAH1223 said:
I think the Greens ain’t gonna get as many votes as 2016.
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I don't think so either - the main DNC fear was that the dirtbag Left would somehow drive more to the Green Party side - there have been several NYT op-eds about that exactly.

Hawkins/Walker ticket is pretty good though - if nothing else I'd much prefer them over anything else :mjcry:
 
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