THE MANHATTAN GREEN SHEET – JANUARY, 2011
(Information/Commentary compiled by one member of The Manhattan Green Party (www.manhattangreens.org, email: ManhattanGreens@gmail.com -- also visit www.greenparty.org).)
ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR JANUARY
STOP SCHOOL CLOSINGS/CHARTER TAKEOVERS!
Jan. 27th 4:30-6:30pm, City Hall Plaza, Near the Brooklyn Bridge (Trains 4, 5, 6, 2, 3, R, A, C) Stand up to privatization! Rally with students, parents, teachers, community members. (email gloriabrand2@gmail.com) Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education plans to close 26 more schools this year. Bloomberg has played a shell game with our most vulnerable children, shuffling them around from closing school to closing school. This process has disproportionately affected students of color, only serving to further perpetuate a separate and unequal school system in New York City. In addition, the DOE plans to grant more public school space to charter schools through co-locations, undermining resources and pitting school communities against each other.
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April 9, 2011 National Antiwar Demonstrations in NYC and San Francisco, sponsored by the United National Antiwar Committee of NYC (contact mailto:acpollack2@gmail.com, mailto:UNACpeace@gmail.com or write UNAC at P.O. Box 123, Delmar, NY 12054 or call 518-227-6947. http://nepajac.org/April9NYCPeace.pdf. Bring U.S. Troops Home Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza! Trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad. End FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and inter-national solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders. Immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings, death squads.
NEWS ABOUT THE GREEN PARTY
Arizona Green Party in response to Tucson: "Nonviolence is one of the Ten Key Values of the Green Party. We promote non-violent methods to oppose practices and policies with which we disagree, and will guide our actions toward lasting personal, community and global peace. Peace is not just the absence of violence; it is a willingness to resolve conflict in a constructive manner with a spirit of good will and respect. ... bloodshed and brutality are not replacements for compassionate dialogue and diplomatic actions."
Green Party Alex White will be running for Mayor of Rochester, NY. White opposes control of the city school district, and supports a return to neighborhood precincts for the Rochester Police Department.
Updates of 2010 from Ronald Hardy of “Green Party Watch” (http://www.greenpartywatch.org):
Re Cathie Black's appointment as Chancellor of New York City schools, Tom Siracuse, retired public school teacher, told reporters that to support his application for Black's former job at the Hearst Corporation he was reading a book. Gloria Mattera called it "an outrage that Mayor Bloomberg has handpicked Cathie Black and the State Education Commissioner granted her a waiver so she could be hired.
May 7, 2010, Caroline Lucas becomes first Green Member of Parliament in United Kingdom -- Ms. Lucas won a hotly contested race in Brighton Pavilion to become the Greens' first-ever member of parliament.
May 31, 2010, Green Party and Cynthia McKinney Condemn Freedom Flotilla Massacre. "The Green Party, led by 2008 Presidential Candidate Cynthia McKinney, has been vocal and active critics of Israel's war on the people of Gaza. Dr. Justine McCabe, co-chair of the Green Party's Intl. Committee: "We demand immediate action from the US, including emergency orders from President Obama to cut off all aid to Israel."
August 21, 2010, The Green Party performed very well in the federal elections in Australia, with Adam Bandt winning a seat outright in Melbourne with over 35% of the first-choice vote, and the Greens winning about 12% of the vote in the lower house.
Nov. 3, 2010, election returns resulted in the Green Party gaining ballot access through at least 2012 in two of the most populous, New York and Texas (though lost ballot access in Illinois and Wisconsin). In NY through to 2014, thanks to Howie Hawkins for Gov. earning over 50,000 votes. In Texas to Ed Lindsay for State Comptroller winning over 5% of the vote through 2012. Tom Clements, Green Party Senate Candidate in S.C., netted the greatest number of votes, 118,000, 9.37% of the total.
About PA State Assembly candidate (http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/) Hugh Giordano: "Hide your unions, Democrats, because the Green Party is coming to take them away. Hugh Giordano, a 26-year old, Roxborough native and food workers' union organizer for Local 152, ran on the Green Party ticket for a seat in the 194th. He lost, but garnered 18% of the vote (23% in Philly)--an unprecedented number for a third-party candidate. Giordano's words in a letter to union workers: "We owe the Democrats and Republicans NOTHING, because they have done NOTHING for our members, for our contracts, and for the movement. How much longer are we going to support a bunch of failures?" Hard working Giordano had many people come out for him. More from his letter: "Many labor unions still believe the Democrats are 'labor's friend'. Really? How can this be when they failed to pass EFCA, they bail out the super rich, failed to pass Single-Payer health care, pass horrible trade laws (NAFTA), attack pensions, and most of all -- are in the pockets of the same people we fight every day, the corporations! ... we CANNOT run as a Democrat or Republican; those two parties are too corrupted and entrenched. We must strengthen and build a THIRD PARTY! ... The corporate Democrats ONLY win because we fuel them, but then they turn their backs on us. ... The Green Party is the party of labor. They have a platform that is 100% pro-labor (repeal Taft-Hartley, NAFTA, and prosecute CEO's who break the law). (http://www.gp.org) ...It's time we make history and do the right thing."
NY Green Party issues being addressed in NY for 2011 include: a ban on hydrofracking for natural gas; education; state budge/progressive revenue options; single payer health care; climate change; and peace/cut the military budget.
Sam Smith of Progressive Review in CounterPunch (http://counterpunch.org/) writes in praise of the success of Green Party Fred Horch in Maine and the past success of John Eder there. "The big parties gave up human relationships long ago. Which is why we have such a hard time relating to them. But you can't text your way to the presidency, you can't Facebook a revolution and you can't save the planet with twitter. At some point real people have to join with, talk to, and help other real people."
UK Young Green membership spiked by 10% in just one weekend when Parliament voted to trebel the cap on university fees in England to 9000 pounds per year. The young people are abandoning their support for the Liberal Democrats.
GREEN ACTION OF THE MONTH
December 12, 2010-EMPTY PLATES SPECIAL: Take Care of the Hungry Not the Wealthy! Protest by Manhattan Greens, Union Square, NYC
Julia Williams, 12th US Congressional District, Detroit, MI in 2010 organized a state and national EMPTY PLATES protest: THE BEGINNING: ONE SMALL OUTCRY!!!! DEC. 12, 2010
“I call for all of us who reject the economic terrorism of our legacy parties to RISE UP and hit the pavement! I want to see grandmothers and mothers, grandfathers and fathers, children, union members, students, Greens, Socialists, any group that rejects the idea that forced starvation can in any way “be good for our country”, become a visible, palpable, physical presence, and demonstrate on December 12th! “
Following is part of "Empty Plates" protest flyer! We stapled green copies of it to empty white paper plates and handed them out. In the center of each paper plate we hand wrote "Fight Economic Terrorism: White House 1-202-456-1111, Call Congress 1-866-220-0044."
WE NEED TO TAKE CARE OF OUR HUNGRY, NOT OUR WEALTHY! TELL BARACK OBAMA, “USE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER TO START A WPA!”
Patrick Martin, WSW: “In a society which took seriously the value of human life and the future of its children, the spectacle of 50 million people at risk of hunger, including 1 million children, would be a social emergency. Given that the United States once boasted of its ability to feed the planet, the indifference to the growth of hunger at home is a national scandal.” A new report from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture reveals 50 million Americans exist under the poverty line and were too poor to buy adequate food last year. That is approximately 17.4 million families. More than a third of these households, with over one million children, were forced to skip meals. “
From the Dept. of Agriculture or Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine:
• Nearly 1 in 4 American children live in households that struggle to put food on the table. That’s 16.7 million children.
• Nearly 1 in 4 children in America is at risk of hunger. Among African-Americans and Latinos, 1 in 3. (16.7 million children)
• About half of all American children will receive SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—Food Stamps) benefits at some point before age 20. Among African-American children, 90 percent will enroll in SNAP before age 20.
• 1 in 8 people is enrolled in SNAP. Nearly half are children.
• More than 90% of SNAP benefits are used up by the third week of the month.
• 1 in every 2 babies born in the United States is enrolled in WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children).
Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2009.
• More than 1 in 8 people in the United States lives below the poverty line, which is $21,756 for a family of four in 2009. 1 in 5 children in the United States lives below the poverty line.
• Most Americans (51.4 percent) will live in poverty at some point before age 65.
• A person working full-time at the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. The official poverty line for a family of three—one parent with two children—is $17,285.
From Bread for the World website: http://notes.bread.org/
• U.S. has gone from 1st to 9th place among nations in percentage of its population that graduates from college. U.S. 24th in the portion of children who have a high school degree. The main reason the U.S. economy was so dominant for much of the 20th century is because U.S. workers on the whole were so much better educated than other workers across the world.
GREEN QUESTIONNAIRE FOR THE MONTH
1) Briefly, how have you served Green Party in the past and/or how do you intend to serve it now?
2) What are the three most burning issues that you would like the Green Party to fight for?
3) Explain 3 ways Green Party can ramp up membership at local, state and/or national levels.
Please email answers to libbyliberalnyc@gmail.com.
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GREEN CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING FOR THE MONTH
Howie Hawkins (Green candidate for NY Gov. 2012:
Today in America the best paid one-fifth of the population receives about one half of all national income, while the bottom one-fifth receives less than 4 per cent. The distribution of wealth in America is even more unfair. Here, the top one-half per cent of all property owners control over 25% of all wealth; while the top 5% sit on nearly 70% of wealth and property. What chance does the average person have for exercising his or her democratic rights under these conditions!
Behind this unfair distribution of wealth and income stand a few giant corporations who own or control nearly all newspapers, television networks and radio stations, movie companies, book publishers, and other sources of information and means of communication. Both of America's major political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, are dependent on these corporations and the few super-rich individuals and families associated with them. In fact, nearly all major offices in the US government, whether elected or appointed, are filled by individuals from this corporate network. What chance does democracy have under such conditions? What chance do nature and the environment have?
Hawkins Recommends: 1) TAX THE RICH! 2) WPA-STYLE JOBS PROGRAM! 3) STATE SINGLE PAYER MEDICARE FOR ALL! 4) FULLY FUNDED PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES, END OF MAYORAL CONTROL, PREVENTION OF PROPERTY TAX CAP, CALL TO OPPOSE CHARTER SCHOOLS! 5) END DRONE STRIKES! 6) END SPYING, END CRIMINALIZATION OF POLITICAL DISSENT, END ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES! 7) FULLY END THE ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS, INVOKE LEGALIZATION AND TAXATION OF DRUGS AND END MASS IMPRISONMENT OF NON-VIOLENT OFFENDERS! 8 ) END TORTURE! 9) END THE SCAPEGOATING OF MUSLIMS! 10) RAISE MINIMUM WAGE TO $12 AN HOUR! 11) BAN ON HYDRAULIC FRACTURING! 12) FOCUS ON CLEAN ENERGY PROGRAMS! 13) BAN ON GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS! 14) STRONG TENANT RIGHTS AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING! 15) BRING THE TROOPS HOME! END THE WARS NOW! CUT THE MILITARY BUDGET 50-75%! END ECONOMICALLY FORCED MILITARY ENLISTMENT!
Hawkins: the nation needs a new "New Deal," a "Green New Deal." It would include the promise of full employment with government as employer of last resort; a single-payer health plan; and full funding for education. He also called for an end to tuition in the city and state universities, a state bank to invest government funds and pension dollars, and a more progressive tax structure. (Hawkins as candidate for Governor had only 3 paid staffers, spent $50,000 in total on his campaign. Compare that to what the corporate-financed campaigns cost Paladino and Cuomo. Hawkins explanation as to why his campaign was not corporate-financed? “We want to be supported by the people, not the special interests.”)
Gloria Mattera … the four pillars of the Green Party: Non-violence and the demilitarization of the United States; social and economic justice; ecological wisdom; and grassroots participatory democracy.
[Betty] Davis, a retired school teacher and principal and veteran of the Ocean Hill/Brownsville fight for community control in the 1960s, said, "Cuomo's proposal for inter-school competition for performance grants is just going to be way for the state to force down the throats of reluctant parents, teachers, and school districts the agenda of Bush's No Child Left Behind and now Obama's Race to the Top. It's all about high-stakes testing and public school closings, charter school openings and privatization, mayoral control and union busting. The first thing the state needs to do is fully fund the public schools, particularly in inner cities and rural communities with limited property tax bases, as mandated by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court decision.”
Monday, January 31, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Green's Hawkins: Cuomo Solution to $9 Billion NY State Deficit? Rich Get $5 Billion Tax Break, State Workers Get 10,000 Layoffs!
This email came today from Howie Hawkins and the Green Party of New York:
Hawkins Opposes Cuomo's Proposals for Tax Cuts to the Rich, Job Cuts, Says Single Payer Health Care is the Solution to Medicaid
Howie Hawkins, the former Green Party candidate for Governor, said today that Cuomo's proposals to resolve the state's alleged $9 billion state budget deficit by giving a $5 billion tax cut for the wealthy and laying off more than 10,000 state workers was doomed to failure and would be rejected by state lawmakers.
Hawkins challenged Cuomo's claim of transparency, saying Cuomo's penchant for micromanaging was freezing out the public and was at least partially to blame for Cuomo's inability to attract qualified Commissioners and senior staff. Most of his Cabinet remains unfilled a month into his administration.
"Cuomo may have lowered the drawbridge to Fort Pataki but the King and his Court have retreated behind closed doors in the inner sanctum. Only the rich and powerful are granted an audience. You don't even know who the budget director is. If advocates want to meet with even middle level staff, they need the approval of the boys in the back room," noted Hawkins. "Even the so-called ethics reform and public campaign financing are being negotiated behind closed doors, without much sunshine."
Hawkins cited Cuomo's so-called Medicaid Restructuring Commission as an example of where special interests were given a front row seat by the Cuomo administration while consumers and the general public were left out in the cold. Medicaid is by far the biggest part of the state budget.
"The biggest problem with Medicaid is the out of control costs of the overall health care system. Despite the fact that the excessive profits, waste and inefficiencies of health insurance are the major reasons why our health care system performs so poorly despite spending far more money than other country, national Democrats recently decided to increase the power and central role of private insurance. If New York wants to control our health care budget, they need to follow the example of Vermont, which is trying to eliminate private insurance and control costs by moving to a single payer system," said Hawkins.
The Primary Care Coalition in NY estimates that overall state spending on health care could be reduced by $10 billion (or 6% of the total bill) through enhanced access to modern, coordinated primary care. Much of the spending on expensive in-patient care and medical treatments could be reduced or eliminated if robust primary care were available in every community. Achieving this can best be accomplished by the kind of coordinated planning environment that a unified single payer system would make possible.
A state funded study of various universal health care systems recently concluded that a single payer system would lower New York's health care costs by $28 billion annually by 2018 compared to the insurance mandate system just enacted by Congress. A recent Vermont study came to the same conclusion in that state, leading the Governor to push for adoption of a single payer system.
Hawkins did say that he was encouraged by Cuomo's acknowledgement in the State of the State address that prisons should not be a job development program. Downsizing the state's prison system to reflect the decline in the prison population and increased support for work release programs would save the state more than $300 million according to the Correctional Association. Hawkins would save additional money by diverting more non-violent offenders out of prisons into community restitution and ending the War on Drugs by decriminalizing or legalizing drug possession and focusing on drug treatment for addicts. The Correctional Association estimates that just repealing (not reforming) the Rockefeller Drug Laws alone would save $155 million per year.
Hawkins faulted both Cuomo and President Obama for failing to acknowledge that the country is in the midst of a great recession with poverty and unemployment at crisis levels.
"We need jobs now, not more promises of corporate subsidies and trickle down economics. New York should take the $14 billion we rebate to Wall Street speculators from the stock sales tax and invest that in a WPA style jobs program to provide half a million jobs right now for New Yorkers. Instead of more tax cuts for the wealthy, we should recapture the tax windfall they just got from Obama and balance the state budget. We should raise the state minimum wage to $10 an hour to stimulate the economy by putting more money into the hands of working people who will spend in buying local services and goods," added Hawkins, a co-chair of the state Green Party.
Cuomo is seeking to give a $5 billion tax cut to the state's wealthiest residents by ending the personal income tax surcharge on high incomes that was enacted by state lawmakers two years ago. Hawkins and the Green Party would go in the opposite direction, raising the tax rate for the state's wealthiest residents. He noted that the top 1% now receives 35% of all income in the state, up from 10% in 1980, according to a Fiscal Policy Institute analysis of state tax returns.
The Greens would also enact a carbon tax on fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse emissions while raising funds to invest in clean energy technology, green jobs, and a carbon-free economy within a decade.
"It is time for Wall Street to start bailing out Main Street," said Peter LaVenia, the other state party co-chair.
The Greens would provide local property tax relief through an expanded property tax circuit breaker; a state takeover of local Medicaid costs in conjunction with a state single payer program; and increasing local revenue sharing to comply with existing state law of 8% of state revenues.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Mavi Marmara Massacre: Eyewitness Account, Feb. 1, 6:30pm, Brooklyn College
From an email from Manhattan Green JM:
The Palestinian Club of Brooklyn College presents:
Featured speakers: JAMAL ELSHAYYAL and MOUSTAFA BAYOUMI
(RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=185019744853542)
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On May 31, 2010 (Memorial Day), commandos from the Israeli Defense Forces intercepted the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, a humanitarian mission carrying aid and heading to break the siege on Gaza. The MV Mavi Marmara, the largest ship in the fleet carrying over 600 civilian passengers, was raided and seized by military force. The IDF fired at passengers, some at close range, and killed 9 people, one of which was a 19-year-old American citizen.
Join us for a discussion and an eyewitness account of what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara with professor Moustafa Bayoumi and guest speaker Jamal Elshayyal.
Jamal Elshayyal is a British news producer for Al Jazeera English. He studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and joined Al Jazeera in 2006. Among the stories he covered are the 2006 war in Lebanon, the Darfur peace talks, Egypt's role during the 2008 Gaza invasion, and the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca. He was on and broadcasting live from the Mavi Marmara before communications were cut.
Moustafa Bayoumi is an award-winning writer and an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College. He completed his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is co-editor of the Edward Said Reader and the author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America. He is the editor of Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict, a compilation of articles on the Mavi Marnara and the blockade of Gaza.
Doors open at 6:00 PM, event begins at 6:30 PM
IMPORTANT: Seats are limited and Brooklyn College requires a guest list for non-Brooklyn College guests! RSVP now and please show up with photo ID! Guests must RSVP at: (PalestinianClubBC@gmail.com)
Refreshments will be served.
Co-sponsored by: Al-Awda NY Palestine Right to Return Coalition, American Muslims for Palestine - NY, Brooklyn For Peace, Existence is Resistance, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, MAS Youth - NY, Siege Busters, Students for Justice in Palestine - Hunter College, Students for Justice in Palestine - New York University.
The Palestinian Club of Brooklyn College presents:
The Mavi Marmara Massacre: An Eyewitness Account
Featured speakers: JAMAL ELSHAYYAL and MOUSTAFA BAYOUMI
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 1, 2011
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
(doors open 6:00 PM)
GOLD ROOM, 6TH FLOOR, BROOKLYN COLLEGE STUDENT CENTER (SUBO)
(RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=185019744853542)
_____________________________________________________
On May 31, 2010 (Memorial Day), commandos from the Israeli Defense Forces intercepted the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, a humanitarian mission carrying aid and heading to break the siege on Gaza. The MV Mavi Marmara, the largest ship in the fleet carrying over 600 civilian passengers, was raided and seized by military force. The IDF fired at passengers, some at close range, and killed 9 people, one of which was a 19-year-old American citizen.
Join us for a discussion and an eyewitness account of what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara with professor Moustafa Bayoumi and guest speaker Jamal Elshayyal.
Jamal Elshayyal is a British news producer for Al Jazeera English. He studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and joined Al Jazeera in 2006. Among the stories he covered are the 2006 war in Lebanon, the Darfur peace talks, Egypt's role during the 2008 Gaza invasion, and the Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca. He was on and broadcasting live from the Mavi Marmara before communications were cut.
Moustafa Bayoumi is an award-winning writer and an associate professor of English at Brooklyn College. He completed his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He is co-editor of the Edward Said Reader and the author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America. He is the editor of Midnight on the Mavi Marmara: The Attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and How It Changed the Course of the Israel/Palestine Conflict, a compilation of articles on the Mavi Marnara and the blockade of Gaza.
Doors open at 6:00 PM, event begins at 6:30 PM
IMPORTANT: Seats are limited and Brooklyn College requires a guest list for non-Brooklyn College guests! RSVP now and please show up with photo ID! Guests must RSVP at: (PalestinianClubBC@gmail.com)
Refreshments will be served.
Co-sponsored by: Al-Awda NY Palestine Right to Return Coalition, American Muslims for Palestine - NY, Brooklyn For Peace, Existence is Resistance, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, MAS Youth - NY, Siege Busters, Students for Justice in Palestine - Hunter College, Students for Justice in Palestine - New York University.
KEEP WALMART OUT OF NYC!!! City Hall, Thurs., Feb. 3, 2011-11am
From an email from Manhattan Green JM:
The day we’ve all been waiting for is about to arrive.
Next Thursday, the New York City Council will finally hold its much-anticipated first hearing on Walmart’s plans to open stores in New York City. We’re going to pack the steps of City Hall at a rally before the hearing to make sure everyone knows how strongly our city opposes Walmart’s plans to hi-jack our local economy by killing jobs and shuttering small businesses.
And we want to bring your voice with us.
We’re circulating a petition to let City Council know that a company that kills three jobs for every two it “creates” is not a company we want setting up shop in our city. Can you sign the petition and ask at least two friends to do the same?
SIGN THE PETITION!
We know that most New Yorkers don't want a future of poverty wages, high unemployment, and limited opportunities for locally-owned businesses that reinvest in our communities for their city. But right now, Walmart is busy mounting a slick PR campaign to co-opt local support and create the false impression that they're wanted here. If you don't want to let Walmart's marketing execs speak for you, then it's crucial you stand up and make your voice heard now:
SIGN THE PETITION!
Our goal is to get at least 1,000 signers by next Thursday’s hearing, but we can’t do it without your help. So thank you in advance for getting the word out, and we look forward to seeing you Thursday Feburary 3, at 11am on the steps of City Hall (map | RSVP).
-- Austin Guest and the NY Jobs with Justice / Urban Agenda team
NY Jobs with Justice and Urban Agenda are merging. Visit our new website at http://nyjwj.org
The day we’ve all been waiting for is about to arrive.
Next Thursday, the New York City Council will finally hold its much-anticipated first hearing on Walmart’s plans to open stores in New York City. We’re going to pack the steps of City Hall at a rally before the hearing to make sure everyone knows how strongly our city opposes Walmart’s plans to hi-jack our local economy by killing jobs and shuttering small businesses.
And we want to bring your voice with us.
We’re circulating a petition to let City Council know that a company that kills three jobs for every two it “creates” is not a company we want setting up shop in our city. Can you sign the petition and ask at least two friends to do the same?
SIGN THE PETITION!
We know that most New Yorkers don't want a future of poverty wages, high unemployment, and limited opportunities for locally-owned businesses that reinvest in our communities for their city. But right now, Walmart is busy mounting a slick PR campaign to co-opt local support and create the false impression that they're wanted here. If you don't want to let Walmart's marketing execs speak for you, then it's crucial you stand up and make your voice heard now:
SIGN THE PETITION!
Our goal is to get at least 1,000 signers by next Thursday’s hearing, but we can’t do it without your help. So thank you in advance for getting the word out, and we look forward to seeing you Thursday Feburary 3, at 11am on the steps of City Hall (map | RSVP).
-- Austin Guest and the NY Jobs with Justice / Urban Agenda team
NY Jobs with Justice and Urban Agenda are merging. Visit our new website at http://nyjwj.org
April 9th March & Peace Rally in NYC -- Further Info
Here's more info from an email from Manhattan Green, Jim, re April 9th anti-war action:
The Green Party of New York and New York Metro Progressives are among the endorsers of the April 9, 2011 march and peace rally in NYC.
For a list of endorsers, see the demonstration website www.UNACpeace.org.
A flyer for the event is at nepajac.org/April9NYCPeace.pdf, Please copy and circulate widely.
If you want to get on the mailing list for updates, send an email to UNACpeace@gmail.com.
I attended the initial organizing meeting Jan 13th. The plan is to hold organizing meetings in person at 7pm every other Weds. I think the next one is 1/26 at a location TBD. They will also try to create a calendar of events in support of April 9th Send event postings to hanalei@gmail.com.
April 9th will have a rally and march from Union Sq down to Foley Sq where they'll be a second rally. There will be a mirror event in San Francisco. Possibly others in London, Vancouver.
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Note from Jim:
Let's get the word out as much as possible to make this huge! Those who can take an active part in helping to organize are needed.
The Green Party of New York and New York Metro Progressives are among the endorsers of the April 9, 2011 march and peace rally in NYC.
For a list of endorsers, see the demonstration website www.UNACpeace.org.
A flyer for the event is at nepajac.org/April9NYCPeace.pdf, Please copy and circulate widely.
Demands:
Bring U.S. Troops Home Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!
Trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
End FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
Immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads
If you want to get on the mailing list for updates, send an email to UNACpeace@gmail.com.
I attended the initial organizing meeting Jan 13th. The plan is to hold organizing meetings in person at 7pm every other Weds. I think the next one is 1/26 at a location TBD. They will also try to create a calendar of events in support of April 9th Send event postings to hanalei@gmail.com.
April 9th will have a rally and march from Union Sq down to Foley Sq where they'll be a second rally. There will be a mirror event in San Francisco. Possibly others in London, Vancouver.
---
Note from Jim:
Let's get the word out as much as possible to make this huge! Those who can take an active part in helping to organize are needed.
STOP SCHOOL CLOSINGS IN MANHATTAN January 27 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
FROM AN EMAIL FROM NY GREEN ANN ROOS:
Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education plans to close 26 more schools this year. Despite the DOE's claim that these school closings are aimed at reforming schools, they have instead opened the door to privately-run charter schools and have limited school options for those affected. According to the accounts by parents, students and teachers, DOE policies have had the effect of sabotaging the schools that are slated to be closed, not "fixing" them.
Bloomberg has played a shell game with our most vulnerable children, shuffling them around from closing school to closing school. This process has disproportionately affected students of color, only serving to further perpetuate a separate and unequal school system in New York City.
In addition to closing schools, the DOE plans to grant more public school space to charter schools through co-locations, undermining public school resources and pitting school communities against each other.
We demand quality resources and support for our public schools, not closings and privatization!
Join parents, students, teachers and community members at a rally to stop school closings.
January 27 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
City Hall Plaza near the Brooklyn Bridge
Trains: 4, 5, 6, 2, 3, R, A and C
(Lists in formation)
Sponsored by: The Ad Hoc Committee to Stop School Closings and Charter Takeovers, Grassroots Education Movement NYC (GEM), New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE),Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública (CPE-CEP), The Manhattan Local of the Green Party of NY State, Class Size Matters, United Federation of Teachers (UFT)
Endorsing Organizations: Teachers for a Just Contract (TJC), Concerned Advocates for Public Education (CAPE), Independent Community of Educators (ICE), Center For Immigrant Families (CIF), The Puerto Rico Solidarity Network - PRSN NY, People Power Movement, Renaissance School of the Arts-M377(UFT Chapter), City Wide Coalition for Educational Excellence Now, South Bronx Community Council, Black Women Against Urban Violence, Teachers Unite (TU), NY with UPR (NY with University of Puerto Rico), Dee Knight, The Independent Workers Movement/Movimiento Independiente de Trabajadores, District Leader Chris Owens (52nd Assembly District, Brooklyn), Retiree Advocate Caucus-UFT, CUNY Mobilization Network Green Party of NY State, Independent Commission on Public Education (ICOPE), Radical Women, Answer Coalition, Community Education Council 1 (CEC1), black New Yorkers for Educational Justice (BNYEE), New Action/UFT, National Black Education Agenda (NBEA), State Assemblywoman Annette Robinson 56th AD, Youth on the Move (a program of Mothers on the Move), PACE Network, Roots Revisited, S.E.E.D.S., Inc., The Healing drum Collective, Batay Ouvriye (Workers' Struggle) Solidarity Network
Help plan the protest!
Join the meeting on Tuesday, January 24 at 5 p.m. in room 5414 of the CUNY Graduate Center, located at 34th Street and 5th Avenue. Contact gemnyc@gmail.com for more information.
Join a rally to....
Stop the school closings!
Stop charter takeovers
Defend public education
Say no to privatization
Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education plans to close 26 more schools this year. Despite the DOE's claim that these school closings are aimed at reforming schools, they have instead opened the door to privately-run charter schools and have limited school options for those affected. According to the accounts by parents, students and teachers, DOE policies have had the effect of sabotaging the schools that are slated to be closed, not "fixing" them.
Bloomberg has played a shell game with our most vulnerable children, shuffling them around from closing school to closing school. This process has disproportionately affected students of color, only serving to further perpetuate a separate and unequal school system in New York City.
In addition to closing schools, the DOE plans to grant more public school space to charter schools through co-locations, undermining public school resources and pitting school communities against each other.
We demand quality resources and support for our public schools, not closings and privatization!
Join parents, students, teachers and community members at a rally to stop school closings.
January 27 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.
City Hall Plaza near the Brooklyn Bridge
Trains: 4, 5, 6, 2, 3, R, A and C
(Lists in formation)
Sponsored by: The Ad Hoc Committee to Stop School Closings and Charter Takeovers, Grassroots Education Movement NYC (GEM), New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE),Coalition for Public Education/Coalición por la Educación Pública (CPE-CEP), The Manhattan Local of the Green Party of NY State, Class Size Matters, United Federation of Teachers (UFT)
Endorsing Organizations: Teachers for a Just Contract (TJC), Concerned Advocates for Public Education (CAPE), Independent Community of Educators (ICE), Center For Immigrant Families (CIF), The Puerto Rico Solidarity Network - PRSN NY, People Power Movement, Renaissance School of the Arts-M377(UFT Chapter), City Wide Coalition for Educational Excellence Now, South Bronx Community Council, Black Women Against Urban Violence, Teachers Unite (TU), NY with UPR (NY with University of Puerto Rico), Dee Knight, The Independent Workers Movement/Movimiento Independiente de Trabajadores, District Leader Chris Owens (52nd Assembly District, Brooklyn), Retiree Advocate Caucus-UFT, CUNY Mobilization Network Green Party of NY State, Independent Commission on Public Education (ICOPE), Radical Women, Answer Coalition, Community Education Council 1 (CEC1), black New Yorkers for Educational Justice (BNYEE), New Action/UFT, National Black Education Agenda (NBEA), State Assemblywoman Annette Robinson 56th AD, Youth on the Move (a program of Mothers on the Move), PACE Network, Roots Revisited, S.E.E.D.S., Inc., The Healing drum Collective, Batay Ouvriye (Workers' Struggle) Solidarity Network
Help plan the protest!
Join the meeting on Tuesday, January 24 at 5 p.m. in room 5414 of the CUNY Graduate Center, located at 34th Street and 5th Avenue. Contact gemnyc@gmail.com for more information.
"I'm a Cage-Free Liberal Voting Green in November (and not for Obama in 2012)!"
THIS IS ONE OF MY BLOGS PRIOR TO THE ELECTION:
Obama and company apparently feel they deserve some appreciation and recognition in their what I can only call "bizarro bubble" perspective. It seems Obamaco is getting ready to blame us on the left for any Dem losses in November.
I say, let us take advantage of this opportunity. If we are marginalized and demonized by them whenever politically convenient, "Let's give them something to talk about!" Let us make our displeasure felt at the voting booth! Though when was the last time any real messages from us on the left actually made the establishment or faux-progressive media radar. To blame us they will have to end their insulting denial of the scope of our existence.
I say again, "Blue Dog Obama Treats Far Left Like a Hydrant." I was chided by some for calling us "far" left. Relatively speaking, I meant. It is not we who have drifted far left, it is Obama and legacy Dems and legacy Repubs who have galloped right. And yet, Obama spins away in indignation, as he continues to self-annoint all his sell-out activities as "historic". Borrows progressive rhetoric to celebrate his destructive, constitution-eroding, regressive leadership.
Glenn Greenwald says it all so well as he responds to a recent quote from Obama:
[snip]
[snip]
Thanks, Glenn. More and more I am inspired to vote NOTA (none of the above) in terms of legacy Dems and go for the GREENS!
We've got 5 weeks and then we've got 2 years. We are in a tug of war to get our country, our constitution, our multi-trillion dollar military, bank and insurance bailouts, our pre-rogue criminal international reputation back from the status quo establishments -- both of them -- in power. Someone said recently the Dems as the lesser of two evils sure have gotten more and more evil. Time for their reckoning. We know the Republicans are murdering rabid rat bastards. It is time to call out the Dems as murdering rat bastards. Both are WAR/MONEY parties. Both are beholding to the fabulously wealthy .1% of the country.
I am not going to hold my nose and vote this election for either party that massively BETRAYED the citizenry. Yes, the Republicans are awesome in their cravenness. So are the Dems. Obama and the Dems betrayed. Pointing to the Republicans can't eclipse that. Well, it does for some. But not for those of us seriously paying attention. Obama and the Dems want us to eat sh*t and smile. Obama isn't even bothering to play Lucy and the football this time. He is so smug and arrogant. He thinks we have no place to go. We do, Mr. President. We can go Green. We can go for real reformers. We can't afford to lose more time and liberty from callow pretenders.
Obama and company apparently feel they deserve some appreciation and recognition in their what I can only call "bizarro bubble" perspective. It seems Obamaco is getting ready to blame us on the left for any Dem losses in November.
I say, let us take advantage of this opportunity. If we are marginalized and demonized by them whenever politically convenient, "Let's give them something to talk about!" Let us make our displeasure felt at the voting booth! Though when was the last time any real messages from us on the left actually made the establishment or faux-progressive media radar. To blame us they will have to end their insulting denial of the scope of our existence.
I say again, "Blue Dog Obama Treats Far Left Like a Hydrant." I was chided by some for calling us "far" left. Relatively speaking, I meant. It is not we who have drifted far left, it is Obama and legacy Dems and legacy Repubs who have galloped right. And yet, Obama spins away in indignation, as he continues to self-annoint all his sell-out activities as "historic". Borrows progressive rhetoric to celebrate his destructive, constitution-eroding, regressive leadership.
Glenn Greenwald says it all so well as he responds to a recent quote from Obama:
[Obama] The idea that we've got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible. . . . .If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election.
This may be one of the most audaciously hilarious political statements I've read in quite some time. The Holder Justice Department's record on domestic civil rights enforcement is actually one of the few areas where there has been substantial improvement -- and that's a perfectly legitimate argument to make -- but for Barack Obama to cite "civil liberties" as a reason why Democratic apathy is "just irresponsible," and to claim with a straight face that this election will determine whether we're "the kind of country that respects" them, is so detached from basic reality that I actually had to read this three or four times to make certain I hadn't misunderstood it. To summarize Obama's apparent claim: the Republicans better not win in the midterm election, otherwise we'll have due-process-free and even preventive detention, secret assassinations of U.S. citizens, vastly expanded government surveillance of the Internet, a continuation of Guantanamo, protection of Executive branch crimes through the use of radical secrecy doctrines, escalating punishment for whistleblowers, legal immunity for war crimes, and a massively escalated drone war in Pakistan. That's why, as the President inspirationally warns us: "If we want the kind of country that respects civil liberties, we'd better fight in this election."
[snip]
What is notable about it is what it reveals substantively. The country is drowning in a severe and worsening unemployment crisis. People are losing their homes by the millions. Income inequality continues to explode while the last vestiges of middle class security continue to erode. The Obama civil liberties record has been nothing short of a disgrace, usually equaling and sometimes surpassing the worst of the Bush/Cheney abuses. We have to stand by and watch the Commander-in-Chief fire one gay service member after the next for their sexual orientation. The major bills touted by Obama supporters were the by-product of the very corporatist/lobbyist dominance which Obama the candidate repeatedly railed against. Rather than take responsibility for any of this, they instead dismiss criticisms and objections as petulant, childish, "irresponsible whining" -- signaling rather clearly that they think they're doing the right thing and that these criticisms are fundamentally unfair.
[snip]
And it's even more baffling that they seem to believe that insulting their disappointed supporters -- rather than addressing the source of their critiques or, even better, doing something about them -- will generate enthusiasm to go vote.
Thanks, Glenn. More and more I am inspired to vote NOTA (none of the above) in terms of legacy Dems and go for the GREENS!
We've got 5 weeks and then we've got 2 years. We are in a tug of war to get our country, our constitution, our multi-trillion dollar military, bank and insurance bailouts, our pre-rogue criminal international reputation back from the status quo establishments -- both of them -- in power. Someone said recently the Dems as the lesser of two evils sure have gotten more and more evil. Time for their reckoning. We know the Republicans are murdering rabid rat bastards. It is time to call out the Dems as murdering rat bastards. Both are WAR/MONEY parties. Both are beholding to the fabulously wealthy .1% of the country.
I am not going to hold my nose and vote this election for either party that massively BETRAYED the citizenry. Yes, the Republicans are awesome in their cravenness. So are the Dems. Obama and the Dems betrayed. Pointing to the Republicans can't eclipse that. Well, it does for some. But not for those of us seriously paying attention. Obama and the Dems want us to eat sh*t and smile. Obama isn't even bothering to play Lucy and the football this time. He is so smug and arrogant. He thinks we have no place to go. We do, Mr. President. We can go Green. We can go for real reformers. We can't afford to lose more time and liberty from callow pretenders.
Help "Drain the Corporate-Cronyism, Military-Blood-(and Money)-Sucking Swamp"! HOWIE HAWKINS (NY) & GREEN NEW DEAL!
THIS WAS AN EARLIER BLOG I WROTE ABOUT HOWIE HAWKINS:
Howie Hawkins has got a lot of strong things to say about the smokescreen kabuki going on between Cuomo and Palidino. As quoted by Celeste Katz of Daily News:
I like what Hawkins is asserting these days. Like when he floats the question as to whether the janitor of Trump Towers is paying a higher rate of taxes than Trump himself. Hawkins is the political hero I have been holding out for! THE ALTERNATIVE now that I have pledged to vote "none of the above" (NOTA) to Legacy Democratic Party candidates!
Of course, the media and political machines won't give him air time. But isn't it time to stop holding our noses while voting? Time to stop voting for a hopped-up media/ad-created faux-personality and endorse and enable a real candidate of the people, grounded in principle and integrity?
Alan Singer at Huffpo writes:
How refreshing is all of this after the corporate puppet cronies spin their spin, and our mid-term choice we are told is idiot-easy! No it is not. I don't want to enable the lesser of two evils. That promotes evil, don'tchaknow? Weren't Cuomo, Schumer, et al. attending Rangel's recent birthday party? Stand by your allegedly criminal activities man! A united front, even when the center is rotten? I guess they decided that loyalty was more important to the electorate (and cronies everywhere) than showing ANY criticism of a crony who is being called out on illegal and unethical behaviors, of which undoubtedly many have their own political closets full.
Alas, Rangle won his primary. The majority of those voters were sadly not mature enough to vote principle above personality. But there are mature voters looking for integrity over cronyism. We have to deliver tough love loud and clear with our voices and votes because God know's the legacy parties aren't capable of it. Cronyism all the way. (As Rahm heads for Chicago and his cronyism-earned mayoral "crowning"). Even in New York, The Working Family Party wouldn't endorse a profound "working family candidate" if I ever saw one, Jonathan Tasini, on the Dem ticket, mind you, against Rangel. It was a telling moment. These cats can't drain the swamp. We need alternative candidates of integrity and the alternative candidates, in this case, the Greens, are ready to roll!
Like Hawkins for Governor in New York State (and our Corrente friend Julia Williams running for Green Congressperson in Detroit), they are willing to blast through the corporate and military crony firewalls to the TRUTH! They stand on refreshing and renewing truth to power platforms!
Here are Hawkins' own pronouncements on the Working Family Party choice to endorse Legacy Dems at the expense of real reform alternative candidates: (The days of me googling the WFP to see which Dems to vote for are SO OVER!!!!!)
Unrequited love, huh? Remind you of any Dem president you know selling out America to unimpressed and rapacious heartless Republicans? You get down with Blue Dogs, the whole damn country gets up with quality of life eroding fleas!
Hawkins is equally outspoken and articulate about the horror and moral travesty of the military industrial security complex:
Finally, a candidate willing to stop ignoring that un-ignorable (un-ignorable ... except to 99% of our elected representatives and the entire corporate media) elephant in the corner of the room. MASSIVE MILITARY SPENDING. More from Hawkins:
I am sorry. I can't stop quoting this guy!!! Mr. Hawkins:
Still more of Hawkins from wikipedia.
So, what is it going to be New York State? America? The kool-aid coma style voting for legacy Dems one more time? Fool me once, blame them. Fool us again and again and again???? Think of the definition of insanity one more time!
I also am reminded of Robert Frost's lines that so beautifully encourage moral adventure and risk:
I'm going down the GREEN road! Please join me. Let's ramp up its traffic! Let's walk the walk!
Howie Hawkins has got a lot of strong things to say about the smokescreen kabuki going on between Cuomo and Palidino. As quoted by Celeste Katz of Daily News:
[Hawkins] "Both want to cut public spending and services in order to keep tax breaks for the wealthy. All that's left to argue about is 'who's the bigger man?' -- and the media's falling for it. Given the chance to debate, I can provide New Yorkers with a competing vision, my prosperity plan vs. their austerity plan."
Hawkins is calling for a "Green New Deal" with a WPA-style green jobs program to put the state's 800,000 unemployed back to work. The plan, according to Hawkins, could be financed with the yearly $16 billion in Stock Transfer Tax funds that are currently rebated right back to Wall Street.
"Cuomo and Paladino whine about the so-called 'budget crisis' but won't even mention the Stock Transfer Tax. Andy and Carl's hot tub reconciliation will come after Election Day, when they're toasting champagne glasses with Wall Street banksters."
I like what Hawkins is asserting these days. Like when he floats the question as to whether the janitor of Trump Towers is paying a higher rate of taxes than Trump himself. Hawkins is the political hero I have been holding out for! THE ALTERNATIVE now that I have pledged to vote "none of the above" (NOTA) to Legacy Democratic Party candidates!
Of course, the media and political machines won't give him air time. But isn't it time to stop holding our noses while voting? Time to stop voting for a hopped-up media/ad-created faux-personality and endorse and enable a real candidate of the people, grounded in principle and integrity?
Alan Singer at Huffpo writes:
The Green Party is running Howie Hawkins, a teamster from the Rochester area who works for UPS for governor and Gloria Mattera, a health professional and community organizer from Brooklyn for lieutenant governor. I think the Green Party campaign is different from the campaigns of the other minor candidates and from the major parties and bears close attention ...
Jon Stewart has accused minority parties on the left and right of promoting extremism and of irrationality. In the case of the New York Greens, Stewart is definitely wrong! Hawkins and Mattera are two of the most rational and thoughtful people I have met in the political arena. They make the Democratic and Republican Party candidates look like the irrational extremists.
Howie Hawkins told me "Paladino thinks he is mad, but he's not as mad as me!" He thinks, "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?"
Hawkins is wrong in one respect. This is probably the basic issue facing the entire country.
Hawkins told the assembled group that New York State and the nation need a new "New Deal," a "Green New Deal." It would include the promise of full employment with government as employer of last resort; a single-payer health plan; and full funding for education. He also called for an end to tuition in the city and state universities, a state bank to invest government funds and pension dollars, and a more progressive tax structure.
Gloria Mattera used her allotted speaking time to explain the four pillars of the Green Party: Non-violence and the demilitarization of the United States; social and economic justice; ecological wisdom; and grassroots participatory democracy.
How refreshing is all of this after the corporate puppet cronies spin their spin, and our mid-term choice we are told is idiot-easy! No it is not. I don't want to enable the lesser of two evils. That promotes evil, don'tchaknow? Weren't Cuomo, Schumer, et al. attending Rangel's recent birthday party? Stand by your allegedly criminal activities man! A united front, even when the center is rotten? I guess they decided that loyalty was more important to the electorate (and cronies everywhere) than showing ANY criticism of a crony who is being called out on illegal and unethical behaviors, of which undoubtedly many have their own political closets full.
Alas, Rangle won his primary. The majority of those voters were sadly not mature enough to vote principle above personality. But there are mature voters looking for integrity over cronyism. We have to deliver tough love loud and clear with our voices and votes because God know's the legacy parties aren't capable of it. Cronyism all the way. (As Rahm heads for Chicago and his cronyism-earned mayoral "crowning"). Even in New York, The Working Family Party wouldn't endorse a profound "working family candidate" if I ever saw one, Jonathan Tasini, on the Dem ticket, mind you, against Rangel. It was a telling moment. These cats can't drain the swamp. We need alternative candidates of integrity and the alternative candidates, in this case, the Greens, are ready to roll!
Like Hawkins for Governor in New York State (and our Corrente friend Julia Williams running for Green Congressperson in Detroit), they are willing to blast through the corporate and military crony firewalls to the TRUTH! They stand on refreshing and renewing truth to power platforms!
Here are Hawkins' own pronouncements on the Working Family Party choice to endorse Legacy Dems at the expense of real reform alternative candidates: (The days of me googling the WFP to see which Dems to vote for are SO OVER!!!!!)
“WFP should learn from this [Cuomo] rejection that power for working people comes from their independent political action, not acting as a faction of the Democratic coalition and handing over their votes to the corporate-dominated Democratic Party, which then takes their votes for granted and reduces their leverage and power to nothing. The WFP, along with much of the media, promotes the party as a progressive alternative, despite their failure to actually pass hardly any legislation. But every time I and other Greens have faced WFP-endorsed democratic nominees for office, they supported more war, more money for the military, and more corporate welfare, while opposing things such as single payer health care or strong action on climate change,” noted Hawkins. “Now they have rolled over for Andrew Cuomo, the latest son seeking to inherit his father’s former office, who refuses to make Wall Street and the rich pay their fair share of taxes, who intends to make war with the public employees union, supports expanding the financial waste of charter schools and wants to impose caps on public spending. The WFP leadership has become just another self-serving political faction more interested in their personal power and patronage, just use the name working families as a advertising slogan to mislead the voters,” added Hawkins, a teamster who is the only union member running for Governor.
Hawkins said he would welcome the opportunity to debate the WFP nominee but so far their candidate is just a charade playing inside political games while the WFP leadership treats their own members and the voters with disdain.
“The WFP suffers from unrequited love. They did all this work for the Dems and the Dems kick them out when they feel they no longer need them. Greens would welcome a coalition with the WFP if they embraced independent politics. On the surface, we share a lot of values and policy demands. We just see WFP’s electoral strategy as politically suicidal. Those chickens are coming home to roost with Cuomo’s rejection,” added Hawkins.
Unrequited love, huh? Remind you of any Dem president you know selling out America to unimpressed and rapacious heartless Republicans? You get down with Blue Dogs, the whole damn country gets up with quality of life eroding fleas!
Hawkins is equally outspoken and articulate about the horror and moral travesty of the military industrial security complex:
Hawkins joined local peace activists outside the Hancock National Guard Airbase in opposing it as a site to remotely control reaper killer drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The NY Times today reported that the CIA has greatly increased the use of the drones in Pakistan in recent weeks. The unmanned drones fly at 50,000ft, are virtually invisible and carry a deadly payload of missiles and bombs. Costing about $13 million each, and up to $100,000 for each of its four Hellfire missiles, drones are an extraordinary amount of cash that is routinely being spent to try to kill a single individual.
Hawkins condemned the FBI raids on antiwar groups conducted in six states last Friday. “The FBI is criminalizing antiwar activism while failing to address the corporate crime wave at the root of the banking crisis that has caused the worst crisis of unemployment and home foreclosures since the Great Depression,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins said that as Governor he push to bring all National Guards troops home to New York. Hawkins also called for ending the wars, bringing all American troops home, and cutting the federal military budget 50 to 75% to create a peace dividend to rebuild America, pay for a WPA style jobs programs for the unemployed, and finance a rapid transition to a carbon free economy.
“The two major parties are always so willing to send our young men and women to die in foreign lands to protect the oil and gas companies under the guise of creating democracy, but they fight as hard at the can to prevent a real multi-party democracy here in America,” asked Hawkins, a former Marine who organized opposition to the Vietnam War.
Hawkins said that as Governor he will rally other states to demand large cuts in the military budget to provide fiscal relief to state and local governments, support the conversion to a green energy system, and to create jobs through increased investments in housing, child care, anti-hunger programs, mass transit, schools and environmental initiatives. Hawkins supports direct government employment in public works and services on the model of the 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA).
Finally, a candidate willing to stop ignoring that un-ignorable (un-ignorable ... except to 99% of our elected representatives and the entire corporate media) elephant in the corner of the room. MASSIVE MILITARY SPENDING. More from Hawkins:
“Candidates for Governor usually argue they have no role in foreign policy. But the war in Afghanistan / Pakistan is being fought right from Sy racuse. Statewide, our local National Guard was ordered into wars abroad. These soldiers signed up to help with domestic emergencies, not to fight foreign wars for oil, gas, and global military empire of over 800 foreign bases. The massive amount of tax dollars we spend on the military and its corporate contractors hurts our economy, promotes global warming and undercuts job creation here in America,” said Hawkins. US spending on the military has increased by two-thirds since 9/11 and now exceeds the rest of the world combined.
“The mission of the US military should be defending our republic, not policing an empire on behalf of global corporations, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and the private contractors that feed off of it,” stated Hawkins. Hawkins added that “Just as President Dwight Eisenhower warned the country a half century ago, the two major parties are now completely controlled by a military industrial complex that demands an ever growing share of our nation’s wealth while subverting the critical civil liberties upon which our country was founded.”
I am sorry. I can't stop quoting this guy!!! Mr. Hawkins:
Hawkins said that he supports a reduction in military spending in the 50 to 70% range. “The mission of the US military should be defending our republic, not policing an empire on behalf of global corporations, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and the private contractors that feed off of it,” stated Hawkins.
New York taxpayers have spent $93.9 billion for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan since 2001. New York taxpayers will have to shell $67 billion for Total Defense Spending just for FY2011 – more than 7 times the size of the state’s projected budget deficit.
Hawkins said the bipartisan war on terrorism has been a disaster for America, undermining our national security while bankrupting the economy and curtailing civil rights.
"Under President Obama, we have escalated the futile war in Afghanistan, continuing the destruction of that country that we started under President Carter. We have expanded that war into Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Torture continues, as does illegal spying on Americans. Under Obama we remain the bullies of the planet, using our enormous military might to promote the agenda of multinational corporations, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and legions of private military contractors, not defend the American people. If we leave people in the Middle East alone, they will leave us alone. If we occupy and wage war on their countries, the blowback will include desperate acts of terrorist revenge. We spend enormous amounts of tax dollars to maintain military bases in more than a hundred countries whose people resent foreign occupation. We continue to fight wars in the Middle East in a futile attempt to prop up an unsustainable petroleum-based economy,” stated Hawkins.
Hawkins reminded us that a half century ago, President Eisenhower, who successfully led the allied forces in World War II, warned the American people about the social and budget dangers posed by the military industrial complex. The American people had to be careful that they did not allow special interests to absorb an ever-increasing share of national wealth.Eisenhower proclaimed that “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired” was “a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
More recently, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” King called for “a campaign for jobs and income, because…the economic question was the most crucial that black people and poor people, generally, were confronting.”
Still more of Hawkins from wikipedia.
[Hawkins] "... he [Cuomo] wants to solve the state budget crisis by cutting spending such as for state workers and schools. He ignores that the root cause of the problem is not spending but the huge tax cuts for the wealthy that began when he was helping his father as Governor. Instead of spending caps, we need the wealthy and Wall Street to pay their fair share."
Hawkins supports single-payer, community-based health care and would work to end the "drug war". He also supports marriage equality and reproductive freedom, including abortion. Renewable energy and public power are central to his campaign platform, which describes a Statewide Sustainability Plan for renewable energy for New York. Hawkins has also stated that he would shut down New York’s aging nuclear power plants as soon as replacement power in renewable energy comes on line.
So, what is it going to be New York State? America? The kool-aid coma style voting for legacy Dems one more time? Fool me once, blame them. Fool us again and again and again???? Think of the definition of insanity one more time!
I also am reminded of Robert Frost's lines that so beautifully encourage moral adventure and risk:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I'm going down the GREEN road! Please join me. Let's ramp up its traffic! Let's walk the walk!
Obama, Captain of the USS Titanic, Willing to Throw Older Women Out of the Lifeboats First By Raising Retirement Age
Raising the retirement age to a whopping 70 is more than a twinkle in the eyes of Obama and his Gucci-loafered-Austerian-Commission-sadists from both sides of the aisle. They are about to stick it once again to all of us, but particularly to struggling low-income older women in physical jobs!
It just keeps on getting uglier and uglier. Sharon Johnson in this article in womensenews spells out how exceptionally cruel it is to the plight of women.
Nice reward working so hard all your life to have these sociopathic millionaire bastards steal your taxpaying money to reward fraudsters and then add insult to injury by moving your retirement goal post to 70 and making your hard-earned benefits (to some the ONLY benefits for a life of struggle) belated and unlivable.
According to Ellen Bruce, past president of OWL (Older Women’s League) 1 in 4 older women depends on Social Security for 90 percent of her income. Women have overwhelmingly far fewer assets than men when they retire.
Sharon Johnson writes:
Ms. Johnson quotes Cindy Hounsell, president of the Washington-based Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement, known as WISER:
WISER has accumulated the statistics: Nearly two-thirds of working women earn less than $30,000 a year, which makes it difficult to save. Almost half of these low-paying jobs do not provide retirement plans or 401k plans.
Johnson reports:
Sharon Johnson on the upcoming retirement age fight participants:
So, President Obama, Captain of the USS Titanic and his patriarchal and clearly misogynistic anti-social crew want to throw older women out of the lifeboats into the icy waters first. Who cares that women and all of us have worked hard for that money and our retirements!
We must rally to stop this pack of wannabe and fast-becoming feudal overlords!!!!
It just keeps on getting uglier and uglier. Sharon Johnson in this article in womensenews spells out how exceptionally cruel it is to the plight of women.
Nice reward working so hard all your life to have these sociopathic millionaire bastards steal your taxpaying money to reward fraudsters and then add insult to injury by moving your retirement goal post to 70 and making your hard-earned benefits (to some the ONLY benefits for a life of struggle) belated and unlivable.
According to Ellen Bruce, past president of OWL (Older Women’s League) 1 in 4 older women depends on Social Security for 90 percent of her income. Women have overwhelmingly far fewer assets than men when they retire.
Sharon Johnson writes:
The battle over Social Security age limits can be personified as Conservative Republican Alan Simpson versus Ellen A. Bruce, immediate past president of the Washington-based Older Women's League, known as OWL. Simpson, a former senator of Wyoming and now co-chair of President Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, recently sent OWL a letter calling Social Security "a milk cow with 310 million tits" that warrants changes because Americans are living longer.
To ensure the solvency of Social Security--which is facing a modest long-term fiscal shortfall--the bipartisan, 14-member fiscal commission is expected to recommend on Dec. 1 a gradual increase in the eligibility for full benefits from age 66 to 70.
Ms. Johnson quotes Cindy Hounsell, president of the Washington-based Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement, known as WISER:
"This proposal is the latest attack on the fraying safety net, ... Social Security is a lifeline for older women, because it has becoming increasingly difficult for the average woman to accumulate sufficient assets for retirement, let alone women in low-paying, physically demanding jobs that don't provide pensions."
WISER has accumulated the statistics: Nearly two-thirds of working women earn less than $30,000 a year, which makes it difficult to save. Almost half of these low-paying jobs do not provide retirement plans or 401k plans.
Johnson reports:
In 1983, Congress became concerned about the impact of longer life spans on Social Security reserves and increased the age for full benefits from 65 when Social Security was established in 1935 to 66 today to 67 in 2022.
The added two-year waiting period--to 67 from 65--will reduce benefits for the average retiree by 13 percent, a loss of more than $28,000 over the course of a typical retirement, projected the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that studies the labor force, federal budget, deficit and other issues.
Pushing the full-retirement age to 70 would cut benefits another 19 percent, a total of $63,573.
To get the same amount of benefits a worker receives today, a future retiree will have to work an extra year for every year the retirement age is increased, which is impossible for many women in physically demanding jobs, says Hounsell of WISER.
"Unlike women in white-collar jobs who went to college, maids, retail clerks, waitresses and nurses' aides started working in their late teens and early 20s," she said. "By their mid-50s, they are worn out from standing eight hours a day, moving patients and carrying heavy trays. Many have developed crushing back pain and other health problems."
In 2009, nearly 35 percent of workers age 58 and older held physically demanding jobs, according to an August analysis by the Washington-based nonprofit Center for Economic Policy and Research.
Hye Jin Rho, author of the report, warned that women would be harder hit than men by a higher retirement age because the gender gap increases with age. He found that about 32 percent of women 58 and older held physically demanding jobs compared to 37 percent of men in the same age group.
But when Rho analyzed the distribution of physically demanding jobs at either end of the retirement-age spectrum, he found more men doing heavy lifting earlier and more women stuck with that type of work later.
He found about 37 percent of women in the oldest age group--70 and over--were cleaning houses, stocking shelves and waitressing compared to about 30 percent of women in the youngest age group--58 to 61.
For men those figures were the other way around: About 35 percent of men over 70 were loading trucks, constructing buildings and standing eight hours a day in the kitchens of restaurants versus 38 percent of men between ages 58 to 61.
"Older women are highly motivated to keep working because their financial situation becomes more precarious as they age," said Katherine Klotzburger, founder and president of the Silver Century Foundation in Princeton, N.J., which seeks to change the personal and cultural experience of aging. "Many widows are left with little income because they have lost their husband's pensions or the couple's assets were depleted paying for care during their husband's last illness. Many older women also are supporting their parents or grandchildren."
Proponents of raising the retirement age contend that workers in physically demanding jobs can work longer if they assume less strenuous positions.
"But this is rarely the case," said Bruce, of OWL, who is director of the Gerontology Institute at University of Massachusetts Boston. "For workers in physically demanding jobs, finding new positions is often impossible because they work in industries or geographical areas where jobs are disappearing. As a result, they are forced to retire in their late 50s and early 60s and struggle to survive on reduced Social Security benefits for two decades."
Social Security benefits are modest, even if one works to age 66. The average retiree's benefit is $13,800 annually, less than working full time at a job paying minimum wage.
Women on average receive $2,000 less, because they were paid lower salaries during their working years and left the labor force for several years to raise children or care for elderly relatives.
Sharon Johnson on the upcoming retirement age fight participants:
Although this situation will reverse beginning in 2012 and the program will be solvent until 2037, prominent Democrats like Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff under President Clinton and co-chair of the fiscal commission, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland joined House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio in calling for an increase in the retirement age.
The proposal will face serious opposition in Congress. In the House, 104 representatives sent a letter to Obama, written by Democratic Reps. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, John Conyers of Michigan and Dan Maffei of New York, urging him to reject any proposals to cut Social Security benefits.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent of Vermont, and 11 Democratic colleagues introduced a resolution in the Senate Sept. 30 opposing increases in the retirement age and other proposals the deficit commission might recommend.
"The Social Security system, which has run surpluses for a quarter century, is America's most successful and reliable retirement program," Sanders wrote. "The Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.6 trillion surplus that is projected to grow to more than $4 trillion by the year 2023. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Social Security will be able to pay full benefits until the year 2039. It will not be bankrupt."
So, President Obama, Captain of the USS Titanic and his patriarchal and clearly misogynistic anti-social crew want to throw older women out of the lifeboats into the icy waters first. Who cares that women and all of us have worked hard for that money and our retirements!
We must rally to stop this pack of wannabe and fast-becoming feudal overlords!!!!
“The Green Party is No Longer the Alternative, the Green Party is the IMPERATIVE” (Govt. of the People NOT the Corporate Pimps!)
Here in New York, Cuomo’s election for Democratic Governor was a veritable cakewalk. All Cuomo did was sit back and let racist Paladino repel voters one sound bite at a time.
David Koch, massive funder of the Tea Party movement, even donated $50,000 for Dem Cuomo’s campaign. CUOMO’S campaign!! I mean, clearly Republican Paladino was gonna lose. So why don’t the sociopathic fat cats grease the palms of the other war/money party candidates? Those contributions sure go far. Look at Obama’s choices. Cuomo even baldly invited Tea Partiers to vote for him due to his similar austerity platform to Paladino but without the verbal nastiness of his opponent.
Disgraced Dem Congressman Rangel cakewalked, too, thanks to the same bobble-headed Democratic voting that got Cuomo in office. Voters apparently voted personality not character in terms of Rangel. I’m thinking daddy's name recognition and Pavlovian learned helplessness for Andrew. What a surprise.
Meanwhile, Green Party Howie Hawkins as candidate for Governor had only 3 paid staffers and spent $50,000 in total on his campaign. Compare that to what the corporate-financed campaigns must have cost Paladino and Cuomo. Hawkins simple explanation as to why his campaign was not corporate-financed?
Sounds like something Obama seduced with in 2008. But Hawkins actually meant it and still means it. One more time:
If people had heard and heeded that (thanks to earnest blockage by corporate-cronied local and national media, not too many did) it would have been landslide time for Greens and Hawkins, et al. (Sigh.)
Speaking of special interests, which we progressives of conscience need to keep doing, here is an enlightening quote I found on the Green Party of the United States website:
Howie Hawkins came to us from the citizen NOT corporate network. As did such other Green candidates as New York’s Julia Willebrand for Comptroller, Manhattan’s Ann Roos for State Senate, or Corrente’s own (and Michigan’s) Julia Williams for the U.S. House. Howie Hawkins is a Teamster from Syracuse. Hawkins won over 50,000 votes which returned the New York Green Party to official party status making the next four years easier for them to run candidates.
I am in a sophomoric, honeymoon phase of a new relationship with the Green Party. And though I registered a mere month ago myself, I feel downright awe and anger as to why my fellow New Yorkers did not positively embrace the Green Party this election. The party of integrity. While I was chewing on my my fist and complaining that the Greens deserved a landslide of votes, my fellow Green marathoners of conscience realized how sluggish justice sometimes travels and were celebrating getting to ballot status higher ground.
But what are progressives and at least semi-sane Americans screaming about? A lack of integrity in our governance! A corporate-captured government. So what did they do when they had the opportunity in many states to vote for such a non-corporate captured party? THEY IGNORED IT! THEY REJECTED IT!!!! Whoa.
What is the rush, I guess? That would mean change and we know how screwy the “change” option is for this country. They vote in massive numbers for faux-change, but for the real thing? Are you kidding? Ooooooooo ... too scary. Let’s not go crazy changing the status quo. Why we might get accused of socialism. Even though the status quo is a nightmare and destroying quality of lives or actual lives. God forbid we end corruption and violence. Let’s just hope one of the legacy parties -- the one not in office we invite back in backlash to the one already in office, and the only alternative we obtusely think we have as we act out the definition of insanity (doing the same thing expecting different results) -- can slow us down on the slippery slope to the extinction of democracy. Leave the slippery slope? Brrrrrr. What are you asking? Anyway, isn’t that impossible?
Geeeeez.
Leafletting for Hawkins and the Green Party slate in NYC I was dismayed at how many passersby simply shook their heads at me and scolded, “They can’t win!!! Why vote for the party that can’t win?” As if I were INSANE to suggest it. To some, not many, who paused long enough, I stammered out something like, “But they can’t win because you think the next guy won’t vote for them, so then you won’t vote for them, BUT if you vote for them out of principle, because they are the party of integrity, forget the next guy, and if he forgets about you and votes for them, then they CAN win. The non-corporate-captured party CAN WIN!!!! It SHOULD win!!!!” Whew. Sometimes I simply just yelled back, “Maybe not this election, but I see a Green President in 2012!!!” I do.
Hip-hop activist, real community organizer Rosa Clemente who ran on the national Green Party ticket with Cynthia McKinney in 2008 asserts: “The Green Party is no longer the alternative, the Green Party is the imperative”!
Okay, my blogs tend to run very long. So let me just throw out quickly 15 or so reasons I am SOLIDLY COMMITTED TO THE GREEN PARTY AND SUCH CANDIDATES AS NY’s HOWIE HAWKINS. Most of the following stances were cherry-picked from Hawkins’ recent election press releases via email.
Just look at these wholesome, renewing, honest, pro-citizen and SANE mandates!!!!! They are not about spin. Not inspired by desperate political opportunism and needs of impression management. They are about reality and solutions. Consider the genius, common sense, and/ or empathy behind each! No attempts at confusing (from the Latin, “fused” “with”) disinformation or “bait and switch” rhetorical vagueness or outright lying. This isn’t all of the NY Green platform, but it gives me hope and confidence. Believable hope. I hoped for an alternative. This is it. Now I need to hope and work for a nation of despairing, betrayed and cynically negative citizens to reach for it with me.
So what is it going to be, America? Peace and a better world via the Greens or violence and ecological/economic disaster brought to you from bobble-headed voting empowering the corporate pimps and your betraying legacy parties?
David Koch, massive funder of the Tea Party movement, even donated $50,000 for Dem Cuomo’s campaign. CUOMO’S campaign!! I mean, clearly Republican Paladino was gonna lose. So why don’t the sociopathic fat cats grease the palms of the other war/money party candidates? Those contributions sure go far. Look at Obama’s choices. Cuomo even baldly invited Tea Partiers to vote for him due to his similar austerity platform to Paladino but without the verbal nastiness of his opponent.
Disgraced Dem Congressman Rangel cakewalked, too, thanks to the same bobble-headed Democratic voting that got Cuomo in office. Voters apparently voted personality not character in terms of Rangel. I’m thinking daddy's name recognition and Pavlovian learned helplessness for Andrew. What a surprise.
Meanwhile, Green Party Howie Hawkins as candidate for Governor had only 3 paid staffers and spent $50,000 in total on his campaign. Compare that to what the corporate-financed campaigns must have cost Paladino and Cuomo. Hawkins simple explanation as to why his campaign was not corporate-financed?
“We want to be supported by the people, not the special interests.”
Sounds like something Obama seduced with in 2008. But Hawkins actually meant it and still means it. One more time:
“We want to be supported by the people, not the special interests.”
If people had heard and heeded that (thanks to earnest blockage by corporate-cronied local and national media, not too many did) it would have been landslide time for Greens and Hawkins, et al. (Sigh.)
Speaking of special interests, which we progressives of conscience need to keep doing, here is an enlightening quote I found on the Green Party of the United States website:
There are many things that will have to be changed before a truly democratic and Green society can exist but one is the tremendous and unfair gap today between the rich and the poor; in fact even between the very rich and the average person.
Today in America the best paid one-fifth of the population receives about one half of all national income, while the bottom one-fifth receives less than 4 per cent. The distribution of wealth in America is even more unfair. Here, the top one-half per cent of all property owners control over 25% of all wealth; while the top 5% sit on nearly 70% of wealth and property. What chance does the average person have for exercising his or her democratic rights under these conditions!
Behind this unfair distribution of wealth and income stand a few giant corporations who own or control nearly all newspapers, television networks and radio stations, movie companies, book publishers, and other sources of information and means of communication. Both of America's major political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, are dependent on these corporations and the few super-rich individuals and families associated with them. In fact, nearly all major offices in the US government, whether elected or appointed, are filled by individuals from this corporate network. What chance does democracy have under such conditions? What chance does nature and the environment have
Howie Hawkins came to us from the citizen NOT corporate network. As did such other Green candidates as New York’s Julia Willebrand for Comptroller, Manhattan’s Ann Roos for State Senate, or Corrente’s own (and Michigan’s) Julia Williams for the U.S. House. Howie Hawkins is a Teamster from Syracuse. Hawkins won over 50,000 votes which returned the New York Green Party to official party status making the next four years easier for them to run candidates.
I am in a sophomoric, honeymoon phase of a new relationship with the Green Party. And though I registered a mere month ago myself, I feel downright awe and anger as to why my fellow New Yorkers did not positively embrace the Green Party this election. The party of integrity. While I was chewing on my my fist and complaining that the Greens deserved a landslide of votes, my fellow Green marathoners of conscience realized how sluggish justice sometimes travels and were celebrating getting to ballot status higher ground.
But what are progressives and at least semi-sane Americans screaming about? A lack of integrity in our governance! A corporate-captured government. So what did they do when they had the opportunity in many states to vote for such a non-corporate captured party? THEY IGNORED IT! THEY REJECTED IT!!!! Whoa.
What is the rush, I guess? That would mean change and we know how screwy the “change” option is for this country. They vote in massive numbers for faux-change, but for the real thing? Are you kidding? Ooooooooo ... too scary. Let’s not go crazy changing the status quo. Why we might get accused of socialism. Even though the status quo is a nightmare and destroying quality of lives or actual lives. God forbid we end corruption and violence. Let’s just hope one of the legacy parties -- the one not in office we invite back in backlash to the one already in office, and the only alternative we obtusely think we have as we act out the definition of insanity (doing the same thing expecting different results) -- can slow us down on the slippery slope to the extinction of democracy. Leave the slippery slope? Brrrrrr. What are you asking? Anyway, isn’t that impossible?
Geeeeez.
Leafletting for Hawkins and the Green Party slate in NYC I was dismayed at how many passersby simply shook their heads at me and scolded, “They can’t win!!! Why vote for the party that can’t win?” As if I were INSANE to suggest it. To some, not many, who paused long enough, I stammered out something like, “But they can’t win because you think the next guy won’t vote for them, so then you won’t vote for them, BUT if you vote for them out of principle, because they are the party of integrity, forget the next guy, and if he forgets about you and votes for them, then they CAN win. The non-corporate-captured party CAN WIN!!!! It SHOULD win!!!!” Whew. Sometimes I simply just yelled back, “Maybe not this election, but I see a Green President in 2012!!!” I do.
Hip-hop activist, real community organizer Rosa Clemente who ran on the national Green Party ticket with Cynthia McKinney in 2008 asserts: “The Green Party is no longer the alternative, the Green Party is the imperative”!
Okay, my blogs tend to run very long. So let me just throw out quickly 15 or so reasons I am SOLIDLY COMMITTED TO THE GREEN PARTY AND SUCH CANDIDATES AS NY’s HOWIE HAWKINS. Most of the following stances were cherry-picked from Hawkins’ recent election press releases via email.
Just look at these wholesome, renewing, honest, pro-citizen and SANE mandates!!!!! They are not about spin. Not inspired by desperate political opportunism and needs of impression management. They are about reality and solutions. Consider the genius, common sense, and/ or empathy behind each! No attempts at confusing (from the Latin, “fused” “with”) disinformation or “bait and switch” rhetorical vagueness or outright lying. This isn’t all of the NY Green platform, but it gives me hope and confidence. Believable hope. I hoped for an alternative. This is it. Now I need to hope and work for a nation of despairing, betrayed and cynically negative citizens to reach for it with me.
1) TAX THE RICH! Hawkins wants a tax like the 1970s progressive income tax that would release for the state $8 billion from the wealthy and give the citizens a 95% tax break. He also wants to end the rebate of $16 billion to Wall Street speculators of the Stock (transfer) sales tax (something Wall Street friendly legacy party representatives won’t communicate about).
2) WPA-STYLE JOBS PROGRAM! Massive public jobs program. Hawkins supports direct government employment in public works and services on the model of the 1930s Works Progress Administration (WPA).
3) STATE SINGLE PAYER MEDICARE FOR ALL! Hawkins wants New York to be the first state in the country to implement a single payer Medicare for all health care program, to eliminate the waste and red tape of private health insurance. It would save New Yorkers $28 billion annually by 2019. He asserts Congressional health care reform did not go far enough and that tens of millions of Americans were left outside of the system and the “historic reform” is forcing Americans to buy expensive inadequate health care coverage. Hawkins claims 2 to 1 Americans think Obamacare does not do enough. Last year Hawkins was arrested protesting Wellpoint, the nation’s largest private health insurer, for denying care to policy holders.
4) FULLY FUNDED PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES, END OF MAYORAL CONTROL, PREVENTION OF PROPERTY TAX CAP (which Cuomo wants and what will dry up school funding and public services), CALL TO OPPOSE CHARTER SCHOOLS!
5) END DRONE STRIKES! Hawkins protested Hancock National Guard Airbase as proposed site to remotely control reaper killer drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan. (These unmanned suckers fly at 50,000ft, they are nearly invisible and carry missiles and bombs. The drones cost $13 million each, and up to $100,000 for each of its four Hellfire missiles, all that cash to kill a single targeted individual or, more likely and tragically, to accidentally incinerate innocent victims, radicalizing more enemies for the U.S.).
6) END SPYING, END CRIMINALIZATION OF POLITICAL DISSENT, END ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES! Hawkins condemned 9/24/10 FBI raids on antiwar groups conducted in six states. He stated, “The FBI is criminalizing antiwar activism while failing to address the corporate crime wave at the root of the banking crisis that has caused the worst crisis of unemployment and home foreclosures since the Great Depression.”
7) FULLY END THE ROCKEFELLER DRUG LAWS, INVOKE LEGALIZATION AND TAXATION OF DRUGS AND END MASS IMPRISONMENT OF NON-VIOLENT OFFENDERS! According to Alice Green, exec director of Center for Law and Justice in Albany, there are 12,000 nonviolent offenders in NY jails, 55% of them should have avoided jail time except for the draconian Rockefeller laws. These laws disproportionately affect people of color. Black men are incarcerated six times more than whites. Latino men twice as often as whites. Hawkins calls it a “phony” war on drugs, a "phony moralism", a failed “prohibitionist” policy. The Powers that Be are toying with taxing non-diet soda in NY. What about really making a difference morally and economically? A really brave and just choice?
8 ) END TORTURE!
9) END THE SCAPEGOATING OF MUSLIMS!
10) RAISE MINIMUM WAGE TO $12 AN HOUR! Generate public living wage jobs for the unemployed.
11) BAN ON HYDRAULIC FRACTURING!!! End hydrofracking.
12) FOCUS ON CLEAN ENERGY PROGRAMS! While doing my research on the Green Party, I remember reading America’s present “energy policy” bluntly described as “war for oil.” Hawkins wants secure investments in alternative energy and mass transit.
13) BAN ON GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS! Also referred to as “Frankenfoods”.
14) STRONG TENANT RIGHTS AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING!
15) BRING THE TROOPS HOME! END THE WARS NOW! CUT THE MILITARY BUDGET 50-75%! END ECONOMICALLY FORCED MILITARY ENLISTMENT! Hawkins explains that this peace dividend can be used to “rebuild America, pay for a WPA style jobs programs for the unemployed, and finance a rapid transition to a carbon free economy.” Here is a powerful quote from Hawkins (a former Marine who at one point organized opposition to the Vietnam War) on what he calls the military-congressional-industrial complex:
“The two major parties are always so willing to send our young men and women to die in foreign lands to protect the oil and gas companies under the guise of creating democracy, but they fight as hard as they can to prevent a real multi-party democracy here in America.”
How much would be released by reducing the military budget? According to Hawkins enough to provide "fiscal relief to state and local governments, support the conversion to a green energy system, and to create jobs through increased investments in housing, child care, anti-hunger programs, mass transit, schools and environmental initiatives.”
“Hawkins urged NYS congressional members to sign on to a letter by Cong. Frank and Paul to the Deficit Reduction Commission urging them to include cuts in military spending in their recommendations. So far the only Congressmember from NY that has joined with 30 plus members is Maloney. Congress will vote on the Commission’s recommendations in a lame-duck session after the November elections. The Commission is expected to propose cuts in the Social Security program, which Hawkins opposes.”
“Candidates for Governor usually argue they have no role in foreign policy. But the war in Afghanistan / Pakistan is being fought right from Syracuse. Statewide, our local National Guard was ordered into wars abroad. These soldiers signed up to help with domestic emergencies, not to fight foreign wars for oil, gas, and global military empire of over 800 foreign bases. The massive amount of tax dollars we spend on the military and its corporate contractors hurts our economy, promotes global warming and undercuts job creation here in America,” said Hawkins. US spending on the military has increased by two-thirds since 9/11 and now exceeds the rest of the world combined."
“The mission of the US military should be defending our republic, not policing an empire on behalf of global corporations, the Pentagon bureaucracy, and the private contractors that feed off of it,” stated Hawkins. Hawkins added that “Just as President Dwight Eisenhower warned the country a half century ago, the two major parties are now completely controlled by a military industrial complex that demands an ever growing share of our nation’s wealth while subverting the critical civil liberties upon which our country was founded.”
"Hawkins pointed out that the US set an official record in FY 2011 with a $700 billion plus dollar Department of Defense budget, with actual spending for the military, including military spending in other departments besides Defense, increasing to over $1 trillion dollars. The United States spends far more than any other country in the world on the military, which is a major cause of the US budget and trade deficits, which are also the highest on earth. This huge expansion of debt, made worse by the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and declining tax revenues during current Great Recession, is one of the underlying causes of persistent economic stagnation in the US economy."
So what is it going to be, America? Peace and a better world via the Greens or violence and ecological/economic disaster brought to you from bobble-headed voting empowering the corporate pimps and your betraying legacy parties?
December 12, 2010-EMPTY PLATES SPECIAL: Take Care of the Hungry Not the Wealthy!
This was my "Empty Plates" protest flyer [from a Green Party demonstration outside of B&N in Union Square 12-12-10]. You are welcome to use it in the future! We stapled green copies of it to empty white paper plates and handed them out. In the center of each paper plate we hand wrote "Fight Economic Terrorism: Call White House 1-202-456-1111, Call Congress 1-866-220-0044."
* * *
WE NEED TO TAKE CARE OF OUR HUNGRY, NOT OUR WEALTHY! TELL BARACK OBAMA, “USE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER TO START A WPA!”
Statement by Michigan Green Party Candidate: Julia Williams on her EMPTY PLATES protest:
THE BEGINNING: ONE SMALL OUTCRY!!!! DEC. 12, 2010 http://juliawilliamsforcongress.com/
Obama: Create Jobs by Executive Order http://www.marjoriecohn.com/2010/11/obama-create-jobs-by-executive-order.html
Excerpts from Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn
* * *
WE NEED TO TAKE CARE OF OUR HUNGRY, NOT OUR WEALTHY! TELL BARACK OBAMA, “USE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER TO START A WPA!”
Patrick Martin, WSW: “In a society which took seriously the value of human life and the future of its children, the spectacle of 50 million people at risk of hunger, including 1 million children, would be a social emergency. Given that the United States once boasted of its ability to feed the planet, the indifference to the growth of hunger at home is a national scandal.” A new report from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture reveals 50 million Americans exist under the poverty line and were too poor to buy adequate food last year. That is approximately 17.4 million families. More than a third of these households, with over one million children, were forced to skip meals. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26849.htm
From the Dept. of Agriculture or Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine:
• Nearly 1 in 4 American children live in households that struggle to put food on the table. That’s 16.7 million children.
• Nearly 1 in 4 children in America is at risk of hunger. Among African-Americans and Latinos, 1 in 3. (16.7 million children)
• About half of all American children will receive SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—Food Stamps) benefits at some point before age 20. Among African-American children, 90 percent will enroll in SNAP before age 20.
• 1 in 8 people is enrolled in SNAP. Nearly half are children.
• More than 90% of SNAP benefits are used up by the third week of the month.
• 1 in every 2 babies born in the United States is enrolled in WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children).
Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2009.
• More than 1 in 8 people in the United States lives below the poverty line, which is $21,756 for a family of four in 2009. One in five children in the United States lives below the poverty line.
• Most Americans (51.4 percent) will live in poverty at some point before age 65.
• A person working full-time at the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. The official poverty line for a family of three—one parent with two children—is $17,285.
From Bread for the World website: http://notes.bread.org/
• The United States has gone from 1st to 9th place among nations in the percentage of its population that graduates from college.
• The U.S. 24th in the portion of children who have a high school degree. The main reason the U.S. economy was so dominant for much of the Twentieth Century is because U.S. workers on the whole were so much better educated than other workers across the world.
Statement by Michigan Green Party Candidate: Julia Williams on her EMPTY PLATES protest:
THE BEGINNING: ONE SMALL OUTCRY!!!! DEC. 12, 2010 http://juliawilliamsforcongress.com/
“I call for all of us who reject the economic terrorism of our legacy parties to RISE UP and hit the pavement! I want to see grandmothers and mothers, grandfathers and fathers, children, union members, students, Greens, Socialists, any group that rejects the idea that forced starvation can in any way “be good for our country”, become a visible, palpable, physical presence, and demonstrate on December 12th! …
Can we demand that Obama sign Executive Order 7034 and create a WPA? A thousand small fires can light up this country, the beginning of a movement that rejects the savaging of our safety nets, that disavows the idea that throwing millions of children into poverty, hunger and homelessness is the answer to our economic problem, while corporations and CEOs enjoy ever-larger profits and income at our expense. Please, can we join together for this one, small outcry? For a few hours in the middle of this holiday season we can make a statement that could reverberate around the country and begin to show our true strength.”
Obama: Create Jobs by Executive Order http://www.marjoriecohn.com/2010/11/obama-create-jobs-by-executive-order.html
Excerpts from Jeanne Mirer and Marjorie Cohn
The WPA was quickly implemented. By March 1936, 3.4 million people were employed and an average of 2.3 million people worked monthly until the program ended in June 1943. During its existence the WPA employed more than 8,500,000 different persons on 1,410,000 individual projects, and spent about $11 billion. The average yearly salary was $1,100, a living wage at the time. During its 8-year history, the WPA built 651,087 miles of highways, roads, and streets. It constructed, repaired, or improved 124,031 bridges, 125,110 public buildings, 8,192 parks, and 853 airport landing fields.
Today our infrastructure is crumbling, and loss of revenue is forcing many cities and states to cut basic services. About 15 million people have become unemployed since the crisis hit in late 2008; a million and a half of them are construction workers. The need for a direct jobs program is either as great, or even greater than during the Depression. But, in light of the election results, is such a program possible? Can the President directly create jobs by executive order? The answer is a resounding yes. Remember when the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which created the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) was passed, one of the purposes was to preserve homeownership, and promote jobs and economic growth.
Much of the TARP money has been repaid and the administration refers to the profit on the payments. If one assumes an average cost of one job is $50,000, 6 million jobs could be immediately created for $300 billion. 12 million jobs could be created for $600 billion. Because this is already appropriated money, Congressional Republicans could not block it. This direct job creation would be bold. It would also be highly stimulative. It would not add to the deficit because it is already appropriated money. Furthermore, one third of it would come back immediately in taxes, and more importantly, the growth in demand from this number of added jobs would expand private sector job growth and grow the overall economy.
This country has a lot to do to get its economic house in order. It is heavily dependent on the financial services industry which only promotes speculation and unregulated bubbles. It is largely controlled by the defense industries which have promoted two and possibly more wars. It is beholden to the extractive energy industries, whose owners are funding the “tea party,” thus putting environmental amelioration on indefinite hold. And it is more and more influenced by the prison industrial complex which promotes hostility to immigrants, and takes resources from education and other vital areas. For the last 30 years it has relied on anti-union and anti-worker policies, which has forced the hemorrhaging of high paid manufacturing jobs to low cost countries and driven down wages for U.S. workers which can no longer be papered over with unsustainable debt.
The President cannot solve all these problems overnight, but with a stroke of a pen he can use already appropriated money to create millions of good green jobs, and move down the road to recovery much faster. Any opposition to this from the Republicans will expose their hostility to anyone but the richest members of society, and give the progressive movement ammunition to take the offensive.
Green Party: Bush-Obama Tax Cuts (For Obama Anything Worth Doing, Worth Doing Badly!)
Email I received from Howie Hawkins NY Green Party Office:
· Tax-cut deal with GOP seals Obama's betrayal of working Americans who elected him, say Greens
WASHINGTON, DC -- Green Party leaders urged House Democrats to stand firm and do what they can to block President Obama's tax package, calling it a capitulation to the Republican Party that will expand the deficit and undermine Social Security.
"The tax cut is evidence that President Obama isn't compromising with Republicans, he's adopting their agenda," said Howie Hawkins, 2010 Green candidate for Governor of New York and co-chair of the Green Party of New York State. "Greens warned that should the President's tax package pass, Democrats will be the ones initiating the half-century GOP plan to dismantle Social Security. Since the plan extends unemployment benefits by diverting some payroll taxes away from Social Security, it weakens the safety-net for working Americans and defers the financial hit a little bit longer."
Green Party leaders praised Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vt.) for his eight-and-a-half-hour speech on the Senate floor about the damage that the President's tax package will do to the Social Security trust fund and the safety net for low- and middle-income Americans.
Green leaders said that if either Democrats or Republicans want to reduce the deficit and restore domestic financial stability, they should reduce the military budget and work to end the military occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Green Party has repeatedly called for such action, as well as for requiring the rich to pay their fair share in taxes, since tax breaks for the wealthy have contributed even more to the deficits than bloated military funding, as the CBO has repeatedly documented over the last decade.
"It's no secret that maintaining the Bush tax cuts for people who don't need a tax break will do very little to stimulate the economy. The Congressional Budget Office confirms that for every one dollar in tax cuts, only 10 cents to 40 cents are returned to the economy. The tax cuts may drain $4 trillion from the US treasury in revenue," said Laura Wells, 2010 Green candidate for Governor of California. "Republicans have little concern for the deficit or for the nation's unemployed.
The swollen deficit is attractive to Republicans because it leads to a fiscal crisis in which agencies and public-sector jobs get shut down, regulation of corporations goes unenforced, and privatization of public resources and services is fast tracked," Ms. Wells added.
The tax bill will raise taxes on working people: about 40% of workers (about 45 million households out of just over 100 million total households) by replacing the Making Work Pay tax credit with the Social Security payroll tax cut (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20025087-503544.html).
Greens also faulted Democrats for not fighting to extend unemployment benefits for "99ers," about 2 million unemployed whose benefits ran out in their 100th week of unemployment.
Greens called the GOP obsession with the estate tax, which affects the top three tenths of one percent of Americans, typical of a party that exists solely to serve the most powerful corporate interests and the wealthiest income brackets. "Populist" Tea Party favorites elected to Congress and conservative 'Blue Dog' Democrats have signed on to the same plutocratic agenda, and Democratic Party leaders repeatedly cave in to their demands, regardless of which party controls Congress, said Greens.
MORE INFORMATION Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
· Green candidate database and campaign information: http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml
· Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
· Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers
· Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/ballotstatus
· Green Party Livestream Channel http://www.livestream.com/greenpartyus
"Compromise Tax Cut Plan Tilts Heavily in Favor of the Well-Off" Citizens for Tax Justice, December 7, 2010 http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2010/12/compromise_tax_cut_plan_tilts_heavily_in_favor_of_the_well-off.php
"Note on the Tax Deal" By Sam Smith, The Progressive Review, December 7, 2010
http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2010/12/notes-on-tax-deal.html
"Alternatives to Austerity" By Joseph E. Stiglitz, Project Syndicate, December 6, 2010 http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz133/English
"Obama-GOP tax deal the beginning of the end of Social Security, Sen. Sanders says" By Edward W. Dolan, The Raw Story, December 14, 2010
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/tax-deal-beginning-social-security-sen-sanders/
"What Bernie Said" By William Rivers Pitt, truth-out.org, December 14, 2010
http://www.truth-out.org/what-bernie-said-part-i65944
Green Pages: The official publication of record of the Green Party of the United States (Fall 2010 issue now online)
http://gp.org/greenpages-blog
Open Letter to NY Governor Andrew Cuomo from Green Party's Howie Hawkins
An Open Letter to Andrew Cuomo from Howie Hawkins via email:
December 30, 2010
Dear Governor Cuomo,
Congratulations on your election.
During our recent Gubernatorial contest, we emphasized different approaches as to how best restore the state's fiscal health and to reduce the onerous impact of local property taxes. But as you prepare to start your administration, it is critical that the long term needs of our state take priority over the political rhetoric that dominates election campaigns.
For most New Yorkers, especially the more than one million who are unemployed or underemployed, the lack of jobs is the most critical issue. And with our state and country facing the greatest recession in seventy years, it is imperative that government policies at all levels provide a cost effective economic stimulation.
Progressive tax reform, starting with ending the rebate of billions of dollars annually from the Stock Transfer Tax, should at the top of the list for three reasons: for fiscal responsibility, for jobs and economic recovery, and for providing needed public services.
Fiscal Responsibility: As economists such as Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz have pointed out, it is fiscally irresponsible in a major recession to rule out progressive tax reforms that raise taxes on the wealthy and cut taxes for the middle and working classes. In particular, tax cuts for the wealthy such as recently enacted by Congress will do nothing to stimulate the economy because they do nothing to stimulate demand.
The share of income taken home by the richest 1 percent of Americans has almost tripled in the last three decades to 24 percent. New York has the most unequal income distribution of all 50 states. Yet the rate for the top income tax bracket in New York is less than half of what it was in the 1970s. The wealthy need to pay their fair share of taxes again.
Retaining the revenue from New York's existing Stock Sales Tax would generate at least $13 billion in additional revenue, eliminating the projected $10 billion budget deficit for 2011. Along with other revenue reforms it would generate a surplus for job creation and public services, which will help the economy to recover.
The Stock Transfer Tax is a tiny sales tax on stock purchases, with a graduated scale topping out at 1/20th of 1 percent or $350, whichever is less, on large purchases of a stock. Compare that to the 8 percent sales tax on consumer goods. The tax has been collected since 1915. But since 1981, it has been collected and then immediately rebated.
This sales tax primarily hits on those who speculate on stocks rather than those who make long-term investments. The sales tax revenue been growing rapidly due the computerized high-frequency trading on their own accounts by big financial firms like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase - a form of insider trading that distorts the market and should be discouraged. These firms, which the taxpayers bailed out with trillions in federal loans and guarantees and are now highly profitable, pay the lion's share of the Stock Transfer Tax.
Jobs and Economic Recovery: The economy needs public spending to raise demand in an economy that is stagnant, with excess productive capacity, intractably high unemployment, and mounting foreclosures and bankruptcies. The banks and corporations are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. But they are not lending and investing because the consumer demand to make such investments profitable is not there. If government doesn't step in with spending to raise demand, the economy will continue to deteriorate, lowering tax revenues, and necessitating further public spending cuts, which will further depress the economy. It is a vicious downward spiral. With consumer demand and therefore business investment depressed, only increased government spending can turn the economy around.
Public Services: In this stagnant economy, there is an increased need for public services, from safety net programs to aid the unemployed and their families to public jobs in public works and services to reduce unemployment. Whether it is the under-staffing of schools and snow removal crews due to recent budget cuts, it makes no sense to cut public jobs and services when we face high unemployment, depressed consumer demand, and increased needs for public assistance.
I highlight the Stock Transfer Tax because it is revenue the state already collects but gives right back. It is not a new tax. It just requires that the state retain revenues it already receives.
Income tax reform is another option. The massive and growing disparity of wealth in NY and the US is a fundamental cause of our present economic crisis and needs. The Progressive Caucus of the NYC City Council recently proposed changing the state and city income tax laws to recapture part of the hundreds of billions of dollars in a tax cut windfall recently given to the wealthy by Congress.
If New York went back to the progressive income tax structure we had in 1972, the state would raise $8 billion more in revenue while giving 95% of New Yorkers a tax cut. In 1972, New York State had a personal income tax with 14 graduated brackets, ranging from a low of 2% to a high of 15%. Today New York has only five flatter brackets, between 4% and 6.85%. Most people with a full-time job reach the top bracket. A single person reaches the top 6.85% rate once his or her taxable income reaches $20,000, a married couple at $40,000. A more progressive income tax would increase state revenues and, due to the tax cut for the working and middle classes, increase consumer demand to help the economy recover.
The state's fiscal crisis is not due to excessive spending, but rather to under-taxing the wealthy. Let's not make the state's economy and fiscal crisis worse with austerity measures that cut public spending while leaving the existing regressive tax structure in place.
There are certainly areas of wasteful spending that should be addressed. We need to control our skyrocketing health care costs, by far the biggest part of the state budget. The first step should be to eliminating the enormous waste associated with our odd system of private health insurance. We need to stop spending billions of dollars on economic development and tax expenditures that reward campaign contributors rather than creating jobs. We need to stop wasting enormous amounts of tax dollars in contracting out services, such as we witnessed with the recent payroll scandal in NYC. We need to stop the endemic graft among state legislators.
It seems like every politician these days talk about a green vision for the future of New York. That will only begin to be realized under your tenure as Governor if you provide the leadership needed to make the necessary public investments to rebuild New York for a sustainable prosperity.
Sincerely,
Howie Hawkins
2010 Green Party candidate for NY Governor
Syracuse NY
hhawkins@igc.org
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