Howie Hawkins defends Jill Stein’s role in 2016 as he accepts the Green Party’s nomination
Howie Hawkins, the Syracuse activist who is a perpetual candidate for state and local office in New York and who won the Green Party’s 2020 presidential nomination, said his party owed a debt of gratitude to Jill Stein, who remains widely blamed by Democrats for siphoning votes away from Hillary Clinton in her narrow loss to President Trump.
“The Green Party moves forward, standing on the shoulders of Jill Stein, and her running mates, Cheri Honkala and Ajamu Baraka,” Mr. Hawkins said in his nomination acceptance speech Saturday. “They brought the Green Party to another level in 2012 and again in 2016.”
The New York Times
July 13, 2020
Ms. Stein, who was the party’s presidential nominee in both of those elections and who has declined to seek the nomination this year, argued during her campaigns that there was little difference between the major-party candidates. The Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017 said it was investigating links between Ms. Stein’s campaign and Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Mr. Hawkins credited Ms. Stein for the Green New Deal, which the Green Party touted for years but didn’t become a Democratic Party staple until after the 2018 midterm elections, when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arrived in Congress.
“Jill Stein put the Green New Deal, the signature issue of the Green Party in the 2010s, onto the national agenda,” Mr. Hawkins said. “But the Democrats have taken the slogan and watered down the content.”
Mr. Hawkins also joined many Democrats in criticizing former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for conducting his campaign largely from his Delaware home because of coronavirus concerns.
“Where the hell is Joe Biden?” Mr. Hawkins said. “He lives within commuter distance of the White House press corps. He can command their attention. He should be holding news conferences and pounding away at what we need now — a test, trace, and isolate program to suppress the virus, like most other organized countries around the world.”
