Howie Hawkins says he hears almost every day from well-known environmental advocates who plead with him not to spoil the 2020 presidential election. "I'm getting a lot of celebrity calls trying to persuade me to stand down in the swing states," said Hawkins, the Syracuse activist who has never been elected to public office in 24 previous attempts. Continue reading

Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins, left, speaks with cleveland.com reporter Robin Goist in Cleveland on the night of the first debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. (Eric Heisig, cleveland.com) CLEVELAND — Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins was in Cleveland for Tuesday's presidential debate – not to participate, but to criticize the event as a "fraud" and draw attention to his stances on police reform and other issues. Speaking with cleveland.com outside the Cleveland Museum of Art, Hawkins noted that the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has organized major-party presidential debates since 1988, was organized by Republicans and Democrats. Continue reading

Over the years we have watched the rise in rabid partisan politics in Wisconsin, but they rose to new levels – or rather descended to new depths—in the past two weeks when Green Party candidates for president, Howie Hawkins, and vice president, Angela Walker, were denied spots on the Nov. 3 ballot by the Wisconsin Elections Commission and their appeal was brusquely dismissed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The ballot denial was ostensibly over a discrepancy in Ms. Walker's address on her nomination petitions. The former Milwaukee bus driver who now resides in Florence, S.C., had moved during the time signatures were being collected this summer and, while her filing with the state had her current address, some of the nearly 4,000 signatures on her petitions listed her previous address. Continue reading

PEORIA, Il – Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate David Black made a stop at three of Peoria's downtown statues Tuesday. Black said each statue represented a key issue he believes in. One issue close to Black's heart is helping states transition away from coal dependence and into clean energy without revenue and job losses. "We could do this with solar, wind, and other sources of energy. The net loss would be offset with a net gain. We need to provide some assistance, and retraining and transition. ultimately we can do better," said Black. Continue reading

On the first day of virtual school, only a handful of Franca Muller Paz's students logged into her Spanish class. Many just didn't have a way to get online as they isolated at home, the coronavirus pandemic unplugging them from their educations. As a public school teacher, Muller Paz had an unvarnished view of Baltimore's inequities long before COVID-19 hit. Even when she could teach students in person before the pandemic struck last spring, her classrooms didn't always have functional heat. Continue reading

For years, Democrats have largely failed to rebut President Trump's hollow populist rhetoric on many points. President Donald Trump and Kim Klacik's calculated abuse of "Black Butterfly" Baltimore neighborhoods ("On Twitter, Trump calls Baltimore 'WORST IN NATION,'" Sept. 6) is a case in point. There are two typical responses that have been repeated in enough places to make it safe to assume that these are more or less official Democratic counterpoints. Continue reading

The Wisconsin Supreme Court's conservative majority has a record of intervening in the political process in the wrong way and at the wrong time. Its decision to force the April 7 spring election to go forward at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic — when states across the country had wisely delayed voting until a safe and healthy process could be established — was nightmarishly wrongheaded. Now, the court has intervened again. And it could cause even greater headaches. Continue reading

Hawkins says it is critical for party to reach vote threshold in NY ALBANY, NY – Howie Hawkins, the Green Party's presidential candidate, rallied supporters at Townsend Park to get people to vote for him Nov. 3 so the party can meet the new state requirements to maintain its place on the state ballot. The Greens need at least 135,000 votes or 2 percent of ballots cast, whichever is greater, this fall in the presidential electron to keep their ballot line instead of the traditional 50,000 votes which was done away when Gov. Andrew Cuomo approved the law making the change. Continue reading

Perhaps no place in Maine epitomizes the state’s schizophrenic political character more than the Somerset County town of Solon (pop. just north of 1,000, about an hour’s drive west from Bangor). Somerset County is Trump Country. Barely a third of its voters chose Hillary Clinton in 2016, and though Clinton narrowly won statewide, Trump swept the wilderness of northern and western Maine, earning the only electoral vote he got in New England.* Yet Solon is an outlier. Since the late 1960s it’s been home to an eccentric collective of politically radical, back-to-the-lander artists, most notably the painter Abby Shahn. Every Fourth of July, in addition to fireworks and a patriotic parade, the community improv-theater group In Spite of Life Players stages a leftist protest play against war and greed, using gigantic, brightly painted sets and props, a la Vermont’s Bread and Puppet Theater. Continue reading