Not easy being Green

Howie Hawkins looks right at home in the Onondaga County Green Party office on South Salina Street.

Wearing a black polo shirt and well-worn jeans, he sits amid a clutter of tattered books, yellowed newsletters and campaign posters dating back to the mid-’90s. The office is a veritable testament to Hawkins’ work.

‘Been involved in politics a long time,’ Hawkins, 54, said. ‘Even before I could vote, I was urging adults to register and vote for the Peace and Freedom Party in California in the late 1960s.’

Hawkins ran – and lost – a campaign for one of two open councilor-at-large seats for Syracuse Common Council in Tuesday’s election. Democratic incumbents Kathleen Joy and Bill Ryan retained the two seats. Hawkins received 4.2 percent of the total votes, according to The Post-Standard.



It’s a story Hawkins has heard before. Since 1993, he has run for a variety of offices, including common councilor, Syracuse mayor, state comptroller, county executive, U.S. legislator and U.S. senator.

Thirteen times, Hawkins has campaigned for office. Thirteen times, Hawkins has not been elected.

But during this time, Hawkins has earned a reputation for his progressive political stances, which have developed since he was a teenage activist in the 1960s.

In this past election, his platform focused on expanding the living wage to cover all workers, preventing crime through youth recreation and jobs programs and establishing a city-owned power company.

The Common Council recently passed legislation that requires city-owned public buildings to meet certain environmental standards. There are four levels of standards put forth by the U.S. Green Building Council: certified, silver, gold and platinum. The Common Council legislation requires that new construction and major renovations adhere to the silver standard.

That’s not enough, says Hawkins. Hawkins has worked with innovative environmental technologies such as solar panel installation since the 1970s.

‘I support the green principle of creating environmentally friendly buildings,’ Hawkins said. ‘But we can do better and apply platinum standards to neighborhood development.’

Hawkins advocates for a city-owned power company that would cut costs and provide renewable energy such as wind power as an alternative to fossil fuels. A power company like this already successfully exists in nearby Solvay.

Ron Ehrenreich met Hawkins in the mid-1980s when Ehrenreich was traveling through New England organizing political activists. The two men started a correspondence and kept in touch. Ehrenreich was instrumental in bringing Hawkins to Syracuse in 1991 to be director of CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives.

Ehrenreich, now treasurer of the Syracuse Cooperative Federal Credit Union and a fellow Green Party member, calls Hawkins’ ideas ‘visionary.’

‘Some of his ideas may seem unusual to some voters,’ Ehrenreich said. ‘But some of these ideas, like the public power company, have already worked elsewhere. It can be done here, too.’

Hawkins’ interest in politics started developing when he was a teenager. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, surrounded by the protests and demonstrations of the politically turbulent 1960s.

Civil rights was an especially important topic in Hawkins’ racially mixed community. That, and the threat of nuclear war.

‘We had to dive under our desks at school during nuclear war drills,’ Hawkins said. ‘It made me think the people running the world were out of their minds.’

Hawkins described himself as a high school jock who played baseball, basketball and football. But he also wanted to participate in demonstrations for peace, the environment and civil rights.

‘I supported the movements, but I didn’t see myself becoming a candidate or a leader,’ Hawkins said. ‘I just wanted to be one of the troops.’

Hawkins’ activism continued at Dartmouth College, where he enrolled in a Marine officer training program. Hawkins saw the war as illegal and immoral. He spoke publicly for the first time at Dartmouth – a Marine leading anti-war protests.

‘You speak once, and people start seeing you as the person to go to,’ Hawkins said. ‘All the sudden, you’re a leader.’

Hawkins’ officer training program had a two-year active service requirement. But he was never sent overseas.

‘I’m glad I didn’t have to go into combat,’ he said. ‘I’m also glad I didn’t have to refuse an order to go into combat.’

Hawkins stayed in New England after college, working in construction and leading anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid movements. He helped form a cooperative that developed solar and wind energy technologies before it lost funding.

He attended a meeting in St. Paul, Minn., in 1984 about establishing a national Green Party. Creating the party was difficult because activists had to organize local groups around the country to form a support base, Hawkins said. Since then, the Green Party has become prominent in national politics, most notably with the presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader.

Hawkins was still working in construction when Green Party member Ehrenreich recruited him to become director of the Syracuse-based CommonWorks in 1991. The organization worked to form new cooperatives in low-income communities, but was largely unsuccessful, Ehrenreich said.

After CommonWorks lost funding and folded, Hawkins stayed in Syracuse. He spends his days working in the Green Party office or at home. At night, he unloads trucks for UPS – usually from about 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. In his free time, he reads history and social theory. A few months ago, he finished ‘Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.’

‘That book was fascinating to me,’ Hawkins said. ‘The Mongols were brutal in their conquering, but very progressive for their times. With religious tolerance, they were much more advanced compared to some people today.’

Syracuse has become his home. And even though Hawkins has never been elected to public office, his work greatly affects Syracuse’s political landscape, Ehrenreich said.

‘When you’re advocating change, like Howie is, getting the issues out there for people to think about means you’ve run an effective campaign,’ Ehrenreich said. ‘Just because he hasn’t won yet doesn’t mean he hasn’t been successful.’

So Syracuse voters can expect to see more of him in the years to come, 13 losses and all.

‘I’ll be around Syracuse for a while,’ Hawkins said with a smile. ‘Don’t have plans to go anywhere else.’





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