Hawkins will focus on his plan for progressive tax reform and revenue sharing to pay for state mandates, relieve property taxes, and fund schools and municipal services. 

Howie Hawkins Brings Green Campaign for Governor to Ithaca 

Key Issues include Property Taxes, Municipal and School Funding,

Fracking Ban, and 100% Clean Energy by 2030

Howie Hawkins, who finished third out of seven candidates in the 2010 Governor's race, will hold a news conference in front of the Department of Social Services Building, 320 Martin Luther King Jr./State Street in Ithaca at 2:30 pm on Wednesday, April 30.

Hawkins will focus on his plan for progressive tax reform and revenue sharing to pay for state mandates, relieve property taxes, and fund schools and municipal services. He has been an outspoken critic Andrew Cuomo's austerity budgets over the last four years, which he calls “rich man's budgets that pay for top-end tax cuts by spending cuts for programs working people use.”

Hawkins will address the theme of his campaign, A Green New Deal for New York, which aims to restart the upstate economy by guaranteeing economic human rights to meaningful work, living wages, health care, education, affordable housing and mobility. The centerpiece of his economic stimulus is to ban fracking and instead build a 100 percent clean energy system by 2030.

Hawkins will also comment on education policy, including increased state aid and replacing Common Core and high-stakes testing with common standards and tests for student assessment that are written by teachers, not corporate contractors. 

Howie Hawkins has been an organizer for peace, justice, labor, and the environment since 1967. A former Marine, he helped organize opposition to the Vietnam War. In the 70s and 80s, he was a leader in the anti-apartheid divestment movement to end US corporate investment in the system of racist labor exploitation in South Africa. He was a co-founder of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 and the Green Party in the US in 1984. He works at UPS unloading trucks, where he is a member of Teamsters Local 317. He received 40% of the vote in his recent run for Syracuse Common Council.

Hawkins won enough votes in 2010 to restore official ballot status to the Greens. The Green Party state nominating convention will be held in Troy on May 17.

Hawkins activities in Ithaca today include a morning interview on WHCU at 8:10 am, a stop at Onondaga Community College on the way to Ithaca from Syracuse to speak to students in the Whole Earth Club, a 4-5 pm interview on WRFI's Practical Earthkeeper program, a 5-6:30 pm Meet and Greet at the Autumn Leaves bookstore on the Ithaca Commons, and talk at Ithaca College in 102 Textor Hall sponsored by the Ithaca College Greens.