Howie Hawkins arrived at his mid-peninsula California high school in the fall of 1967. That October, playing on a less than successful football team, his political consciousness was tweaked by a call for Ban the Draft Week, which shut down the Oakland Induction Center.
Although classifying himself as a sprinter, Hawkins shifted to cross-country the next year, and didn’t let the books interfere with his education. Meanwhile, the student strike at San Francisco State, the street battles to protest the destruction of that city’s People’s Park and a host of other Sixties highlights rocked the nation’s left coast before he graduated in 1971.
Concerned with the vulnerable number assigned to him for the military draft, Hawkins enlisted in the Marines’ Platoon Leaders Training Program, serving for six years and achieving the rank of sergeant, but not completing his commission. Conflict with the Corps arose, he recalls, when he asserted his position that while he would uphold his pledge to defend the Constitution of the United States, he would refuse to fight in an unconstitutional war–one which had not been declared by Congress. In 1984 he helped found the national Green Party, and has run for office locally on that line 13 times.
Shepperd asks Hawkins:
There seemed to be more of a deliberation process this time compared to all the other races you have entered. Was this a more difficult decision?
No, we deliberate every time. This time there was no hesitation on the part of the Green activists, because they are in the middle of the anti-war movement in this town, the public power campaign, some of them are involved in the work on Onondaga Creek. They want to expand on some of the ideas on a sustainable Syracuse developed in the mayoral campaign in 2005. There was a feeling that if we got involved in the Congressional race it would detract from those things. In the end there were other folks, outside the core Greens, who kept urging me to run.
Finally the Greens gave me their blessing. It just took a while to get to the point where they said, ‘Let’s go.’
You won’t be ballot mates with Ralph Nader this time. What’s up with his presidential campaign?
Nader’s running independent. In New York it will be called Populist. The Greens will probably nominate {former Georgia Congressperson} Cynthia McKinney at their Chicago convention. I’ll be running as a Green Populist. I have the support of both. I don’t know whose line I’ll be on, but I’ll have my own box at the bottom of the ballot.
Of all the issues you’ve raised over the years, do you think public power is the one which finally might really happen?
Yeah. It’s really the second. Living wage is one we really got going. After the Council voted it down, {Green staffer} Sally Kim ran around poking her nose in everywhere to revive it. At the least, we can define the issues of this campaign. I think, however, given the Stonecash poll–and he nailed the County Executive race right on the money–one-third for the Democrat, one-third for the Republican, one-third undecided, pretty close to the enrollment, that means a third candidate could win.
There are two discreet demands I will make, which I think I have majority support in the district. One is national health insurance, a single-payer medicare for all system. Obama’s proposing public subsidies for private insurance, which Maffei talks about, which means the public will get screwed because the private insurance companies are a big lobby and all the regulations will be to their benefit.
Single-payer will save half a trillion dollars a year, $350 billion in unnecessary paperwork done by people trying to get reimbursed from 1,500 insurance companies, a bureaucratic nightmare. That’s 31 percent of our health care dollars.
There’s $200 billion a year in fraud and abuse, which is very hard to track when you have 1,500 payers. Obama says his plan is going to cost $65 billion, but (Hillary) Clinton said with mandatory subsides for people who can’t afford it, it will be closer to $100 billion. We spend more than double per capita on health care than any other country in the world, one out of every six dollars in our economy. The insurance companies are parasites on the rest of the economy. The auto industry in Detroit cannot compete with the auto industry in Ontario, and it’s the same company. There’s a $1,500 difference per car because the government covers insurance in Canada, and GM, Chrysler and Ford have to cover it through private insurance companies in this country.
Second issue is the wars in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. The Democrats talk about ending the war in Iraq, redeploying the troops, escalating in Afghanistan and threatening Iran. All Maffie says is, ‘I want to end the war. It’s a waste of money.’ But he doesn’t specify how he’s different from Obama. In redeployment, Obama wants to move combat units at a rate of one or two brigades a month over 16 months. Depending on who does the math, that leaves between 35,000 and 100,000 support troops, residual forces in Iraq, training the Iraqi proxy army, providing recon, air support–the same kind of insurgency war with new tactics. It’s like Vietnamization on steroids.
Is the war really about oil?
I think there are three reasons for the war. One is oil. Two is military bases in the region so we can strike anywhere. And three is let’s have a war because interests like Blackwater don’t make any money unless there’s a war.
There’s a whole military industrial complex for whom war is just a business. Our position is we have no right to occupy those countries. If we need oil and gas we should buy it on the open market, just like the Chinese. The war has cost between $3 billion and $4 billion in our district alone. That money needs to be devoted to other things.
We should declare an immediate cease fire in both countries, tell the people we’re not shooting anymore, we’re on our way out with a six month withdrawal plan, and let those people figure out what’s going to happen. We should provide reconstruction aid. If they ask for peace keeping forces we should provide financing, but not our troops. Look at the height of their civil war, 80 to 90 percent of the attacks were on US troops or the Iraqi army we were sponsoring. If we withdraw US troops the violence will go down. They’ll still have a fight, but it will be their fight, not ours.
How will you get these messages out? Will they include you in debates?
I think they’ll include me in debates. A lot of people in the media seems to be yawning at the debate as it’s going on now. I’ll stick to the issues, and when you have three candidates, it doesn’t pay to go negative. You may hit the target, but you just get too much on yourself. I think we’ve established that the Greens have a legitimate point of view. When I ran for the Senate the League of Women Voters insisted I be in the debates, and when {Hillary} Clinton wouldn’t have it, they withdrew their sponsorship.
The Greens have consistently chosen not to cross-endorse candidates, compromise on issues or engage in coalition politics. Why pursue that philosophy instead of participating in the mainstream political process?
We want to represent the 90 percent of the people whose wages have not increased since the Seventies. You go into a coalition with the corporate rulers, and they dominate the coalition. That’s what you have with the liberals in the Democratic Party. That’s what you have in the Obama campaign. He’s got most of the left-liberals in tow, but the people calling to tunes are Wall Street, General Dynamics and those with military connections. There’s a bi-partisan consensus in Congress, and it’s around economic policies that benefit the super-rich and the giant corporations, and imperial foreign policy.
We shouldn’t be spending lives in Iraq and Afghanistan for oil and gas. It’s not in the interest of the majority of Americans, and it’s wrong. Domestically, the real wages of American workers since 1973. Our workers work longer hours than any industrial working class in the world, and they’ve gone deeply into debt. They’re sitting up on Wall Street thinking up very complicated ways to separate average people from their money and their homes. It’s the biggest bank robbery in the history of the world. We’ve gone from the Greatest Generation to the Greediest Generation.
It’s time to go back to FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights. Everyone willing and able to work should have a job. Social security, secure pensions, affordable energy, transportation and housing. Health care. Public education from Head Start through college. I think we can do that building a new green infrastructure with renewal energy.
