Howie Hawkins - The Green Party

The Green Party

In 1984, Hawkins was one of the co-founders of the Green Party in the United States, in which he advocated a more grassroots organizing approach than earlier attempts at building a new progressive party. Instead of trying to build the national party from the top down through a presidential campaign as the Peace and Freedom, Peoples, and Citizens parties had done, the Greens would build local organizations and contest local elections until they had enough of a base to launch a presidential campaign, which the Greens finally did 12 years later when they drafted Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke as their presidential ticket in 1996. Hawkins currently serves as a Green Party of New York representatives to the Green Party of the United States National Committee a position he has held for years .He also holds the position of a state committee member from Onondaga County . Hawkins has expressed support and endorsed the Center for Voting and Democracy Instant Runoff Voting campaign .

As an activist in these parties, Hawkins worked on many electoral campaigns, including the Cleaver/Dowd 1968, Spock/Hobson 1972, and Commoner/Harris 1980 presidential campaigns, the 1970s Liberty Union campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Michael Parenti, and several Green campaigns in Vermont and New Hampshire between 1985 and 1990. Howie also gained experience by volunteering in the New Hampshire primaries for major party candidates, namely, Pete McCloskey, the anti-war Republican challenger to Richard Nixon in 1972, and Fred Harris, the populist Democratic candidate in 1976.