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 softly. “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 is running for one of two open Syracuse Common Councilor-at-Large seats. In the election Nov. 6, he is opposed by Republican Bill Harper, Conservative Bob Teachout and incumbent Democrats Kathleen Joy and Bill Ryan.
Hawkins has earned a reputation for his progressive political stances, which have developed since he was a teenage activist in the 1960s. He has run for office 12 times and lost 12 times. But now, he said, he is confident that this time around he will be elected to the Common Council.
In this election, his platform focuses 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. He 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 a city-owned power company to cut costs and provide renewable energy such as wind power as an alternative to fossil fuels. A power company like this already 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. 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, call’s Hawkins’ ideas “visionary.” Some “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.”
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.”
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, as was 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. “I knew I would be drafted and probably sent to Vietnam, but the officer program allowed me to continue school,” he said.
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 its funding from non-profit organizations.
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 RE-IDENTIFY 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, said Ehrenreich, it was largely unsuccessful.
After CommonWorks lost funding and died, 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.”
Although Hawkins spends time organizing local demonstrations, he is often busy campaigning. 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.
In the 2005 Syracuse mayoral election, Hawkins received 4.6 percent of the vote, according to The Post-Standard. His name recognition from that election, Hawkins predicts, will boost him in November’s Common Council election.
But campaign funding has been a problem for Hawkins in the past and continues to be an issue. He often contributes his own money to print yard signs and fliers. He has raised about $1,000 from contributors so far and said he needs a few more thousand to keep his campaign running.
Even if Hawkins doesn’t win this election, Syracuse voters can expect to see more of him in the years to come.
“I’ll be around Syracuse for awhile,” Hawkins said with a smile. “Don’t have plans to go anywhere else.”
Hawkins’ Platform:
- Lower Syracuse poverty rate by expanding the living wage to all workers, creating youth recreation and job programs and hiring more minorities to work with the city and city contractors.
- Require developers to build affordable housing so low-income residents are not displaced.
- Create a city-owned public power company to cut costs and build renewable energy sources.
- Require the inner harbor neighborhood to use environmentally friendly building standards for community development.
-30-
