Letter from New York

Howie on the streets for the Nader campaign



Interesting to get this from Howie Hawkins who is running for a New York Senate seat against Hiliary Clinton (pro-Iraq war would be presidential candidate). Howie is a long term and active ecosocialist, we are going to build up a loose network of global ecosocialist over the next couple of months.

He was very involved with Bookchin's Left Green Network.

As you can see Britain brims with pluralistic democratic promise in contrast to the US, you need 10,000s of signature just to get on the ballot paper for many elections.

It is a virtual two party dictatorship.

Howie's book Independent Politics is worth a read if you are interested about how America can move from being a corporate state, the problem is bigger than the slogans we hear of 'Bush and Blair, no, no, no!'


Hi Derek,

My campaign is taking every moment. After Nov. 7, I will get you a list of US Greens to contact about the international contact list.


We turned in 30,000 ballot petiton signatures, double the 15,000 minimum, and although leaders of the Working Families Party (a satellite of the Democrats) examined out petition, they didn't challenge. It would have been a waste of their time. We are on the ballot, which is not easy in New York.

Clinton won't debate Tasini or me. We both debated an empty chair for Clinton at a peace movement forum in New York City last weekend. She's getting criticized for refusing to debate in the newspaper editorials, but she figure's that is better than getting taken apart in a televised debate on the war, health care, etc.

I've asked for Tasini's support after the primary next Tuesday. We'll see if he's ready to burn his bridges to the Democrats. If he's not, a lot of his campaign workers are. They are disgusted at how the Democratic machine denied his campaign access to local committee meetings and the state convention.

-- Howie