Howie Hawkins Money Bloom Today: Support a Green New Deal for NY!

Grassroots supporters of Howie Hawkins' Green Party campaign for Governor of New York are holding an online “money bloom” today, Friday 22 October, with the goal of raising $10,000 for outreach and advertising.

We are trying to find 1000 people who will give $10 to help Howie Hawkins reach as many voters as possible with his message of a Green New Deal for New York. 

Check out the Howie Hawkins Money Bloom and spread the word!

http://on.fb.me/howiehawkinsmoneybloom 

As anyone who watched Monday night's gubernatorial debate knows, Howie Hawkins is the true progressive candidate in the race, with detailed plans to enact progressive taxation, single-payer health care, green public works jobs with living wages, free SUNY/CUNY tuition, a ban on hydrofracking, marriage equality, legalizing marijuana, and electoral reforms such as proportional representation, instant runoff voting, and public campaign financing. 

In contrast, Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic-Independence-Working Families candidate who leads Republican Carl Paladino by 23 points in the latest Marist poll, presented himself as a socially liberal corporate Democrat who will slash public services and fight unions more effectively than Paladino.

As Hawkins explained in his closing statement at the debate, his goal is to build a movement and establish the Green Party as New York's 3rd major party. If Hawkins gets at least 50,000 votes for Governor, the Green Party will win a ballot line in New York for the next 4 years, making it much easier to run Green candidates on the local level where Greens have had their greatest success in New York. 200,000 votes would firmly establish the Green Party as New York's 3rd major party.

On board yet? Head on over to the Howie Hawkins money bloom:

http://on.fb.me/howiehawkinsmoneybloom  

While Cuomo and Paladino presented harsh budget cuts and union-busting as the only solution to New York's $9 billion deficit, Hawkins pointed out an inconvenient truth: last year NYS collected $16 billion in stock transfer tax revenues from Wall Street – then rebated it in full. Hawkins proposed to keep the stock transfer tax, impose a 50% windfall profits tax on $20 billion in taxpayer-subsidized bankers' bonuses, and restore NY's income tax to the more progressive structure it had in the 1970s (which would increase revenue while lowering taxes for 95% of New Yorkers). 

Hawkins' plan would allow NYS to close the budget gap and leave $25 billion left over for a state-owned Bank of New York and a green economic stimulus. Hawkins proposed “employment offices” where the unemployed could find jobs in fields such as renewable energy, weatherization, and mass transit. The Bank of New York would spur economic recovery by extending credit to small businesses, worker cooperatives, and New Yorkers who are unable to get loans from Wall Street.

On the issue of hydrofracking, the Green candidate also offered a clear alternative. Hawkins pointed out that the reliance of Cuomo's energy plan on natural gas belied the Democrat's “wait and see” rhetoric, while the Green Party supports a ban on hydrofracking, a natural gas mining procedure in which a toxic cocktail of chemicals are injected into groundwater.

Cuomo is virtually guaranteed to win this election. So the choice for progressives has become: do you want to give away your vote to a corporate Democrat who wants to balance the budget on the backs of working people? Are you so scared by a ranting Republican with no chance that you'll surrender your vote to an entrenched insider who will shaft students, labor, the working poor and the middle class to protect his Wall Street funders… the ones who broke the economy in the first place? 

Or do you want to use your vote to build a party that shares your values, to show both parties that you're fed up with their corrupt shenanigans in Albany, to win a ballot line for the Green Party so Greens can build independent progressive power from the grassroots up?

Head to the Howie Hawkins Money Bloom and pitch in $10 or whatever you can afford to give progressive independents in New York a voice. Then spread the word – post it to your facebook wall, invite your friends, retweet (Howie Hawkins is on twitter as @HowieHawkins), blog, send emails, make calls, and shout it from the rooftops:

Howie Hawkins for Governor of New York! It's time for a Green New Deal!

http://on.fb.me/howiehawkinsmoneybloom