Stanley Aronowitz received more than 70% of the vote for Governor at the Green Party statewide nomination meeting in Ithaca on Saturday. Dr. Jennifer Daniels, who recently received the highest vote total in history for a third party candidate for Mayor of Syracuse, was overwhelmingly endorsed for Lt. Governor. Mary Jo Long, an attorney from Afton NY, was nominated for Attorney General, along with Howie Hawkins for State Comptroller. No other candidates received the 25% of the vote needed to qualify for the statewide ballot without the need for petitioning.
Dr. Aronowitz said that key issues in his program would include energy policy, especially the need to close the Indian Point nuclear power plan; the effects of the growing permanent war machine on our ability to meet social needs in the state; and, tax giveaways to the wealthy and corporate welfare. Like many of the speakers at the Green convention, Aronowitz spoke of the need to oppose the efforts by the national Democratic and Republican Parties to use September 11th as an excuse to curtail civil liberties and increase corporate welfare. Aronowitz also spoke on the need for campaign finance reform, universal health care, and increased state efforts to assist low-income and disabled New Yorkers.
Stanley Aronowitz is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Urban Education at the Graduate Center, City University of New York since 1983. He was the chief organizer in New York for the Independent Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Formerly a steelworker he was an organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers(now UNITE) and the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers. Dr. Aronowitz is an elected officer of the Professional Staff Congress, the union of more than 17,000 faculty and professional staff at CUNY Aronowitz is author or editor of 20 books. He was director of Park East High School in East Harlem, the first post-war experimental public High School in New York City and was associate director of Mobilization for Youth, one of the largest youth work agencies in the United States where he also served as a community organizer.
Dr. Daniels was the Green Party candidate for Mayor in Syracuse last year, pulling 7% of the vote on the Green and Libertarian lines. Jennifer Daniels, M.D., M.B.A is a graduate of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and the Wharton School of Business.
Dr. Daniels, a long time critic of corporate welfare, grew up on the South Side of Syracuse, New York, which has for years been known for its drug traffic. After completing her education, she returned to the South Side determined to help reclaim the area. Among her many activities, she has built her medical office on a block that had been vacant for 20 years. She also built a home for herself and her three children on three city lots located two blocks from her office, where she and her children cultivate an extensive vegetable garden. As a member of the ReconsiDer: Forum on Drug Policy Speakers Bureau, Dr. Daniels addresses the benefits of ending the drug trade through legalization.
Dr. Daniels is the recipient of the 1992 American Medical Women's Association Community Service Award, Community Service Award, the Syracuse Mayor's Outstanding African-American Role Model Award (1993) and the Governor of New York's Woman of Achievement Award (1998). On February 19, 1993, Dr. Daniels was featured in the Wall Street Journal special issue on Black entrepreneurs.
Howie Hawkins of Syracuse received the Green Party designation for State Comptroller. Hawkins was a founder of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 and the Green Party in the United States 1984. Hawkins, the Green's 1998 candidate for Comptroller, has been a Green candidate in Syracuse for Mayor, Congress and City Council. He works for the United Parcel Services and is a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Hawkins is the long time Director of CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives and community organizations in Central New York.
Hawkins said that "for 25 years, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, New York has paid for repeated cuts in rich people's income taxes by cutting public services for the rest of us." Hawkins called for a package of progressive tax reforms that would raise taxes on the richest 10% and on environmentally damaging products, while lowering taxes on low- and middle-income people and on ecological products.
The reforms include: higher income taxes on the richest 10%; replacing the Governor Pataki's STAR program with a progressive "circuit breaker" that caps property taxes paid by low- and middle-income homeowners and renters; increased state revenue sharing with cities and school districts; and, replacing the across-the-board sales tax with selective eco-taxes on environmentally damaging products.
Hawkins called for completely scrapping the state's system of economic development incentives to corporations through tax breaks and grants. Decrying this system as "corporate welfare," Hawkins said that "if the public is going to take the investment risks, they should get their share of income rewards instead of just giving it away."
In place of these incentives, Hawkins called for "a federated system of neighborhood, regional, and statewide investment boards that would be popularly elected, competently staffed, and charged with prudently investing economic development moneys, including all such moneys now in the state budget, public pension funds, and the assets of a publicly-owned bank and insurance company."
The Green's nominee for Attorney General, Mary Jo Long, has been an attorney for 25 years. Long has worked at Brooklyn Legal Services, taught at Cleveland- Marshall Law School and Case Western Reserve Law School, and is now a solo practitioner in Afton, New York. She is chair of the Chenango County Green Party Organization, and a member of the Governing Council of the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York (NOFA-NY). Long and her husband live on an 85-acre homestead. Long and her husband built their own house, raise most of our their own food, and heat and cook with wood cut on their own land.
"The domination of corporations over our politics, economy, culture and environment has gone too far. Corporations were originally created by We The People through acts of our State Legislatures. Corporations have been reaching beyond the bounds for which they were created so that now their purpose is to create profit even if that means cheating people (e.g. Enron), poisoning the environment (e.g. General Electric dumping PCBs into the Hudson River and Monsanto developing genetically engineered foods that uses people as human guinea pigs), or encouraging our children to sit in front of television in order to sell them sugar and soda to the detriment of our mental and physical health. Corporations get away with crimes that are not tolerated when committed by flesh and blood human beings. The Attorney General of the State of New York can play an important role in reining in corporations," stated Long.
Additional information about the candidates can be found on the Green Party web site at http://www.gpny.org/.
The Greens, who finished third in the recent Presidential election, need 50,000 votes for Governor in order to maintain their ballot status. The Greens are committed to ecology, democracy, nonviolence and justice.
