Howie Hawkins on Green Party Outreach to the Sanders Coalition

“The Green Party is stronger than ever this year,” Howie Hawkins told me on Saturday, June 11, at the party’s New York State Convention in Troy.

Hawkins talked at length about the Green Party’s internal structure, the demonization of the Greens by the Democratic Party, and Bernie Sanders’ run for the Democratic nomination during our interview. What follows is a condensed version of that conversation.

We had more people right after Ralph Nader joined the party in 1996,” Hawkins said. “It was a lot of people coming out of the Democratic Party with their machine politics. Most faded away after the 2000 election.”

That election, when George W Bush and his brother Jeb colluded to steal Florida from Democrat Al Gore, was Nader’s best showing- just over 2 percent. Ever since, the Democrats have (erroneously) blamed Nader for the result.

The Green Party went through a decline in the wake of the 2000 election. Now, Hawkins said, the party is back on the rise.

“We restructured dues paying and representation,” Hawkins said. “Everyone here”- he waved at the crowd of about 70 people- “represents more than themselves. Each person represents at least one other person, a district.”

Rewriting the rules to accommodate this representation has made the process more streamlined.

“We rewrote the rules so you have to represent someone to make decisions here,” Hawkins said. “So there are about a dozen local affiliations. It may not look as big as it is.”

The Sanders campaign has opened the conversation for left-wing third parties, Hawkins explained, despite the Senator from Vermont’s relationship with the Democratic Party.

“Sanders has had a non-aggression with the Democrats since 1989,” Hawkins explained. “His independence makes sure progressives don’t run against him.”

By running as a Democrat, Hawkins said, Sanders made his “last movement away from socialism.”Hawkins wrote as much last May in the Socialist Worker.

Sanders is confusing people about what socialism is. Socialism is not so much a social theory, a platform of policies or social ownership of the means of production. Socialism is, above all, the movement of the working class for their own freedom and power in a full democracy.

No matter the level of the Vermont Senator’s devotion to socialistic principles, Hawkins said, the Greens still want to reach out to his supporters.

“We want to appeal to the Bernie Sanders base that doesn’t want to support the Democratic Party,” Hawkins said.

So when the party makes appeals to Sanders- like Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein asking Sanders to run alongside her for the November general election- “Those appeals are ‘made to him’ but really to his supporters.”