Howie Hawkins, the Green candidate for the Syracuse City Auditor, will present his views on the issues in the race for Syracuse City Auditor at a news conference to be held on Friday, October 9 in front of Syracuse City Hall.
Hawkins is challenging the incumbent Democrat, Marty Masterpole, in a two-way race. No Republican is running.
Masterpole will appear on the ballot on the Democrats' Row A. Rows B and C for Republicans and Conservatives respectively will be blank. Hawkins will appear next on Row D.
Row D is two rows higher on the ballot for the Greens in 2015, moving up past the Working Families and Independence lines, due to the nearly 5 percent vote for the Green gubernatorial ticket in 2014 with Hawkins as the candidate.
Hawkins has been an organizer in movements for peace, justice, labor, and the environment since 1967. He was a co-founder of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 and the U.S. Green Party in 1984.
After attending Dartmouth College in the early 1970s, he worked in construction and helped organize a workers cooperative that specialized in energy efficiency and solar and wind installations.
Hawkins moved to Syracuse to develop cooperatives for CommonWorks, a federation of cooperatives that worked in the 1990s for an economy that is cooperatively owned, democratically controlled, and ecologically sustainable. He is currently a Board member and Treasurer for the Eat To Live Food Cooperative and for the Southside Community Coalition.
For the last 15 years, Hawkins has worked a night shift unloading trucks at the UPS hub in East Syracuse, where he is a member of Teamsters Local 317.
Howie's articles on politics, economics, and environmental issues have appeared in Against the Current, CounterPunch, Green Politics, International Socialist Review, Labor Notes, New Politics, Peace and Democracy News, Popular Resistance, Z Magazine, and other publications. He is the editor of and a contributor to Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate (Haymarket Books, 2006).