Where in Onondaga County is Howie Hawkins?
Syracuse City Eagle
Ken Jackson
May 17th, 2007
Where's Howie? That's the question some are asking as we speed towards selecting a successor to retiring Onondaga County Executive Nick Pirro. Sides are set as parties draw straws to determine who's most popular kinda like the 1970's TV sitcom "Happy Days." The question on some minds is where in Onondaga County is Howie Hawkins?
The activist turned politician has yet to be heard from this election season, like forsythia or chirping crickets answering nature's call to sprout. Our perennial candidate Howie Hawkins is uncharacteristically quiet. Like sparrows are to Capistrano, we need him.
As America and the world mumps on the global warming bandwagon everybody's talkin' bout being "green." Howie Hawkins was green before it was popular. You've seen Hawkins at the neighborhood store, festival and street corner, rain or shine, 10 below zero or 95 degrees, anywhere he can find a signature to get on the ballot.
Hawkins in his various runs for office has pinched the nipple of our body politic. Placing relevant political issues on the agenda that our average "Republicrat" or Demublican" ignore. Traditional candidates will say, "Howie has a lot of good ideas and then they strip them like a shaft of wheat on its way to becoming Wonder Bread.
Our political leaders tend to treat social justice issues such as municipal energy like elaborate pastries munching around the politically expedient crust never seeking the people-empowering filling inside.
Howie Hawkins would push for countwide power to the people without cowtowing to big money interests. Why invest public monies for fraudulent municipal power schemes where the only savings are to governments not "the people"?
There are many of us who can't afford the latest uber-insulated home powered by the gas from rooster farts, and don't own a hybrid like Toyota's Prius.
We're at the mercy of the great American energy idols called "National Greed" and the seven-sister oil companies that have morphed into a few, sucking every spare dime from the common man, woman and child's pocket.
We have a princess, a bureaucrat, a mortician, and a legislature leader in the race for Onondaga County Executive, a cast of virtual "caricatures," why not a super hero for the people? We need Spider Man, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk or Wonder Woman to standup for Truth, Justice and the American Wayor at least run for Onondaga County Executive.
Since we don't have the aforementioned, I'd settle for Howie Hawkins in the Onondaga County Executive race.