New York State Green Party Nominates Stanley Aronowitz for Governor

New York State Green Party Nominates Stanley Aronowitz for Governor

Dr. Jennifer Daniels Accepts Lt. Governor Nomination

Hawkins and Long Receive Nomination for Comptroller, Attorney General

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.