 If you are a consumer of independent news and the first place you should be going to is Consortium News and please do try to support them when you can. It doesn't have its articles behind a paywall, it's free for everyone, it's one of the best news sites out there and it's been in the business of independent journalism and adversarial independent journalism for over two decades. I hope that with the public's continuing support of Consortium News it will continue for a very long time to come. Thank you so much. Welcome to CN Live, season two episode 19, Green Ticket. I'm Joe Laurier, editor-in-chief of Consortium News. And I'm Elizabeth Voss. As in 2016, Americans are going to the polls or the letterbox this time to choose the next president of the United States or among two less than popular major party candidates, Democratic voters from the progressive wing of the party and independents who identify as progressive are angry that the Democratic party establishment again teamed up to destroy a center-left candidate this time Bernie Sanders again actually and this time for the center-right Joe Biden. As both major parties serve wealthy interests there seems to be no one in Congress or the White House who represents the interests of the majority that is working Americans. Without representation, calls continue to grow for new political parties that can break the stranglehold the Democrats and Republicans have on the system. The feeling of many progressive voters is that they are desperate to get rid of Trump but they can't abide Biden. The dilemma of 2016 seems to be getting even deeper this time around. With us for the next hour are the presidential and vice presidential candidates of the US Green Party, Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker, the green ticket. Welcome both to CN Live. Thank you. Thanks for having us. CN Live has also requested interviews with the Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaigns but we have not heard back from them. Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker, can you both of you give us a brief overview of your backgrounds and how you came to be representing the Green Party in this election for our audience please. Well I'm a recently retired teamster, worked on construction sites and warehouses but that was to pay the bills. I've been a social movement activist since the 1960s. Civil rights, anti-Vietnam War, early ecology movement where I came up in the San Francisco Bay Area and concluded back then that both parties were dragging their feet on civil rights at best and both of them supported the escalation of the war in Vietnam. So I was asking where's my party? Where's the party that represents peace and justice and the environment? So I supported the Peace and Freedom Party in 1968. I couldn't vote for it but I rooted for it and I pestered adults to vote for it, supported and voted for the People's Party in 1972 and 76 and the Citizens Party in 1980 and then I got invited to the first national organizing meeting for the Green Party in 1984 and I've stayed involved in that effort ever since. Greens in New York have run me three times for governor in New York. Each time we got enough votes to get a ballot line and one year we got five percent of the vote. That was the area Andrew Cuomo wanted to run up the vote to get ready to run for president, get more than his daddy Mario Cuomo ever got, get more votes when he was first elected in 2010 and he got less and he couldn't take us for granted. He had to compete for our votes and he adopted a number of demands we've been campaigning for like a ban on fracking a $15 minimum wage, extending the millionaire's tax and paid family leave. So I think I'm running for president because of those gubernatorial campaigns I ran. Greens around the country asked me to, wasn't what I was planning to do but here I am. Angela. I am, thank y'all for having us. I am a dump truck driver by profession, have been a commercial driver. In January it will be 20 years. I do it because I love it. I feel like a big kid in my truck. I'm originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I live in Florence, South Carolina where I am much, much happier. I've been a labor organizer. I have been a community organizer. I was part of the Wisconsin uprising in 2011. I was part of the Occupy the Hood, which was an offshoot of the mainstream Occupy movement because it did not address the needs of black and brown communities during that time as well. I served as the legislative director for the amalgamated transit union local 998 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for about two and a half years. And in 2014, my late friend Rick Castell drafted me to run against former Milwaukee County sheriff David Clark. I think y'all know who that is, so I'm not going to describe him. But as an independent socialist and in that election we took 20% of the vote, which shocked everyone, myself included, and that got the attention of the Socialist Party of the USA and in 2016, how is the running mate of my, you know, very dear friend who also recently departed, made me so sick. And I ran with him in 2016. This war of politics forever, and I really, really meant it. And then I got a call this April from Howie Hopkins. And, you know, Howie and I, you know, go back to 2014. We've been on panels together. We've been in discussions together. So, you know, there's a synergy between the Greens and the Socialists. So, here I am. Well, thank you. Before we get into some of the issues, I just want to talk about the two-party system. What do you say, first, Howie, to fed up voters who say they're going to hold their noses and vote for Biden as the lesser evil, whether they're in a swing state or not? Noam Chomsky, as I'm sure you know, and Dan Ellsberg are prominent voices who don't like Biden, but who are urging voters, particularly in the swing states, to vote for Biden. What is your response to that, Howie? Well, until the Left acts and speaks for itself under its own banner, puts its own program forward, we disappear. You vote for Biden and you're for a Green New Deal and Medicare for All and ending the endless wars, you get lost in the sauce. They don't know you want those things if you vote for Biden. And Biden doesn't know it. He'll take you for granted. And I'm afraid all these prominent progressives telling people they got to vote for Biden everywhere, no matter what, they are reducing the leverage progressives might have. You know, they say defeat Trump, fight Biden, but what are they going to fight him with? Biden's going to think he's got the progressives in his hip pocket. So, you know, the first principle of socialist politics since 1850 has been we need our own party for working class people. And for a lot of socialists for a long time, voting for a capitalist party was like crossing the picket line in a strike. But we seem to have lost that principle of socialist politics. And I think it's a problem. I mean, it's really been the dominant trend on the left in this country since the 1930s. So we don't have a mass based party on the left. And that's what we really need. Otherwise, we end up doing the grunt work for the centrist like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. And that doesn't build the left or an alternative for the life or death issues we face. I mean, Trump is terrible, no doubt, but Biden has no solutions to life or death issues like the climate and inequality crisis that has life expectancies in this country and decline. And a new nuclear arms race, you know, the bulletin and atomic scientists are doing they clock the closest they've ever been to midnight. That issue has not been addressed by any of the candidates to be the party because both parties support this nuclear modernization where they're deploying new strategic nukes and new tactical nukes. So the left better speak up for itself or it disappears. Angela, do you have anything to add to the issue of of the party of the duopoly and what voters should do right now? I think we've lost her. Looks like yes, she froze. She's frozen. So I hope Angela will assign back in again. That's probably what she has to do. The Green parties in other countries like Germany in particular have had success in getting seats in Parliament. I think proportional representation is probably one of the reasons. In the US two-party system, including the difficulty of getting on the ballot, what is the main reason that for the Greens uphill battle? Is that the main reason you think the lack of proportional representation or are there other issues? That's the main institutional reason. When you have single member districts, plurality wins, whether it's an executive office like president or proceeds in Congress. There is a institutional pressure to settle for the lesser evil to stop the candidate you fear the most. In a proportional system, you can vote for who you want without worrying about helping your worst enemy. But I think it's also like I mentioned, since the 1930s, the left has mostly focused on trying to get reforms through the Democratic Party and it's disappeared as an alternative. There are countries with single member districts, plurality winner, where they have multi-party systems. Canada, the UK, Venezuela was a two-party system under that and now all two parties are long gone, same in Mexico. So I think that subjective factor is also very important and the left needs to start acting and speaking for itself instead of trying to be a lobby inside the Democratic Party. So you advocate voters voting their conscience even though they vote for a party that has very little chance of winning. Yeah, their conscience, their principles. You know, as I mentioned when I got 5% of the vote running against Cuomo, it made a difference. You don't have to win the office to have leverage in the political system. Now, I think we're on the verge of getting to proportional representation. We now have ranked choice voting in 23 cities and counties. We're using it in a state of presidential election. It's on the ballot in Massachusetts and Alaska and you can expand that to multi-member districts for legislative bodies. There's a bill in Congress to do that for the house carried by Jamie Raskin and I think as we get more ranked choice voting in local jurisdictions and states, then it becomes a real discussion at the federal level. So I think that's the idea whose time has come. What is the procedure for getting it on the federal level? Wouldn't Congress have to vote on their own change to proportional representation which they would unlikely do? Yeah, Congress could pass a bill and that's what the Raskin bill would do for the house. For the presidency, you'd need a constitutional amendment to replace the electoral college with the national popular vote using ranked choice voting and Napoleon shows people want that. They want a national popular vote. Ranked choice voting they're still learning about but I think we can build a movement around that demand. I mean it's just incredible because even Israel, US is very close. Ally has proportional representation. Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and of course it creates coalition governments. Sometimes they have to vote again. It appears messy. That's the argument you hear but democracy is messy, isn't it? Yeah and we have gridlock. We have negative partisanship. Most people don't vote for their own party. They vote against the other party because they fear it and in the Congress it pays to go negative. You may have mud on your hands but you're getting mud all over to your opponent. You get a multi-party system and then you got to build coalitions because they shift on the issues. Imagine we had Greens and Libertarians as well as Democrats and Republicans in Congress. You know Greens and Libertarians would be on the same side of issues like getting out of these endless wars, civil liberties, ending the surveillance state, cutting corporate welfare. But when it came to economics, the Greens are probably more aligned with the progressive Democrats on a lot of questions. So the coalition shifts so you don't want to make enemies. You want to keep relationships with people. And so multi-party systems, they don't get in this negative gridlock because the coalition's got to be built. So I think it creates a more positive, constructive political situation. Probably why they wouldn't want to. Angela's back with us. Angela, let me ask you a very broad question and then something specific. Can a third party that has a chance to win be built and would that require some coalitions being formed with the Green Party and other parties and has there been any effort to do that? I think that it is definitely possible. I think that now more than any other time in recent history, I think people are very serious about making something like that happen. And I think that the coalition building is important. One of the most exciting things about this particular campaign is the fact that we are running on and part of our campaign is left unity and left solidarity. Because we understand we're not an island as a party and we're not going to necessarily hold hands and sing Kumbaya with everybody on the left. But there are a lot of places where we can intersect and work together because we don't have a broad independent left in this country. And it needs to be built. And so I think that coalition building is necessary. And I think that a party that represents working class and cash poor people in this country is very, very possible and can be, I would argue that we're already viable. I have a good question for both of you. And that is, do you see issues with election integrity standing the way of your goals in terms of both getting leverage over the Democratic Party and potentially achieving ranked choice voting and that type of thing? Howie, you first. Well, election integrity is a huge issue. There's of course Republican voter suppression, massive issue. The electoral college came into play in 2016 and elected the losers. Donald Trump and George Bush, they lost the popular vote. But it wouldn't even have been close without massive suppression of particularly the black vote. So now we're in an election where Trump and the Republicans are calling the mail-in ballots fraudulent. So after November 3rd, we may be out in the streets demanding that they count the vote. And I'm going to hand it over to Angela because she has experience in that from 2000. Yeah, I was actually a voter in 2000 in Florida where they told us our chads were hanging. And I was the first mass mobilization I ever attended was going to Tallahassee to the governor's mansion to demand that they count our ballots. And obviously, you know how everything went. But it just gave me my first glimpse into the fact that the Democrats didn't have any fight in them. We legitimately, you had this mass mobilization of people who showed up and said, we're not being paid attention to. We want our ballots counted. This is not how our democracy is supposed to work. And they wrote us off. So I am very concerned about election integrity, particularly with all of the chicanery that is already, you know, in the air around this election. You know, I have a lot of concerns. And we might add the pushing through of the new Supreme Court justice as part of that to put her in place so that Trump would have a 6-3 majority in case this election like the 2001 goes to the Supreme Court. But am I wrong in thinking that we we're inevitably or inexorably moving towards some kind of third party that's viable given what happened in 2016. So many voters were disgusted with both of those candidates. Maybe they're a little less disgusted with Biden. I don't know the people were with Hillary Clinton. But once again, the rest of a huge section of the population is being shut out. And is that is that growing? You think how we from 2016? Is there a more of a momentum towards some something that has to change here? Well, I think the conditions are there for that. The problem this year is Trump. I mean, Trump's rhetoric is so negative. He scapegoats so many people. And it's people just want them out. And they're not thinking what the next step is, which is Biden. And there's no solutions there to these real serious problems. But you look at where the people stand. I mean, the three issues I mentioned, Green New Deal, Medicare for all, any needless horse, public opinion polling shows our platforms more popular than Biden's and Trump's because they oppose those things and work for them. And then you look at public opinion polling on party affiliation, the biggest block of voters are unaffiliated now. Polling shows the majority of people would like to see another major third party. So I think it's the onus is really on the left to get its act together because the conditions are there. And I think the way we do that is from the bottom up, you know, the Greens have elected over 1200 people over the years, there are over 100 in office now. We should be electing thousands to local offices. We win a high percentage, you know, relatively high over 30% of those races. It's a matter of knocking on doors, identifying your support and getting out to vote. And those local races, big money doesn't pay such a big role. It's really, you know, going out there and talking to the voters. We can win a lot of those races. And as we build a foothold at the local level, then psychologically, people's can say, well, why can't we elect them to the state legislature or the house? Because we've elected them locally. So you go with that psychological barrier. So I think we can build this from the bottom up into a major party in American politics. How many states are you on now in the ballot? We're on 30 states. That's 73% of the electorate, 381 electoral votes. And where we're official write-ins where the votes will be counted, it's 17 more states. That's, I think it's 94% of the electorate and 514 electoral votes out of a possible 538. What is the source of your campaign contributions? The individuals almost totally. We do have, I think we got $50 from one Green Party local, $500 from one socialist organization. So aside from those sort of political action committee donations, which will accept from people's organizations, we won't accept from, you know, corporate or for-profit interests. It's been individuals, you know, average donation. I don't know what it is right now. It's about $25. And we've raised, last report was $360,000. It's probably about $400,000 now. We've applied for matching funds. We're the only campaign in the country that did. This is primary matching funds. You have to raise $5,000 and contribute to the 250 or less from 20 states. We did that. We're just trying to get it documented with the FEC. And I believe there's 150 or 200,000 more dollars we'll get from that. Now, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the billions the two major parties have, but enabled us to run a, you know, pretty good campaign staffed with, you know, about a dozen people got us running around the country. You know, we're able to do a lot. We can't buy big TV advertising and that kind of thing because that's where the big money goes or direct mail. So have you had, what was the interest from the media been like? Well, print and TV, excuse me. Well, in local media markets, they're interested, you know, presidential campaign shows up, you know, in Bangor, Maine or Wichita, Kansas, that's news. But the national networks, the cable news networks, the, you know, agenda-setting newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post has been nothing. We got three minutes on Morning Joe the week before last, which was really a setup, you know, to say I'm a spoiler. So I was on camera for three minutes and then they spent two minutes after that saying why, I mean, Willie Geist had to admit my program was popular and a lot of people might want to vote for it, but not this time. And then the only time New York Times or Washington Post covers us is when we get knocked off a ballot in some state like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. So we've been basically blanked out. We get more coverage, a lot more coverage in Europe and Latin America, Morocco, places like that, but not the United States. I'd like to move to foreign policy now. Let me ask you this. What is the biggest foreign policy problem facing the U.S.? Well, it's trying to be a global military empire. It is a global military empire. And that's not about the peace and security of the American people. It's about the security of the profits of U.S.-based global banks and corporations. So it's an enormous strain of resources and it makes enemies instead of friends around the world. So we want to totally change the direction. We have peace initiatives. We want to cut the military budget by 75 percent, withdraw from these endless wars, start withdrawing our troops from these over 804 military bases, pledge no first use of nuclear weapons, and with tensions reduced, go to the other nuclear powers and deal with this global nuclear weapons crisis and negotiate complete and mutual nuclear disarmament under this new treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, which 122 nations agreed to the text of three years ago. And now 50 states have ratified and it's going into effect for them. That just happened this week. And go there with world public opinion. Those nations, the international campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons got the Nobel Peace Prize for getting that treaty, the text agreed to by those 122 nations. And hardly anybody in America knows about that because the two major parties are for nuclear modernization, deploying these new nuclear weapons. And corporate media won't talk about anything that they won't talk about. So it should be a top campaign issue, but it hasn't been. And then we got bipartisan support for things like changing who the president of Venezuela is, as if we have the right to do that. Juan Guaido is in the gallery at Trump's last state of the union address. And when Trump acknowledges him, he got a standing ovation from all the Democrats as well as all the Republicans. Very little dissent on that side from deciding who the president of Venezuela is, as if we have the right to do that. You know, Howie, if I'd asked the other two guys running, what's the biggest foreign policy problem facing the US, they would have said some combination of Iran, China, Russia, Venezuela, et cetera. But you've pointed out it's the United States itself that's the biggest foreign policy problem, isn't it? With all of its bases around the world, with its aggressions. Andrew, let me ask you, does the US really face any threats in the world? As we keep hearing? I don't think it's what, I don't think that it's what we're hearing. I think we are the threat. You know, I agree with Howie on that. I think that, you know, our idea of American exceptionalism that, you know, we have the right to, you have something under your sand or something under your soil or in the mountains in your country. And we want it, we come take it because we're us. And, you know, we've got the biggest toys, we've got the biggest, you know, we can mobilize our military. No one, I mean, we are the threat. And, you know, other countries aren't shy in letting us know that. So I think that, you know, going to what Howie was saying earlier, we really have to change the way that we move in the world if we want to change our standing and the way that we are working with other countries. And speaking of, you know, US aggression around the world, we know that journalists, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have done a huge amount to expose evidence of US war crimes and other corruption around the world, committed by not only obviously the US, but also powerful corporations and the list goes on. So now that Assange is facing a tradition to the United States charged with under the Espionage Act, I'd just like to ask for both of your comment on the situation with him and the threat that his prosecution would pose to press freedoms in general and around the world. It's a huge threat. I mean, if he's convicted for that, there's no press in the whole world free. He's not even an American citizen. He's an Australian and US things that can go around and get people for publishing leaked information. I mean, everything or not everything, but a lot of what the New York Times and the Washington Post reports is leaks. That's how that we find out what the hell our government is up to. Julian Assange is being persecuted because he exposed war crimes that Chelsea Manning, you know, released to him. He published. I mean, he's being prosecuted for being a publisher. It's a huge threat to the press freedom of all news organizations. So we believe Julian Assange is the charges should be dropped and he should be freed. Angela, did you want to add anything to that? No, I agree with what I always said. I mean, if you, it sets a horrendous precedent to press around the world and it also like what Howie just alluded to says the US, you don't have to be a US citizen for the US to punish you for telling the truth about the garbage the US is actually involved in around the world. So, and it sets people up to not, to not say anything, which is, you know, the intent. So Julian Assange should be free. Howie, Howie, did you have a change of heart about Assange? I think you were quoted earlier a couple of years ago in questioning whether he was involved with Russia in in the leaks of the emails, or have you always had a consistent position on Assange? Yeah, I've always said Assange should be free. I think, I think in an interview, I did say I was critical of him for direct messaging Donald Trump Jr. during the 2016 campaign, which I was actually recently talking to Daniel Ellsberg, who is trying to get me to tell people to vote for Biden in the in the battleground states. We agreed to disagree. But, you know, he mentioned he's fighting hard for Assange, but he was critical of that as well. I think in, you know, how politics is people like to pick on one thing and blow it out of proportion. I think that's what happened with that comment I made. I think it's a good time to talk about the Russia gate thing. We went through a couple of years. Elizabeth, did you have a question about that? Yeah, first of all, just to reference the way in which Jill Stein, you know, your predecessor, the Green Party presidential candidate in 2016 was unfairly smeared in the aftermath of Donald Trump's win for being a spoiler candidate, but also there were accusations that she had some association with Russia, being a Russian tool, et cetera, et cetera. And just do you, if Trump should win a second term, do you expect to similarly be smeared as agents of Russia in some way? And do you, how much do you think the media is responsible for touting these outright false narratives? Or do you think that they, I mean, do you think that Russia gate has some weight to it basically as well? Well, I've already been called a Russian asset. I've also been called a Russia gator because, you know, intelligence agencies do stuff like that. And I think, you know, circumstantial evidence to indicate they might have been 2016, but it doesn't explain why Hillary Clinton lost. That's black voter suppression in the electoral college. And as far as Jill Stein being a Russian asset, I mean, Hillary Clinton said that about 15 months ago on David Plus podcast without any evidence and the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report on their investigation into the Russians in 2016 gave Jill a clean bill of health. And they prefaced, they commented on what she did, which was go to a RT gala and she was trying to present her points of view and she paid her own way. So they reported all that and they prefaced it by saying, you know, they thanked her for being forthright in what she did. And they're not saying she did anything wrong. But that won't stop the Democrats from this narrative that Jill Stein spoiled the election and who's with the Russians, which is, you know, that's not dealing with the real reason why they lost, you know, the Republicans suppressed a lot of vote. And then the electoral college installed the winner. And, you know, they go after us saying we shouldn't even be on the ballot. Think about how authoritarian that is running for offices, probably the fullest expression of the First Amendment, free speech, petitioning government for redress the grievances, getting your word out through the free press. And they're trying to suppress us, you know, by knocking us off the ballot where they can or here in New York, they tripled the number of votes we need in a bill attached to the state budget last April in the middle of the pandemic, when nobody's paying attention, tripled the number of votes we need to keep our ballot line. So that's the real threat to democracy, the voter suppression, the suppression of parties, which is a form of voter suppression. And I think the other problem with this Russiagate narrative is that it's used as an excuse to save or rattle at Russia, which is, you know, if you care about human rights in democracy in Russia, to be belligerent toward them just reinforces their, you know, the nationalist rhetoric, you know, that they have to justify repression. So I think we need to engage them constructively, particularly on issues that concern us all, which particularly are the nuclear arms race and the climate crisis. And that's the way to approach those problems. I mean, the saber rattling, I mean, a war with Russia would be totally insane because it'd go nuclear and that'd be the end of all of us. And all these war gains and maneuvers and all the, you know, geopolitical movers and the proxy wars, that is just making the situation worse. How we as the democratic establishment came under unexpected and very strong pressure in the 2016 election, it seemed that they have developed now this default position to democratic center that if there's any criticism from anyone in the US of their policies, that they, that's indigenous, that they blame it on Russia, that no one in this country in the United States could develop their own critique of the establishment unless they're being somehow directed by Russia. Also, if there's any information that comes and not disinformation, for example, the DNC emails that we could be published, that was, they were all true. That was information. Even if Russia had hacked it, it really doesn't matter because they were spreading information. It was an information campaign, not a disinformation campaign. So it really doesn't matter who the source was because of documents where now we see the same thing happening with these Joe Biden and Hunter Biden emails. The Post has published them. They seem legitimate because they've not really been denied by anyone on the Biden side. And then immediately we see these 50 former intelligence officers saying that this is a Russian information operation, apparently the letter says. So again, it's blaming Russia. It's not very convenient for the Democrats. How do you combat that by standing up to a power that every time they're criticized or every time there's some wrongdoing on their part is revealed, they blame Russia and it seemed to get away with it. Well, there's a phrase you want to speak truth to power, but I'm more interested in having the power to speak the truth and get it heard, which to me means we got to build a mass party on the left that people know us because we're in the communities and they trust us because they have personal relationships that we built through organizing. And then we can talk about these issues outside that narrative. I mean, when I was on morning Joe, after they took me off camera, Joe Scarborough said he wants to cut the military budget by 75%. Oh, Putin will love that. I would have loved to have responded to him. I think it would be a problem for Putin in their military industrial complex. How are they going to justify their big spending? I mean, it would change the dynamic, but that's not in the mainstream narrative. It's, you know, anytime you criticize the Democrats to quote unquote, the left in the mainstream narrative, you know, you must be working for Russia. I mean, I could go into a lot of my criticisms of Russia as an authoritarian capitalist country, but you know, it's really up for the Russians to deal with. I got to deal with my own authoritarian capitalist country where I live. Even if the US cut their military by 75%, they'd still spend problem more than Russia does. It may be even Russia or any other country in the world. Still. Now, how is this the issue of the myth of America that is so successfully sold to the people? And to me, I look back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki as creating some kind of megalomaniacal leadership in the US. We had Curtis LeMay during the Cold War wanting to drop 300 nuclear weapons on the Soviet Union, et cetera. And this has been an inherent part now that both Trump and Biden seem to embrace this nationalistic, chauvinistic America having to teach the world a democracy when we really, if you look at it with clear eyes, you see they're pursuing strategic and geostrategic and economic interests. And they're not spreading democracy, Libya, Syria, the countries where they touch are and collapse. They overthrow Democrats like Mosaic in Iran or our Benz in Guatemala or or Salvador Allende in Chile to put in place kings, military dictators. They've done it, Syria, they've done it so many places since the end of the Second World War when the CIA began, with the bombings behind them and with short unbelievable power that no nation has ever had before. How can you address this to the American people without them feeling insulted? It's hard to tell the American people, you aren't as great as you're told that you are. How do you make that argument today? Well, my argument is all this foreign military interventions, all these endless wars is not about our peace and security. It undermines our peace and security. I mean, this is a very wealthy country. I like a phrase Ralph Nader used to use, instead of being the world's global military empire, we should be the world's humanitarian superpower and provide aid instead of arms and make friends instead of enemies. We talk about our Green New Deal, a global Green New Deal, to help the global South in particular leap out of the 19th century fossil fuel agent of the 21st century solar age. That would do more to promote our peace and security and world peace and security than this global military empire, which just makes things worse. And you mentioned when you were starting to list some of those countries, I'm thinking more recently like Honduras, President Zelaya being grabbed in his pajamas one morning, and Clinton right away says it's constitutional and the U.S. supported that. And it's similar thing in Bolivia recently. And they just had an election and the people resound and they rejected that coup. But this is something that's ongoing. And I think you just got to explain to people, like Muhammad Ali used to say during Vietnam, I don't have no beef with no Vietnamese. I'm not going to go fight them. I think we got to ask. I'm a former Marine. I was talking with a guy that, a Marine who had been to Helmand province twice, very conservative guy, culturally conservative. And we were talking about his experience. And he said, I was over there twice. And these farmers, we couldn't engage them because of the rules engagement during the day while they're farming. And then they go home, get their rifles and we shoot at each other at night. And then he said, they're back there farming and I'm here. What the hell was I doing there? I think you can explain that to Americans, but we can't do it through the corporate media. That's why we need a mass party that can actually get into the communities and have forums where people look to what we're saying and have a way to participate in politics at the grassroots level. Democrats and Republicans don't offer that. We really have memberless parties. The party enrollment, if they have it in the state, is just to determine which primary you vote in. You don't go to your local chapter of the Democrats or Republicans to solve a problem in your community. They don't exist. The committees they do have are basically social networking and voter mobilization. They don't have discussions of policy or have people organizing to find solutions to their problems. I'd like to move to domestic issues. Angela, about the uprisings. We saw an extraordinary development over the last few months after years of taking police abuse and outright murder, mostly of Black Americans. People had enough, even in the middle of this pandemic. They had enough. We saw an unbelievable uprising. For me, the toppling of statues, those statues are the leaders who created the system that we live under. The people who are now enjoying the benefits of ruling this system that we live under did not want to see their forebears really being toppled. That gets a significant act, more than just symbolic, to show that the old order could be crumbling. It also caused people to take a stand. You couldn't be in the middle anymore. We've seen the viciousness of Trump and Bill Barr, in particular, coming out against legitimate protests, peaceful protests, smearing them, and even trying to smear Joe Biden as a socialist, which is the funniest thing in the entire campaign. I want to ask you, Angela, about the uprisings. Where direction should they go? How do you avoid them being co-opted by the Democratic Party? How does it remain a legitimate movement that can really bring change by keeping the pressure on, I think, a frightened establishment? I think that, and I'm thinking of, because the movement for Black Lives virtually held its Black National Convention at the beginning of the summer, and I attended. One of the things that was up for discussion is the fact that co-optation is a threat by the Democrats. In order for Black people in this country to fully be able to advocate for their own, for our own liberation, we absolutely have to have independent, an independent party, or an independent, and they're still working this out. It's something that's in the works, as far as I understand. But the emphasis is on remaining independent, and that crafting our own agenda, and that these are things that are not coming from the power structure, which is what usually happens. They tell us what we need. It's our pacification techniques. What we're seeing with the way that these uprisings are manifesting now is that these young people are seeing through the pacification tactics. They see these things. The kneeling and kente cloth, which was ridiculous and gross. The painting of Black Lives matter murals in the street. Yeah, that's cute, but that's not what we're asking you for. We want systemic change. At this point, we realized that a lot of folks are still, which is, I saw to my, I wasn't encouraged to see it, but watching the convention, a lot of us are still very plugged into the Democratic Party. A lot of us really still feel that we can push the Democratic Party towards our agenda, but you got a whole lot of folks in this country right now, Black folks that are saying, I want nothing to do with it. We need to be independent. We need to be the ones that are coming up with the solutions that are going to end violence. A whole lot of those voices are socialist because we understand that when you end capitalism, you end some of the most horrific abuses of racism. They're tied to capitalism. A lot of people that are coming forth and saying these things are socialist. It's not something that is solidified, but one thing that is prominent is that people understand that the things that the Democratic Party have been throwing us are topical solutions because they want to keep kicking the can down the road. They don't want to tick any of their donors off. Defund the police. Why will we do that? We don't want to look bad, even though we don't want to tick off police unions. We don't want them angry with us. Well, there's a lot of growing orders among Black folks in this country. We're not playing this game with y'all anymore and are looking to create independent bodies outside the duopoly to get what we need done. Unless Elizabeth has a question on that, I wanted to move on to climate change, Howie. You're the Green Party. Trump's outright climate change denier and fossil fuel champions almost forget about him. Biden has a plan. What do you know about it? How can you critique Biden's plan? Well, I say Trump calls climate change a hoax because Biden acts as if it's a hoax because his plan is pro-fossil fuels, pro-nuclear power, and when you get down to the details that remain after he made it clear he's not for a Green New Deal. If anybody wasn't paying attention, they got that in their first debate. He gives the detail, for example, we're going to retrofit five million buildings in the first four years for clean energy and efficiency. What are 120 million buildings in the country? At that pace, it'll take them 150 years to clean up the building sector. When they talk about transportation, they talk about 50,000 electric vehicle charging stations, but not about revamping the whole transportation system around rails, light rails in the city, high-speed trains between the cities, and putting most of the freight on electrified rails, which is a lot cleaner than trucking now. Most of what he does for solar wind energy is incentives, basically corporate welfare wind. The prices of those have come down, what we really need, and this is what we do in our EcoSocial Green New Deal, which is a detailed plan. There's not another one out there like it. We show our homework, we show them how much it'll cost, transform all productive sectors, not just energy production, but manufacturing, agriculture, buildings, and transportation. We show how many jobs it will create. It creates 38 million jobs. It's a 10-year program, $27.5 trillion to get to zero to negative greenhouse gas emissions in 100% clean energy by 2030. That's because the climate science says we got to do that. Greta Thunberg was schooling the adults at the United Nations recently saying, your last report from the International Panel on Climate Change about the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold says we have a global carbon budget of 420 gigatons carbon. That was two years ago, and we've emitted 42 tons each year, which means we've blown through 20% of that budget, we'll blow through the whole budget in eight years, and there's nothing being done. So we want a full strength Green New Deal. What Biden is offering is fracking the hell out of the country. They made it clear there for fracking. They're not against drilling for oil, and they kind of cover that up when they talk about carbon capture and sequestration, which isn't economically viable. It's not going to happen, and if they did try to do it, it requires a massive infrastructure to pipe the carbon to where you can inject it in the ground, which has its own environmental hazards. It's not viable. Nuclear power costs two to three times more than most foreign to solar and wind energy. Why would you even go down that path? Obama and Biden already did. They gave long guarantees for six new nukes in South Carolina and Georgia. Four of them they've given up on due to cost overruns and construction delays, and they're still pouring money down the two nukes at Vogel, Georgia, but that's only because Brian Kemp, who has Secretary of State suppressed the Black Boat and stole the election from Stacey Abrams, became governor. He's a creature of Georgia power in the Southern Company. That's just a dead end. For the money you would spend on nuclear power, you can build a lot more energy capacity in solar and wind. There's not really a plan there. I don't think Biden really has a climate plan. When he presents it, he talks about some public investment, which really means corporate welfare, not the government itself employing people and making things that we need, which is what our eco-social Green New Deal does. We do like we did a bit in the New Deal and we did during World War II when the federal government took over 25% of the manufacturing capacity of the country in order to turn industry on a dime and that also a democracy to defeat the fascist powers. That's the kind of thing when you need to make this transition. Our eco-social Green New Deal emphasizes public enterprise and planning, particularly in the energy, transportation, and manufacturing sectors. That's the kind of program we need. It seems even the progressive Democrats can't conceive of the government actually directly employing people and producing goods and services. It's always got to be corporate welfare and then it's supposed to trickle down, but it never does. We've got only a few minutes left. Talking about having a war for it to fight climate change, you might argue the same thing for this pandemic, Angela. The way Trump is handle this is almost criminal. I mean it seems like he had a decision to make either we open the economy or else I'm not getting reelected even though that's going to kill a lot of people or we keep it shut down and save people, but I'm probably going to lose because the economy is going in the tank. What is the Green Party's platform strategy, I should say, for fighting this pandemic? One of the biggest things that, you know, sets us apart from anything else. Medicare for all is ours and for us, Medicare for all is a community controlled national health service and it would put the infrastructure in place to make sure that people can get, you know, get test traced and isolated to manage COVID in a way that we're not able to do now because that infrastructure doesn't exist is very hit or miss and I would gently push back that, you know, the way that this current administration has handled the pandemic is not almost criminal. It is absolutely criminal to know, you know, to not invoke all of the things that it could have done and literally let people die. There's a lot of things that could have, you know, if we're going to have people shelter in place, our administration would understand that folks, you know, need to be financially supported and so making sure that, you know, not this hit or miss, you know, $1,200 maybe, you know, that a whole lot of folks didn't get. Our proposal is $2,000 every month for every adult, $500 a month for every child for the duration of the pandemic so that people are not being forced out into the workplace during, you know, a plague and also, you know, alluding to what Howie said about turning the government on a dime. There should be no shortage of PPE for anyone who needs it, you know, just thinking of nurses taking pictures and garbage bags and, you know, both sewing PPE at home because there was nothing available when we as a country could have been producing that and that's something that the president could have made happen and chose not to and I, you know, I have my reasons, you know, behind wondering what his motivations were but the fact remains is he could have done this. There's a lot of things that we could have done to make sure that people were able to shelter in place and be safe and not be forced out to work, you know, or to school or wherever and being that I was, you know, thinking about the fact that I've been classified as an essential worker. I've worked in the duration of this pandemic so just thinking about people who are endangered, they've been treated like they're expendable and we didn't have to go that way. That 2000 a month is really key to this. There are other countries, Britain, Australia, I think France and Germany, they paid their workers so they wouldn't you're going to tell people to have to stay home, you've got to pay them and instead, Howie, we saw these bailouts of again Wall Street, big corporations feeding at the public trial again in the middle of a crisis. I mean, there can't be a worse advertisement for a plutocracy than what we saw here and yet the message doesn't seem to get through this is what's happened. I think the people underground do see that. They only got their $1,200 and they read that Wall Street got a bailout again when they didn't need one. How do you translate that anger again into some kind of mobilization to change this? Well, I think where it's gone is through the vote for Biden because Trump has been so bad on it. You know, I don't expect much from Biden, but I expect them to listen to the public health officials and do what's necessary to suppress community spread, which is test contact rates, isolate those exposed and infected and you suppress community spread, then you can go back to work in school relatively safely. One thing that doesn't get talked about enough is OSHA should have had a special regulation to make sure everybody had the protections they needed in terms of PPE and that workplaces and schools were restructured so you could maximize the social distancing and OSHA has been AWOL and we expect that from Trump, but I haven't heard the Democrats really push on that issue. Some in the labor movement have, particularly those industries affected, but to me the total disaster of the COVID pandemic shows how the two governing parties are presiding over a failed state. You know, all the Pacific Rim countries, European countries, many countries in the global south figured out how to test, trace, isolate, they suppressed community spread and then they went back to work in school relatively safely and we're now in the middle of this pandemic having record numbers of people the last week you know become infected. We got 4% of the world's population and 25% of the infected in the deaths. It's a total failure and while Trump has been a dummy about it, I mean he could be campaigning on how he saved us from the COVID pandemic if he just followed the public health officials. Instead, like he pointed out, he wanted us to go out and die for the Dow. He didn't care about us, he cared about the stock market. Instead, I think it's you know killed any chance he has to win if the vote is counted. So this is something that we could have done a lot better on but this country you know they got gridlock in Congress so they can't get you know any kind of relief to the people and the president is he's like a child you know he's like place make believe it's going to disappear. We've turned the corner as it gets worse and worse. It's unbelievable. By the way, I said almost criminal because I'm not quite sure what statute you can get him on. It must be something for the way he's handled this crisis maybe anyway. I want to end now by allowing you to make final statements. Elizabeth, this is your chance to ask a few more questions. Well, I was just going to ask both of you to comment on how much of an insult you feel it is that the Democratic Party nominated somebody like Joe Biden with his history especially in regards to the 94 crime bill and Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate with her record as a very corrupt prosecutor. I mean how much more tone deaf could the Democratic Party possibly be? Angela, if you want to go take that first. And tone deaf is exactly what we said you know we understood going in that it would probably be Senator Harris who would get the nomination and when they did it was just like y'all are serious you're really going to do this when you know there's a rebellion happening across this country and you nominate someone who is the embodiment of everything this rebellion is rebelling against. It was just I couldn't make it up and you know just the celebrating you know going to what you said about insult just the celebration of the fact you know on the Democrat side that hey we're running a black woman for VP this is the first black woman our side say oh excuse me wait a minute the left has been running black black female VP candidates for decades you know there was already a black woman in the race for VP you know so you know we made sure we put that point but it is absolutely just I don't even know what to call it you know the disregard of what people are asking for and or not asking for we don't want someone who is you know we don't want the architects of mass incarceration in this country to be governing this country so it is very interesting to watch this unfold. Yeah I think it should be regarded as an insult but unfortunately Trump is just I think got people scared stupid they don't even know they've been insulted you know what they did to Bernie Sanders you know after Biden won the South Carolina primary the whole rest of the field closed ranks with the corporate establishment of the Democratic Party to front Sanders off and they know you know Medicare for all is signature issue is enormously popular but they're more interested in their donors than their voters and they think they can take their voters for granted and they will until we build an independent left party. Howie Hawkins am I muted? Nope. Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker were our guests today. Howie one last question do you have any position on nationalizing certain key industries you know the idea of a mixed economy and like back in the 70s and 80s was not in the West and Britain had one in France I mean it was quite quite common never happened in the US is there any role for nationalization some interest to pay for the programs that would be needed that we've discussed Yeah we like to speak of socialization because some industries you want to have decentralized to the proper level and socially owned so it could be the municipal level or you can have like public power systems we have over two thousand of them in the country and we're going to have a national public energy system that's a federation of local public power districts so socialization means social ownership and democratic administration and we say certainly for the big banks and industries that are systemically important or so big that they have you know systemic economic impact and then in the private sector we advocate cooperatives so worker cooperatives workers get the full fruit of their labor that's a form of social ownership and the consumer cooperatives you get the service at cost rather than cost plus the profit for some owners so yeah we're we call ourselves you know democratic and ecological socialist and we want system change not just tinkering with capitalism which is structurally incapable of ecological balance because it's a system of endless growth of democracy because it concentrates wealth in a billionaire class that translates that economic power into political power is incapable of long-term peace and security because you get wars between capitalist states trying to protect their own corporations and it's not about it increases inequality without you know some countervailing measures because you get a fixed wage and all the other value you create goes to the people that own it and that just makes the rich richer and the rest of us struggling to get by so we want system change not just you know reforms of a system that particularly with the concentrated wealth of the very rich they can roll back those reforms because of their concentrated political power well that was howly halkins the green party presidential candidate we were also speaking with angelo walker the vice presidential candidate about the vast majority or a big majority of american people who don't feel represented anymore by the political class and how they are organizing and around the most important issues that they face so again we thank howie and angelo for joining us this week on cn live thank you elizabeth boss my co-host kathy wogan executive producer and our viewers and tune in uh saturday 8 p.m we will be having greg palestine to talk about voter suppression techniques so again for cn live this is joe loria goodbye get out your notebook