Good morning. Guest good morning. Host you are part of the original u. S. Green party and you are running for president. Tell us the history of the green party, how has it changed since 1984, and what does the party look like today . Guest we got started in 1984 after the german greens elected 35 people to their bundestag, their congress, and people around the world said maybe we should do that. We met in 1984 in st. Paul, minnesota and said, we cannot build this out of the president ial run. We have to start in local politics, and we proceeded to do that for the next dozen years. In 1996, ralph nader let us use his name on ballots for president. We got on over 30 ballots, and then he ran an active ballot in 2000 and we were on over 40 ballots. That put us on the national spotlight. We have been here 35 years and currently have 129 elected officials in local offices. It is one of the best kept secrets in american politics, more than any independent Progressive Party has. You have to go back to the heyday of the socialist party before the 1930s. What has changed is we have a lot of ballot lines running local candidates, a lot of experience, and our orientation politically has changed, not just advocating peace and environmental and Economic Justice reforms, we are talking structural changes to ecological structuralism. Host how many people would you say are in the green party as of today . Guest i think a ballpark would be half a million. We have about 250,000 enrolled or registered in the green party where you can do that, but you cannot do that in every state and we do not have a ballot line in every state. If you roughly double what we have, the states that we have the green party, it is half a million. Host cspan will be airing speeches from you and your running mate at 8 00 and 11 00 p. M. What has your Green Party Convention been like . How did the Green Party Convention party go and how does it differ from what the democratic and republican parties to . Guest we are similar. We have primaries and delegates are committed to states, and there will be a roll call today. I came in with the most committed delegates, so the rollcall should nominate me. That is very similar. With the coronavirus pandemic, we have had to do this virtually, so there has been an adjustment and we had to get the technology up. So far, it has gone smooth. We were originally going to be in detroit between july 9 and 12, but now we are online so that is different. Host now, you had been raising money to run for president. How has your fundraising been going for this years campaign, and how does it compare to what President Trump and former Vice President biden are doing right now . Guest they are going to raise billions. We are trying to get to our first million. It is one 1000th of a they are billion. On another order and magnitude order in magnitude in terms of financing. We raised over 200,000 and we just qualified for federal primary matching funds. We are the only campaign doing that. The democrats and republicans do not want to do that anymore, because if you accept that money you have to limit your spending to 50 million. They raised so much money they dont want that now. We are the only campaign in the country that has been trying, and this week we reached the threshold. We needed to raise 5,000 in 20 states and contributions of 250 or less. We will be submitting our application to the government next week and that will give us 250,000 back. Host lets talk about your platform. You have our cspan viewers out there right now wondering what is your platform for president and why they should vote for you. Give our viewers your pitch of why they should vote for you for president. Guest vote for us if you support our platform. Do not waste your vote on a platform you do not support. Do not silence your voice. What we are talking about our Real Solutions for life and death issues. The first is the covid pandemic. We have had a Record Number of people come down with infections yesterday. The chart is shooting through the roof in terms of infections and deaths, and we are six months into this. The two governing parties are presiding over a failed state. Why cant we do a test, trace, isolate program like other countries . Trump is a loser, covid wins, and he is like typhoid mary making his people sick. Where the hell is joe biden . He could be amazing using his voice, get the personal protective equipment and medical supplies that are in short supply in states like texas and florida and arizona. We have people out on the streets protesting the centuriesold pandemic of racism and police brutality, so not just reforming Police Practices but Community Control of the police so they work for us, not themselves. When they police themselves, they get away with murder. That is what we have been seeing. If we could take the Police Department and put it into social services, it will not be enough for these racially oppressed communities that have suffered generations of discrimination and exploitation. We want to defund the police and put it into a Marshall Plan for the city for jobs, education, schools. When i started out this campaign was the climate meltdown, trump calls Climate Change a hoax, but the democrats act as if it is a hoax. The proposal from the house said we will reduce Carbon Emissions by 37 by 2030 and that is not even what the International Group called for. We are calling for a full strength Green New Deal that has. Been our issue for the last 10 years. The democrats diluted the content. They are not calling for a ban on fracking and new fossil fuel infrastructure. If we build that infrastructure we will be locked into decades more of burning fossil fuel and the planet will be cooked. It is a plan to get 20 to negative Carbon Emissions by 2030. The other issue is inequality. Life expectancy is decreasing, so we are calling for an economic bill of rights like roosevelt called for. Like the black freedom and civil rights movements called for in the that would include a job 1960s. Guarantee, guaranteed income above poverty, and medicare for all. We are calling for peace initiatives, 75 cut in military spending, getting out of these endless wars, pledging no first use of nuclear weapons, and then going to the other Nuclear Powers and saying we want complete nuclear disarmament, and agree to the treaty on a prohibition of nuclear weapons. The International Campaign got the Nobel Peace Prize for that three years ago and hardly anybody in the country knows that because none of the candidates are talking about this issue. It should be a top Campaign Issue and we intend to make it one. They are life or death issues. Host lets let our viewers join this conversation. We are going to open up our regular lines, democrats, 202 7488000. Republicans, 202 7488001. Independents, 202 7488002. And we are going to open up a special line for green party members. We want to hear from you at 202 7488003. You can text us your opinion at that same number, 202 7488003. We are always reading on social media, twitter and facebook. Mr. Hawkins, i can tell you we are seeing different versions of this question popping up on our social media feed so i am going to summarize all of them for you. We are going to start by reading this from the new yorker if the green party insists on running a president ial candidate in the few states where it really matters, i hope people will not waste their votes. That is not because i think joe biden is a hero. That is because i think hes not only better than the alternative pushable. Sible politics begins once the votes are counted with less exciting business of prodding politicians to keep promises or opening up the political space for them to do what they want. In that world, which is always the real world, it is a chance have a politician jill stein won 1. 4 million votes in the last president ial election, and a lot of democrats say that if jill stein hadnt gotten those votes Hillary Clinton would be president. We are getting this form of question over and over isnt voting for a Green Party Candidate voting for donald trump because that will make him more likely to win . What is your response to those concerns. Guest a vote for the green party is a vote against donald trump. It is in another column. It is the thing you learn in first grade. That is just simple logic. The first question said politics continues after the election, and that is true, and if you want medicare for all and Student Debt Relief and progressive reforms that Bernie Sanders was championing, and you vote for joe biden, you are voting against those things and silencing your voice and giving away your leverage. You vote for the green party, Everybody Knows you stand for that and you will be heard. When i ran for governor of new york, i got 5 of the vote. Andrew cuomo wanted to run up the vote and get ready to run for president. He could not take us for granted. After that election, he adopted three demands we raised a ban on fracking in new york state, 15 minimum wage, and paid family leave, so if you want leverage after the election you have to vote for what you want and not be taken for granted. As jill stein goes, she brought new voters to the polls. 60 of her voters would not have come out and voted, would have stayed home. If you do the math, if that was true in michigan, she was at the margin. The democrats have got to stop blaming the greens for their own problems. It was not the greens that elected donald trump, it was the Electoral College, and we have been giving democrats the solution to the problem since ralph nader ran 2000, abolish the Electoral College and have president elected by rank Choice National popular vote. Joe biden is welcome to embrace that and that last two republicans got elected by losing the popular vote and installed by the Electoral College. You would think the democrats would address that problem instead of blaming it on the greens. We aint going away. Host lets go to the phones and let our viewers take part in the conversation. Garrett from gilbert, arizona on the green party line. Caller good morning. I live in gilbert and right next to a factory with air pollution. I know you are against nuclear weapons. What are your thoughts on Nuclear Energy as a Clean Solution . Guest it is dirty, dangerous, and uneconomical. It has been the most unsuccessful industrial enterprise since world war ii. Insurance will not ensure it, so we have the price anderson act. We have nukes in upstate new york. Epsilon wanted to shut them down because they were not making money and instead this state has subsidized them to the tune of 8 billion. We attempted to build nukes down and North Carolina and South Carolina with long guarantees from the obama administration, all of those projects have been shut down because of cost overruns and over time on the construction. They are in trouble. This is not a viable option. For the same money we might spend on Nuclear Power, we can inld more Power Generation solar and wind energy. Host you talked about your run for governor of new york, and you received i believe almost 5 of the vote if not more. How do you plan to win enough votes to make this a significant race for president . How do you get people to vote for you . Guest like i said earlier, vote for what you want. If you are for medicare for all and you vote for joe biden, you will get lost in the sauce. They do not know joe biden is you want medicare for all. Joe biden is against it, so make your voice heard. Make your vote count, dont waste it. That is why people should vote for us. It is real simple. If you dont vote for what you want, you are never going to get it. Host joe calling from whitman, massachusetts on the independent line. Caller hello. What are your thoughts on expanding to combat global poverty . Guest i did not quite hear. Caller the International Affairs budget to combat global poverty . Guest i am for a global Green New Deal. We talk about the new deal to convert to clean energy and provide basic economic human rights and we should expand that internationally. Instead of being the Global Military empire everywhere, intervening and getting behind cous and regime change, we should be helping countries, making friends instead of enemies, including helping all countries in the world meet their basic needs budgets for Elementary Education and Preventative Health care and clean water. That will do more to create world peace and address poverty. Yes, we should use it to help people in the world instead of trying to dominate them, and make the world safe for u. S. Based global corporations. Host cecil is calling from cary, North Carolina on the democrats line. Caller i have a problem with science. We dont apply science in this guys whats his name . Host mr. Hawkins, our guest . Caller he is a knight in shining armor because of the fact that solar when you depend on it, there is not one day in our life that we do not have the sun applied to the earth. We can have free energy in all sorts of ways, wave power, tidal power, we can make use of those things and we do not have to , spend money. We can make use of free power. Host go ahead and respond. Guest he is right. The only Nuclear Power plant we need is the fusion reactor in the sky called the sun. Solar, derivatives of solar like wind, Gravitational Forces like hydropower, that is Natural Energy all around us. Once you build the technology to harvest this Natural Energy around us, you do not have the fuel cost, so it is cheaper than burning fossil fuels. This is the way we have got to go, and it is imperative given the Climate Emergency we are facing that is an existential threat. People think it will be more heat waves and stronger storms. It is worse than that. It is mass extinction of andies, ecosystem collapse agricultural and ecological collapse, putting our civilization in danger. This is the imperative. We have to go solar. Host we have a question from a social media follower who wants to know does the green Party Support mailin ballots . Guest absolutely. I have said early, why the hell doesnt biden go down and demand a Quarantine Program to suppress this virus . While he is added, he should be demanding universal mailin ballot option so we can all vote in this pandemic. This election is problematic. We have already seen that in some of the primaries. There are not enough polling places because it tends to be older people who work the polls and they do not want to endanger their lives. We need this option and we need it now. I am absolutely for that, and im angry trump is against it because he does not want people to vote and thinks it is the only way he can win, but where the hell is joe biden . I have policy differences with him, and he talks about leadership and he is awol. Host mary is calling from syracuse, new york, on the green party line. Good morning. Caller good morning. How are you . Host i am doing fine. Go ahead. Caller i wanted to make a comment on the third parties stealing votes from the republicans or democrats, and we do see that we take more votes than the republicans. With the last president ial election, if you look at the numbers, especially with the amount of people who didnt vote, you are seeing a lot more people who were being disenfranchised by the twoparty system and do not feel their voice is counted so they are not voting at all. The amount of votes that were not placed would have won the election last year, so we need to have a conversation about why the twoparty system is not working, and how we can stop people from feeling disenfranchised, and be able to partake in the Voting System and feeling like their voices are heard. Host go ahead and respond, mr. Hawkins. Guest mary is right. There were 100 Million People who could have voted in 2016 but stayed home. They are disproportionally working class, people of color, and young people. I believe they are not apathetic, they are alienated. I have done a lot of thinkocking and people the two parties do not know what is going on with those folks. They do not know what the issues are and do not see those people except around elections, and are just alienated. That is where the future of the green party is. We want to bring those people into the process, because we think our platform speaks to their needs and concerns. We are going to bring more people into the process. The democrats are worried about us stealing the votes. We are going to get people who go down ballots and there are a lot of senate races and races where we do not have candidates. The greens are more likely to vote for democrats. They should get us on the ballot because we will help them out in some races. Host like any other party, you do have some intraparty battles going on. One of our social media followers wants to ask about that. He says your rivals in the green party have repeatedly accused you of using railroad tactics similar to th