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HI ,



We want to express our deepest thanks to all who supported our campaign

through a particularly difficult year for Greens and independent

socialists. Your encouragement gave us the strength and resolve to give the

campaign our all.



We're not stopping. We are continuing to the fight for our program, to

organize our grassroots political base, and to build cooperation across the

independent green and socialist left. We have filed for the next election

cycle as HOWIE HAWKINS FOR OUR FUTURE so we can continue to raise and spend

money on this political organizing.



We invite you to keep working with us.



We are happy to say good riddance to Trump. But we also know that Biden has

no solutions. As he said to billionaire donors at a high rollers

fundraiser, "Nothing would fundamentally change."



We know that a lot has to fundamentally change to resolve the life-or-death

problems of climate, poverty, racism, and nuclear war. We are running out

of time. Real solutions can't wait!



So we are continuing to speak out and organize to advance our policy

demands, to strengthen local parties, to secure state ballot lines, and to

help elect thousands to local offices and, on that foundation, to state

legislatures and the House of Representatives.



We have just begun to organize and we want you with us in this fight.



WHAT HAPPENED?



This election was simply a referendum on Trump. Biden was Not-Trump,

nothing more.



The Green campaign was blanked out in the national corporate media and most

of the progressive media. The Green ticket came in fourth again nationally,

although our vote was substantially down from 2016. The Green Party was on

30 state ballots, down from 45 in 2015, due to the difficulties of

petitioning during Covid-19 pandemic, a competitive primary that delayed

petitioning before the nominating convention, and aggressive ballot

petition challenges by the Democratic Party. If votes per dollar were the

measure, we won in a landslide at around $1.25 per vote compared to over

$13 per vote for Biden.



We must face the fact that we largely fell short in our two primary

campaign goals.



One goal was to advance our policy demands, including a full-strength Green

New Deal, Medicare for All, and ending the endless wars.



Polling shows these policy demands have majority support. Trump and Biden

opposed them. Yet the media excluded us.



However, we were able to reach millions through social media, especially

young people who are fighting for their futures and want climate, racial,

and economic justice - now!



Our second goal was to expand ballot access for the Green Party. Our vote

was too low in every state where it might have gained or extended our

ballot status. We lost our hard-won ballot status in states like New

Mexico, New York, and North Carolina. The Green Party still retains ballot

status in many states by other criteria and we plan to help state parties

secure ballot access in every state in the next few years.



We should also recognize that the progressive Democrats got clobbered, too

- or more accurately, clobbered themselves. Once the corporate Democrats

closed ranks with Biden to defeat Bernie Sanders, the progressive Democrats

lined up behind Biden without making any policy demands. Their prominent

personalities focused on a public smear campaign against the Greens as

"spoilers" instead of advancing a progressive agenda. They now have little

if any political leverage with the Biden administration. The corporate

Democrats are already blaming progressive Democrats for supposedly making

the presidential election too close and for the loss of some US Senate

races.



The good news is to be found in many local Green campaigns. Emmanuel

Estrada was elected mayor of Baldwin Park in east Los Angeles. Franca

Mueller Paz finished second with 35% for Baltimore city council, which has

been an all-Democratic one-party dictatorship for nearly 80 years. Lisa

Savage's 4% for a Maine US Senate seat in a close race was highlighted her

widely appreciated presentation of a positive program in televised debates

in contrast to the sour negative sniping by the major party candidates. We

had over 200 Green candidates this year and at least 10 won their

elections.



WHAT’S NEXT?



These local campaigns tell us what we need to do next. We need to go back

to the Green Party's roots in organizing local party chapters, leading

issue campaigns in our communities, and electing people to local office. We

need to rebuild the Green Party from the bottom up.



We want to help local parties get better organized and capable of leading

issue campaigns and electing thousands as we go into the 2020s to local

office, and, on that foundation, to state legislatures and the House.



We want to help state parties recover or gain ballot lines, starting next

year, so our local candidates can more easily get on the ballot and our

2024 presidential campaign will be on the ballot in all 50 states.



We want to keep pushing our program in the social movements - the

ecosocialist Green New Deal, the Economic Bill of Rights to end poverty and

economic insecurity, community control of the police, peace initiatives,

and voting rights and pro-democracy reforms, including ranked-choice voting

and proportional representation.



We have low expectations that any significant progressive reforms can be

won under a Biden administration. Biden promises a national unity

administration, with Republicans in the cabinet and an emphasis on working

across the aisle with Republicans in Congress.



A Covid relief package brokered with Republicans in Congress is likely to

be crumbs for working people and tax breaks and subsides for the super-rich

and the giant corporations. Their bipartisan trickle-down theory assumes

the rich will invest this corporate welfare in the real economy to create

jobs when the reality is they will invest most of it in financial assets -

stocks, bonds, commodities, real estate - which won't trickle down to the

rest of us as living-wage jobs.



The next few years will be a time for us to build popular support for our

state and national policy demands and to build a grassroots party power

base that can conduct effective state and national issue and electoral

campaigns.



We think it is time for the Green Party to re-organize itself as a

dues-paying mass-membership party rooted in strong local party chapters. We

must face the fact that the Green Party's 20-year experiment as a national

party organized as a federation of state ballot lines has failed. The

current Green base largely consists of isolated party registrants and

supporters who are not organized into local party chapters or into Green

issue and electoral campaigns. The party has not had the funding to provide

support staff for effective party field organizing, public communications,

and issue and electoral campaigns.



We will also continue to encourage solidarity and cooperation among Green

and independent socialist groups in building a major party of the left in

US politics. None of us is big enough to be the major party. All of us

should work together to build that party.



We hope will you to stay supportive and engaged in our organizing and

activities.



We are determined, not defeated.



In solidarity,



Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker



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Web: howiehawkins.us



Email: [email protected]



Phone: (315) 220-0101

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