Howard Gresham Hawkins III[1][2] (born December 8, 1952) is an American trade unionist and environmental activist.

[10] Hawkins ran for Governor of New York in 2022, but since the Green Party only received 32,832 votes in New York in the 2020 election, a far cry of the 130,000 needed, the party lost ballot access and Hawkins ran as an Independent write-in candidate.

[13][14][15] He grew up in a diverse neighborhood in the city near the Bayshore Freeway, which had seen a large influx of migrants from the southern United States, both black and white: Hawkins has credited his southern-inflected accent as being a result of this.

[16] His father was an attorney who was a football and wrestling student-athlete at the University of Chicago and served in the counter-intelligence unit for the U.S. Army's Manhattan Project during World War II.

[5] That same year Hawkins campaigned for Bernie Sanders, then the Liberty Union Party candidate for senate and governor of Vermont.

[19][20] In 1973, Hawkins joined Socialist Party USA, a membership which has continued to the present day.

[21] In 1976, Hawkins was one of the co-founders of the Clamshell Alliance which was an anti-nuclear power organization aimed at stopping its use in New England.

[22] In the early 1990s a press conference was held in Washington, D.C., that featured Charles Betz, Joni Whitmore, Hilda Mason, and Howie Hawkins to announce the formation of the Greens/Green Party USA.

[26] However, in 2018 he lost 80,000 votes, but retained ballot access and was only lowered one row down to Row E.[27] In 2012 Hawkins was approached over the possibility of running for the Green Party nomination, but declined due to his employment commitments at UPS forcing him to campaign for offices in New York at most and would interfere with a national campaign.

[33] Hawkins became the first politician to include the Green New Deal in their election platform when he ran for Governor of New York in 2010.

[34] Hawkins supports the Green Party's version of the Green New Deal that would serve as a transitional plan to a one hundred percent clean, renewable energy by 2030 utilizing a carbon tax, jobs guarantee, free college, single-payer healthcare and a focus on using public programs.

[39] In 2008, Hawkins ran for the United States House of Representatives in New York's 25th congressional district on the Green Populist line.

[41] On November 2, 2010, Hawkins received nearly 60,000 votes (1.3%), allowing the Green Party of New York to be listed on the ballot for the next four years.

[44] Hawkins announced his candidacy for 4th District Common Councilor in Syracuse in September 2011, running as a Green Party candidate.

He also supported the establishment of a municipal development bank to provide financing for local cooperative businesses and a 0.4% "commuter tax" on the incomes of suburbanites working in the city.

Bott and Hawkins point out that New York revenue sharing with its biggest cities has decreased from the teens to just about one percent since the 1970s.

His campaign positions included a "Green New Deal" platform, a "Clean Money" system for public financing of elections, ending New York's role in the national Common Core standards, and a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour from the then-current $8 an hour in New York.

[58] Former District 2 city councilor Pat Hogan suggested to Hawkins that he should run for auditor, stating, "I'm not turning Green ...

[66][67][68] On August 23, 2019, the Hawkins campaign announced they had met the requisite federal matching funds for California and New York.