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Utica New York
by Jeanette Lenoir

Green Party gubernatorial candidate, Howie Hawkins made a campaign stop in Utica to talk about creating jobs and getting the economy going again. Hawkins says there are over 800 thousand people in New York that are unemployed and the state should start looking at different ways to create more jobs or risk facing a longer period of unemployment.

Hawkins said, "There's a New York tradition that we need to revive and that's public jobs programs; work progress administration style public jobs programs. That started in New York when Roosevelt was governor and we need to do the same thing now. Private jobs are great but public jobs are necessary to have full employment." Hawkins said the way to create more jobs is to, "get the rich to start paying their fair share and pull their own weight".

He added that last year the state had a 16 billion dollar tax revenue that they took in called, The Stock Transfer Tax and gave it back to Wall Street after they received government bailout money. Hawkins said that money could have been applied towards fixing the state's budget deficit. The Green Party candidate is making his way across the state as he campaigns to be the next governor.