voters who have said, there is too much fuller's miss -- foolishness going around and to stand in line mean something. senate democrats stand with antoinette and millions like her who will not be silenced. journal.'s washington we take your lives live -- your calls live on the air. coming up on sunday morning, the reporter will join us for a discussion on 2020 and key points to watch. the ceo of the american psychological association discusses the latest stress in america report. watch washington journal at 7:00 eastern on sunday morning and join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, texts, and tweets.

hington journal continues. host: back with howie hawkins the green party presidential candidate and he'll tell us how his campaign is going and what the green party offers for his candidacy for president. howie, good morning. guest: good morning. host: we haven't seen each other on this show since july. so tell us what has happened with your campaign from july until now and how your campaign is going. guest: well, the first thing we've focused on, july is when we got the national nomination, me and my running mate angela walker, then it was a mad scramble to get on ballot lines. we started with the green party having the 21 state battle lines and left 30 more petitions to do and we were appealing the state governments for relief during the covid pandemic because it was against public health guidelines to be out there physically asking for petitions and when we did we

looked like hazmat workers with gloves and visors and masks and disinfectant. it was a mad scramble to get on the ballot and in the end we got on 30 ballots representing 73% of the voters, 381 electoral votes, you need 270 to win. and then you count the write-in states we're on and we're 96% of the voters and 514 potential electorate votes out of a possible 538. that was july and august. even more difficult barrier is getting in the national media dialogue about the campaign. we get in on a lot of local media when we show up but in terms of the network news, the big newspapers, the cable news, we've been blanked out. and so that's a big frustration. we are running on things we think people want, medicare for all, a green new deal, getting out of these endless wars.

it's frustrating for us to know we maybe have the most popular platform and we're not getting covered. host: so you're part of the original u.s. green party. tell us about the history of your party and how it was founded and how it's changed since it was founded? guest: we started in august of 1984 with the first national meeting and the inspiration was the german green party. they had got into their bundesgog, ed the we have grassroots democracy and nonviolence and wanted to build positives around that. for the last 36 years now, that's what we've been doing. we elected about -- we won about 1,200 races and about 100 green in local office now. and really our goal is to build that up, elect thousands as we go in the 2020's and build from local office to state office to

congress. then when we run somebody for president they won't be able to ignore us. that's what we're doing and one of the purposes of the presidential campaign is win ballot lines. the percent of the vote we get or in some states an absolute number determines whether we have a ballot line the next election cycle which makes it a lot easier for our down ballot candidates to run, 1%, 2%, 3% or 5% in most states and that's one reason we're running for president in order to run more candidates at the state and local level going forward. host: tell us about the green party, how many members does the green party have in the .nited states and and you referenced the green new deal and tell us what the main party platform is for your green party and run for president.

guest: if you count the number of people that enrolled in the green party in the various states is about 250,000 and if you project it in the states where you can't enroll in the green party because we don't have a ballot line, there's maybe 500,000 people in the country identified with the green party and that's a pretty good base. our leading issues i said three life or death issues. one is the climate crisis where the green new deal comes in. i was the first candidate to campaign on that in 2010 running for governor of new york and we're talking about getting to 100% clean energy and zero green gas emissions by 2030 which is what we have to do to avoid catastrophic climate change and is a plan to invest $27.5 trillion over 10 million to ing 38 care for people of the planet and make the economic transition. and the second issue is the

economic crisis. we've had a economic bill of rights to end poverty and economic insecurity and those rights should include the right to a job with the government as employer of last resort, a guaranteed income above poverty, medicare for all, affordable housing in the public sector, lifelong public education and raising social security benefits so seniors can retire instead of working until they drop dead because they don't have other sources of income and they can all live above the poverty line. the third issue and this is a big frustration because nobody in the major parties are talking about it. we're in a nuclear arms race. we want peace initiatives to reduce tensions and reopen the door to nuclear disarmament. the doomsday clock is the closest it's ever been to midnight. three years ago 122 nations agreed to the text of a treaty of a prohibition on the nuclear weapons. the rest of the world is scared about this. but post of our major parties are committed to this nuclear

modernization program that is deploying new nuclear weapons in the strategic sector and more tactical nukes in the conventional forces. this should be a top campaign issue and not being discussed. we're talking about whether our peace initiatives, deep cuts in military spending, getting out of these endless wars and pledging no first use of nuclear weapons and then trying to open, reopen nuclear disarmament negotiations with the other nuclear powers with world public opinion on our side, those countries that want the prohibition of nuclear weapons. host: let's let our viewers take part in the conversation as well and open up our regular lines, that means that republicans, you can call in at 202-748-80001. democrats, 202-748-8000. dependents, your line is 202748-8002 and open a special line for green party members, we want to hear from you, your line is going to be

202-748-8003. eep in mind you can text us at 202-748-8003 and we're always reading on social media on twitter@c-span wj and on facebook at facebook.com/c-span. howie, where are you seeing growth in the green party in the united states? are there a certain demographic you're going for or certain areas where you see the green party moving forward more than it was in other areas? guest: yeah. the people we're looking to, sometimes people say we spoil the election for the democrats. the truth is we bring new people to the polls. according to exit polls, we wouldn't have come out if jill wasn't on the ballot. we're looking at the 100 million people that didn't vote in 2016 and disproportionately working class, people of color

and young. that's who we're aiming at articularly. we're getting a strong response from the young climate activists who know their future is on the line and have a serious program, the two other parties do not to deal with the climate crisis and we're getting a lot of young people of color because we've been very active in the black lives matter movement and we have a program that goes beyond what the democrats have been willing to offer which is use of force reforms. we want community control for the police and end the war on drugs which is the pipeline to mass incarceration. we think african-americans need reparations and indigenous americans need their treaty a ts looked at and we need rights program for those communities that have been racially depressed communities and invest in the homes and housing and schools and health

care and jobs to improve the communities. when they talk about defunding the police, they're talking about getting those services to the communities but there's not enough in the police departments and needs to be a federal program. e're getting a good response from african-americans and latino people in particular and see that in the crass holves and the polls. there's a small sample in the crass halves but inconsistent in the polls we're included in and getting a good response and can see that to the people coming to the campaign. i would say the groups that responded most are young climate activists and young people of color. host: let's let our viewers take part in the conversation and start with dave who is calling from ohio on the green party line. dave, good morning. dave: well, top o'the morning to you, sir. i haven't voted for a democrat or republican since 1996.

when i voted for nader. i challenge your audience to read the green party platform. there's a lot in there for the working man to agree upon. and there has been $11 billion that has been put into this election between the democrats and the republicans. hat is for bloomberg news. and if you're v