Syracuse New Times
As the English marched out of Yorktown, their surrender climaxing the American Revolution, their band played "The World Turned Upside Down." The rude colonials had stomped the world's greatest army of the moment. Two hundred years later the colonials are the greatest of this moment, even though they were stymied in Vietnam when, as Black Panther leader Huey Newton observed, "The spirit of the people triumphed over The Man's technology."
In contemporary America the triumph of the underdog has been consigned far more to romance than reality, but in the Syracuse mayoral campaign the nature of the city parties seems to have indeed turned upside down. It started last spring when local Republicans looked like Democrats, squabbling in court about their nomination process. In total control of city politics, with no Republican threat on the horizon, Democrats suddenly faced primary challenges to three of their sitting Common Councilors and a buzz of potential primary challengers to the mayor.
Perennial Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins reluctantly shouldered a mayoral nomination to once again articulate an agenda of global consciousness and local decentralization, a decided underdog with the same old list of good ideas generally dismissed as impractical.
But on the top floor of the Marx Hotel, 701 E. Genesee St., Oct. 24, Hawkins and a cadre of Green supporters looked anything but the minor party bristling with idealism and impossible odds. Hawkins, now comfortable wearing a tie after 15 years of campaigning mostly in a T-shirt, stood surrounded by professionally polished planning maps and artist renditions of the Greens' vision for the next generation of the city, a Sustainable Syracuse.
The 20th-floor, 360-degree view of the city provided an instant reference for the locations in the maps and sketches, while the coffee urns and plates of Danish harkened the setting for a mainstream political press conference. But the starkest contrast was the audience, a complete representation of the local press corp, which filled the room. Although included in the candidate responses in John Mariani's informative neighborhood by neighborhood "People's Voices" weekly series in the Post Standard and all but one of the scheduled mayoral debates, throughout the campaign Hawkins had gotten nowhere near equal media coverage as incumbent Democrat Mayor Matt Driscoll and Republican, Independence and Conservative challenger Joanie Mahoney. Rising to the occasion, Hawkins held total attention as he calmly explained just how practical the various elements of the Green vision really could be.
Hawkins built on his now familiar mantras of a municipally owned power company, a municipal bank for locally designed development and neighborhood assemblies to maximize resident access to the decision-making process to enhance the Green vision as an alternative to the proposed Destiny USA. "Why build a phony Erie Canal inside the Destiny dome," Hawkins mused, "when you could re-dig the real canal from {Onondaga} Lake through downtown and out Erie Boulevard to create a linear eco-industrial park, with a light rail line along one side and a bike and pedestrian path along the other?"
As with every element of the vision he proposed, Hawkins cited cities in which the projects he outlined had been accomplished with demonstrable benefit. The canal, he suggested, would foster a strip of light manufacturing plants and high-density residential and urban village shopping districts.
Transformed by the setting into the model of a very major candidate, Hawkins announced, "If I win, I know I'll need to work in a coalition," introducing Bill Harper, Republican-Independence-Conservative challenger for an at-large Common Council seat. "Progress doesn't have a party," Harper said. "I truly believe this vision is the future of Syracuse."
The big picture can be seen on the Green Web site www.syracusegreens.org and is on display at the Coffee Pavilion, 133 E. Water St. in Hanover Square.
- Walt Sheppard
Posted by syracusegreens at October 26, 2005 12:33 PM