Council District No. 3
Kshama Sawant
Comrades! Let us take another step forward in the righteous, people-powered, scent-free struggle to overthrow the greedy capitalists and create a Socialist utopia on Puget Sound, a place where a giant state apparatus will ensure that you have no concerns. Ha-ha-ha. No. That’s not going to happen. That’s never going to happen. And even if it does happen, sometime after we’re all dead and wrong, we promise our desiccated corpses will keep having concerns to complain about. But let us reelect Kshama Sawant anyway!
Sawant’s election and her work after being elected were instrumental in getting Seattle a $15 minimum wage. Now she wants to force the question of rent control at the state level (she wants the state to give Seattle the power to consider rent-control measures), which a lot of political types are saying is impossible. You know what else they said was impossible? A $15 minimum wage.
Sounds like Sawant is running against McDermott I would support her in that campaign. Does he have any interest in actual issue facing District 3??
Yes, Sawant’s style—her inspiring badassery—has bunched the collective panties of her colleagues on the council and the mayor. But those panties needed bunching. And don’t be fooled: “She who shall not be named”—as Sawant started calling herself when other council members took to criticizing her while refusing to say “Sawant” out loud—is more than just a necessary disrupter of the Seattle-nice process that blocks reform and preserves the status quo. Her activism as a council member—marching with Black Lives Matter protesters, working to call attention to increased violence against LGBT residents of Capitol Hill, riding in a Duwamish tribal canoe to protest Shell’s Arctic drilling rig—has pulled the council and the mayor to the left. Would Council Member Mike O’Brien be getting detained at protests if Sawant weren’t in the mix? Would Mayor Ed Murray be hopping onto flatbed pickup trucks and leading union rallies? No and no.
The Stranger left out soe of Sawant’s other stuff: asking the Council to support a letter condemning Israel and supporting Hamas, lying abut taking only a $40.000 salary, smearing her opponents as corporate tools, arguing that the workers should take over Boeing ………….
On the downside, Sawant was the lone vote against the confirmation of Seattle police chief Kathleen O’Toole—which now seems like a mistake to us—and, perhaps because she loves a righteous defeat, she’s light on passed legislation. (Another scenario: The hacks at city hall are pulling a McGinn on Sawant: attack her, refuse to work with her, and then accuse her of being divisive and incapable of working with anyone.) But Sawant’s strong line on fixing the Seattle Police Department (she gives the mayor a grade somewhere between a D- to F on police reform), her demands for publicly financed affordable housing in this city, and her insistence on progressive taxation to pay for better transit represent a perspective that this city needs to hear as these issues get debated and (hopefully) addressed.
Sawant’s challengers left us underwhelmed. Morgan Beach has good things to say on gender pay equity but hasn’t lived here long, seems uninformed on some issues, and admits she doesn’t have a chance. Rod Hearne helped lead the final stages of the fight for marriage equality in Washington State, but he seriously sat in our offices and argued that Sawant has to go because she makes people in Bellevue uncomfortable. (You know who else makes people in Bellevue uncomfortable? Gays and lesbians, pot smokers, young people, musicians, artists, sex workers—basically a huge chunk of the people who live in District 3.) And local Urban League president Pamela Banks was unsteady once we got into the details of housing affordability and tax policy. (For example, she said at a forum that she was against an income tax and then told the SECB she was for a state income tax but against a city income tax—which makes no sense.)
Bottom line. The Stranger likes Sawant cuz demagogues sell newspapers (or sell adverts from pot and porn vendors).
Sawant still won’t tell us exactly what a fully realized Socialist revolution will look like. But her presence and her politics are having a hugely positive impact on city politics. Vote Sawant.