RSS

Sawant and Hypocrisy

Sawant: Seattle must stand up to wave of bigotry

by – at the Seattle Globalist 

This is pretty arrogant for a woman who is Brahman but campaigned as a "person of color" against as Black woman. to some artifact. The criticism, moreover, is consistent with my subjective POV that most of the achievements are in the past and that our ranking is going to down as those events are further away. The criticism is likely valid as Reuters does this sort of thing .. that is how it sells its stuff! However, even if you use other rankings ... more subjective .. systems, the UW is pretty much unique among public universities in being among the top of all world universities but in a state where we are the only significant research university. The closest comparables are Michigan and Wisconsin but both have more research universities. I suspect that ten years from now, the uW will be much lower on all lists .. watch for the UC campuses and Univ. Texas campuses. I think it would be good if someone here were to look critically at the Reuters' rating. This is now complex because of the union issue. If AAUP were to run this, I suspect it would come across as an atatck on the UW Excellence crew. On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 4:24 PM, Robert Wood wrote: Hi Steve, What do you make of this?

This is pretty arrogant for a woman who is a high caste Indian, a Brahman,  but campaigned as a “person of color” against an African  American woman and then denigrated her opponent as a tool of the rich.   Sawant has herself shown a a nasty stripe of condescending bigotry  with her effort to get the City Council to condemn Israel and her nasty comments about Vietnamese Seattle folks and their choice of a flag.    I also find it both ironic  that a Hindu whose country underwent a horrific religious schism with huge numbers of refugees endinbg in a nuclear armed stand off would ascribe the ISIS issue to “the decades of Western imperialist policies ,,,, at the behest of oil corporations.”  Ms, Sawant must have flunked her Indian history classes if she thinks the issues with Islam are all due to everyone but those she she seems to see as brown people.  I think this brown lady needs to be a bit more humble before preaching to others. 

 

Seattle City Councilmeber Kshama Sawant. (Photo via City of Seattle.)
Seattle City Councilmeber Kshama Sawant. (Photo via City of Seattle.)

We have all watched in horror the tragedy that took place in Paris, and our hearts go out to the victims and their families, as they do to the people of Beirut.

As we condemn the terrorism and brutality of ISIS, we must also stand firmly against all anti-Muslim and anti-refugee scapegoating.

Already we are seeing a wave of hysteria and bigotry, including in our own region. A few days ago, the following right-wing threat was posted locally on Facebook:

“There are 18 Mosques in the greater Seattle area where I live. I’ve got the addresses of each. Do you know where the next attack will come from? I at least know where to strike back! The only way that we can be completely free of this threat of terror is to eradicate the Death Cult masquerading as a religion from our streets!”

Communities in Seattle and the whole region need to stand together against such a threat. We will not be divided.

This threat must be immediately and rigorously pursued. It may pose a gravely serious danger. Just last month, a mosque in was attacked during a West Seattle arson spree.

I stand unequivocally in solidarity with Muslims, refugees, and all others threatened by hate violence and bigotry.

ISIS is not supported by Muslims worldwide, but it is Muslims who often pay the price of its terrorism. It is the horror and breakdown of the social fabric in the Middle East which has given rise to ISIS and also to the biggest refugee crisis in world history. Underlying the current situation are the decades of Western imperialist policies in the region and the brutal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, at the behest of oil corporations.

Working people of all nationalities, of all religions, and of no religion, need to come together to build an alternative to this system of crisis. We must stand together in solidarity against hate crimes, terrorism and war.

To submit a guest opinion, write to [email protected].


Comments are closed.