[Peace-discuss] FW: Why are they targeting Sawant?

Fri Mar 20 10:17:02 EDT 2015

From: David Johnson [mailto:davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net] 
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2015 9:45 PM
To: davidjohnson1451 at comcast.net
Subject: Why are they targeting Sawant?

Why are they targeting Sawant?

Freelance journalist Ben Norton looks at why a liberal civil rights
organization has decided to challenge the most left-wing member of the City
Council.

March 17, 2015

Description: Kshama Sawant on the campaign trailKshama Sawant on the
campaign trail 

THE URBAN League is going after the only leftist and the only woman of color
on the Seattle City Council. Rather than challenging the pro-corporate
advocates of neoliberalism, whether Democrat or Republican, who increasingly
dominate U.S. politics, this well-known liberal organization is expending
its energy on defeating the left.

Pamela Banks, president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle,
announced this month
<http://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2015/03/05/21834325/its-official-urba
n-league-president-pamela-banks-will-take-on-kshama-sawant>  that she will
run in the next municipal election against City Council member Kshama
Sawant, the Socialist Alternative candidate who won national attention for
her successful 2013 campaign. <http://www.votesawant.org/> 

Sawant has been a leading figure in the Fight for 15 campaign
<http://fightfor15.org> , a national movement to demand demands a living
minimum wage of $15 per hour. As Salon.com pointed out
<http://www.salon.com/2014/08/09/they_don%27t_have_the_courage_how_the_two_p
arty_system_aided_israel_disaster> , she was one of the few officeholders in
the U.S. to "openly and unapologetically criticize" Israel's war crimes
against the Palestinian people
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/05/israel-accused-war-crimes-gaza
--amnesty-international> . She is also in a virtual dead heat for the
highest approval rating citywide of any City Council member, and has far and
away the most name recognition, according to a poll published last October
<http://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-profiles/publicola/articles/afternoon-jo
lt-poll-shows-sawant-with-october-2014> .

Because of her election success and her principled left-wing stands as a
City Council member, Sawant has become an important symbol throughout the
country that a democratic, anti-racist, feminist, socialist alternative to
the Democratic Party is possible. Yet Banks and the Urban League want to
pull down this symbol.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHAT ARE Banks' critiques of Sawant? "I've learned over my career that you
solve more problems with a telephone than a megaphone," she said. So the
problem is that Sawant actually practices grassroots democracy? She leaves
the local government back rooms and helps to mobilize grassroots activism
among ordinary people, instead of making private phone calls to ask for
tit-for-tat favors. That is apparently a bad thing.

Banks continued: "I won't be making rebuttals to the State of the Union,"
she explained. Now we see what is likely the Urban League's real problem
with Sawant--this is about partisanship. Sawant publicly criticized the
Obama administration's broken promises and concessions to the right
<http://www.socialistalternative.org/2015/01/20/kshama-sawant-socialistrespo
nse-obamas-state-union-address/> , so she must be challenged for her
defiance--even if that means weakening one of the only examples of
progressive political independence in U.S. politics today.

"I don't think we differ much in our values," Banks admitted. "The biggest
difference is how you get things done." If she doesn't differ much on
values, why go after Sawant? There are eight other members she and the Urban
League could work to unseat. Why not go after the more conservative members
of the City Council? Why go after the most progressive (not to mention most
prominent) member of the council?

The method of electing the City Council changed with the 2013 election.
There will only be two at-large seats drawing votes from across the city.
The most conservative council members will run in the newly created
districts that represent the wealthier parts of town. Sawant has decided to
run for office in District 3, and that's where Banks will aim to try to pull
votes, along with two other candidates.

Still, the question remains: Why didn't the Urban League focus on any of the
following City Council members:

-- Mike O'Brien, a businessman who, according to his own Council biography,
<http://www.seattle.gov/council/obrien/bio.htm> "has spent most of his
professional career working in financial management." He spent 10 years as
the chief financial officer of the corporate law firm Stokes Lawrence, whose
client list includes the likes of AT
<http://www.stokeslaw.com/about/clients> &T, Bank of America, T-Mobile,
Toshiba, Wells Fargo, and more;

-- Sally Bagshaw, a business and finance lawyer
<http://www.seattle.gov/council/bagshaw/bio.htm> ;

-- Tom Rasmussen, a former deputy prosecuting attorney
<http://www.seattle.gov/council/rasmussen/bio.htm> ; or

-- Nick Licata, a former insurance broker and president of the Metropolitan
Democratic Club <http://www.seattle.gov/council/licata/bios.htm> .

Surely Kshama Sawant, an Indian-American Marxist feminist whose father died
when she was 13
<http://bennorton.com/wp-admin/www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-c1-seattle-socia
list-20131120-dto,0,7140015.htmlstory>  and who won office thanks to a
groundbreaking grassroots campaign, will serve the interests of Seattle's
most marginalized communities infinitely better than, say, a former
financial officer of a corporate law firm that defended a racist bank that
systematically saddled black Americans
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/07baltimore.html?pagewanted=all>
(whom its employees referred to as "mud people") with crippling subprime
mortgages (which it referred to as "ghetto loans").

But Sawant is a socialist, so clearly, she must go!

In their challenge to Sawant, Pamela Banks and the Urban League are
demonstrating that their allegiance to the Democratic Party and their
relationships to the local elites in Seattle comes before defending the
interests of people of color, women, and the working class.

This should not come as a surprise. When she was running for Seattle City
Council, "all of the city's major Democratic Party organizations" opposed
Sawant, as one news report put it
<http://kuow.org/post/activist-democrats-support-socialist-candidate-kshama-
sawant> . They instead endorsed her Democratic opponent Richard Conlin.

Liberals often accuse radicals of "dividing the left." Perhaps the
best-known example came in the 2000 presidential election, when Green party
candidate Ralph Nader was blamed for George W. Bush winning the White House,
not Al Gore and his conservative, corporate-friendly policies--nor the
outright election fraud in Florida that gave Bush his victory
<http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/06/yes-bush-v-gore-did-steal-the-
election.html> .

We can see from the example of Pamela Banks and the Urban League in Seattle
that the opposite is true: The real dividers are the liberals who waste
money, time and resources attacking a genuine leftist, on behalf of the
corporate-controlled Democratic Party.

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