[Peace-discuss] Kshama Sawant Re-Elected: Seattle's Political Revolution Continues

[David Johnson]

Another component to this story is how the Urban League of Seattle ran an
African American woman ( backed up with hundreds of thousands of dollars of
corporate campaign donations ) against Ms. Sawant. Funny why they chose Ms.
Sawant instead of any of the other corporate democrats running for
re-election from other districts in Seattle.

 

Kshama Sawant Re-Elected: Seattle's Political Revolution Continues

By Patrick Ayers 

04 November, 2015
 
<http://www.socialistalternative.org/2015/11/04/kshama-sawant-re-elected-sea
ttles-political-revolution-continues/> Socialist Alternative In Action

Description: http://www.countercurrents.org/kshamasawant.jpg

Not only can socialists get elected, we can get re-elected. At the time of
writing, and with about a third of the votes counted, 52.6% of voters in
Seattle's District 3 have chosen Kshama Sawant to serve another four years
on the City Council. Since late votes tend to trend in our favor, we can
safely claim victory. In Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood tonight,
hundreds of campaign supporters are celebrating at our election night party.
People arrived confident due to Kshama's outstanding work in the council and
our ferocious ground game.

The night before, on Monday, Socialist Alternative member and Boeing IAM
machinist Jeremy Prickett addressed volunteers gathered for the last
doorknocking effort of the campaign. "Brothers and sisters," he began, "it's
a privilege for us to be here today because for so long politics have been
out of the hands of working people. Socialist Alternative and Kshama Sawant
are changing that."

Over 600 volunteers, more than 30 unions, and dozens of progressive
organizations had Kshama's back against our opponent who had the support of
CEOs, the Chamber of Commerce, the real estate lobby, the landlord lobby,
Amazon.com, slumlords, six conservative members of the city council, and
even a handful of Republican millionaires who created their own PAC to
attack us and support our Democratic Party opponent in the final weeks.

Against this powerful establishment opposition, along with their echo
chamber of vitriolic attacks and their exorbitant bank accounts, we knocked
on 90,000 doors and made 170,000 phone calls. We talked to thousands of
people about affordable housing, inequality, taxing the rich, and working
class politics. It was an unprecedented grassroots effort for local Seattle
politics.

A New Kind of Politics

As Jeremy's words above suggest, for many people, this campaign was about
far more than re-electing Kshama. It was about building a whole new kind of
politics that fights unapologetically for working families, and not
corporations. It was about showing what was possible if working people get
organized.

In the age of Citizens United and in a year when corporations in Seattle
spent five times more than ever before on City Council elections, we
shattered fundraising records for a council race and defeated corporate
cash. We raised nearly $500,000 from almost 3,500 individual donors. Our
median donation was merely $50 and more people donated to our campaign from
Seattle and our district than for any other candidate running for City
Council across the city. Like Bernie Sanders' campaign which also refuses
corporate money and raised $28 million in three months, Kshama's campaign is
a demonstration of the huge potential for independent working class politics
in the US.

"The degree to which [Kshama Sawant] blows everyone out of the water in some
funding categories, and her ability to rely on many small donors, is this
election's clearest sign that the old guard is being shaken." - Crosscut.com

Movement Building

Nobody in Seattle has caused more headaches for the political establishment
over the past two years than Kshama Sawant. "I wear the badge of socialist
with pride," she declared in her January 2014 inauguration speech after
upsetting a 13 year incumbent. She promised at that time: "There will be no
backroom deals with corporations or their political servants. There will be
no rotten sell-out of the people I represent."

And Kshama delivered. Her office became a center for working class
resistance, helping tenants, workers, people of color, LGBTQ people,
immigrants and indigenous people. Kshama pushed the political debate in
Seattle to the left. "Affordability" has become one of the most repeated
buzzwords. Nevertheless, she was blocked many times by a conservative
majority on the council that was tied by a thousand threads to the corporate
establishment. But Kshama never relented in her unapologetic fight for the
interests of working people, explaining again and again that what could be
won inside city hall largely depended on the strength of movements outside -
and actively doing everything she could to help build those movements.

This same spirit imbued the election campaign. While we knew we were in a
strong position with a visible sea of red posters and yard signs blanketing
the district, we nonetheless took nothing for granted given the way
democracy is warped by capitalism, where cash buys votes and the corporate
media narrows and distorts the discussion.

Instead, we relied on building up our own independent force that could reach
thousands of voters by activating working and young people to talk with
thousands of people on their doorsteps.

When $60,000 was dumped into our race by three different corporate PACs in
the last weeks of the campaign, our grassroots movement was prepared. Within
days, we were able to get a leaflet to thousands of doors across the
district alerting voters to the flood of PAC money. And when our opponent
sent two negative attack mailers in the last week, we again got another
leaflet out to thousands of doors exposing the dishonesty of the attacks.

An Example to Build On

As the first elected socialist in Seattle in a century, Kshama's re-election
campaign took on far more significance than the average local election. Al
Jazeera called it one of seven elections in the whole US to watch this year.
The campaign took place against the national background of surging support
for Bernie Sanders' campaign for president as a socialist and his call for
"a political revolution against the billionaire class".

Undoubtedly, the experience of the last two years in Seattle has provided a
wealth of lessons for socialists and working people everywhere. Kshama would
be the first to say that what has made the key difference in Seattle has
been the existence of an organized socialist movement and Socialist
Alternative in particular.

We have provided key political support to Kshama to help navigate the
pressures of elected office and movement building. Together, we were able to
give a successful lead and turn the growing anger at inequality,
skyrocketing rent, and out-of-touch establishment politicians into a
movement that relies on its own strength, its own organizations, and its own
resources.

The opportunities to build the socialist movement across the US are only
getting bigger. Capitalism has completely failed working families. People
are fed up with the corporate establishment and there is a growing interest
in socialist ideas reflected in the intense interest when Bernie Sanders
explained why he considers himself a democratic socialist in the debate with
Hillary Clinton. The movement for a $15/hour minimum wage has won a number
of key victories around the country, students are beginning to fight back
against student debt, and a whole new generation of young activists has been
activated by Black Lives Matter. The world is changing and there has never
been a better time to join the socialists.

By no means does our work end tonight. We need to use this opportunity and
build on our victory. First of all that means we need to get even more
organized. It has been movement building that has gotten us this far. People
should join Socialist Alternative and help us build an even stronger
movement that can win more victories over the next years.

And tonight in Seattle, now that Kshama's seat is safe, our hard-working
volunteers are enjoying a well-deserved celebration that will likely last
late into the night. We're proud to know that many people around the country
and the world are celebrating with us. This victory belongs to socialists
and working class people everywhere. Together, we have a world to win.

 

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