by CHRIS HEDGES
Since being elected to office in 2013, Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and her socialist party have been locked in a bitter battle against the city’s moneyed elites, who have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a corporate PAC called “A Better Seattle” and saturated television and digital platforms with negative advertising. Sawant is hated because she is effective. Following a three-year struggle against the richest man in the world—Jeff Bezos—and his political establishment, she and her allies pushed through a tax on big business that increased city revenues by an estimated $210 to 240 million a year.
Her leadership and her party provide an example of effective resistance to the war being waged on the working class and the poor—but, as she explains in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, every victory has been won in spite of entrenched opposition from Democrats. Instead of depending on the Democratic Party establishment, Sawant says the only way to make advances in the class war is through class struggle and mobilizing ordinary people.
Chris Hedges interviews writers, intellectuals, and dissidents, many banished from the mainstream, in his half-hour show, The Chris Hedges Report. He gives voice to those, from Cornel West and Noam Chomsky to the leaders of groups such as Extinction Rebellion, who are on the front lines of the struggle against militarism, corporate capitalism, white supremacy, the looming ecocide, as well as the battle to wrest back our democracy from the clutches of the ruling global oligarchy.
Chris Hedges:In December, Socialist Alternative leader and Seattle city council Member Kshama Sawant defeated a well-funded campaign by the city’s business community to remove her in a recall vote. Since being elected to office in 2013, Sawant and her socialist party have been locked in a bitter battle against the city’s moneyed elites, which has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into a corporate PAC called A Better Seattle and saturated television and digital platforms with negative advertising.
She and her party have been denied ads by Google, YouTube, and Hulu. Amazon alone spent over $3 million to defeat her when she ran for office in 2019. Sawant is hated because she is effective. She helped lead the fight in 2014 that made Seattle the first major American city to mandate a $15 an hour minimum wage.
Following a three-year struggle against one of the richest men in the world, Jeff Bezos, and his political establishment, she and her allies pushed through a tax on big business that increased city revenues by an estimated $210 to $240 million a year. She was part of the movement that led to Seattle’s successful ban on school year evictions of school children, their families, and school employees. She was one of the sponsors of a bill that protects tenants from being evicted at the end of their term leases, requiring landlords to provide tenants with the right to renew their leases, and prohibiting landlords from evicting tenants for nonpayment of rent if the rent was due during the COVID emergency and the renter could not pay due to financial hardship.
Her leadership and her party provide an example of effective resistance to the war being waged on the working class and the poor. Joining me to discuss her nearly decade-long battle against the billionaire class and the lessons we can take from her successful struggle is Kshama Sawant.
So Kshama, the campaign to remove you from office was dirty. It was highly funded. But rather than go on the defensive, you used the recall campaign to collect over 15,000 signatures to establish rent control, which I expect shocked your rich adversaries. I wondered if you could explain those tactics.
Kshama Sawant:Yes. I think the idea of going on the offensive for the working class and our representatives and our movements to go on the offensive against big business and the politicians that represent them is contrary to the conventional guidebook we are handed down by the Democratic Party officials and by the NGO leaders. And in fact, unfortunately, even many social movement and labor movement leaders, the idea is that you can actually make change by not antagonizing the powers that be and resorting to moral persuasion and prioritizing peaceful – And not just peaceful, but extremely cordial relationships with big business, politicians, with Democratic Party politicians as in Seattle, and with big business lobbyists.
Well, we threw that guidebook out the window because we understand from our study of history as socialists, as Marxists, that that is precisely what doesn’t work in the interest of the working class. And in fact, it is not an incidental idea, this pervasive idea that, well, we should all be talking nicely regardless of our position in society, and that is the way to convince rich people to hand a little bit of crumbs to those of us who don’t have any.
That idea is a false one, but it doesn’t incidentally exist in our society under capitalism. It is very much a conscious narrative that is put forward by the ruling class, by the capitalist class, by their political representatives, and their media representatives in the corporate media. Because it benefits them for working people to be lulled into this idea that we’re all on the same side, this is a shared situation, that COVID was a shared sacrifice.
Well, I think people’s eyes have been opened for the most part in understanding that the very essence of capitalism is that the very wealthy at the top, they make this enormous profit at the expense of ordinary people. And the only way really to address the class war that we face is through class struggle.
Chris Hedges:Can you talk about the role of the Democratic Party, especially during your efforts to raise the minimum wage, to protect people from evictions, to increase taxes on large corporations such as Amazon? Where were the Democrats?
Kshama Sawant:Yeah, I mean just to make sure all your viewers know, Seattle, the electorate, the ordinary people are extremely progressive, and you could say it’s a left-leaning city for the most part. And the city council has nine council members. I am one socialist, and the rest of the eight have always been Democrats from as long as I know. And certainly as long as I’ve been on the council, since I took office in January 2014.
One of the first things that happened when I took office was these two prominent Democrats, Democratic council members who came into my office, sat me down, and said, well it’s all well and good – I mean, I’m paraphrasing, obviously, I don’t remember the exact words – But paraphrasing, that it’s all well and good. You roused the rabble and got elected as a socialist, but we’re here to tell you that City Hall runs on our terms and you are not winning any wage increase, let alone $15 an hour. And less than six months later, we had won the $15 an hour minimum wage. So that about sums it up for the Democrats.
And as you indicated, Chris, it has never changed. It has never been different. It’s not like they were close to $15 an hour, but they were forced to concede, and then they were morally persuaded to then be on the side of working people. No, it has never been that way. As a matter of fact, even the more self-described progressives, not the overt corporate Democrats, even have played a role which is actually contrary to the interest of working people, and every step of the way they have placed obstacles in the path of winning these victories.
And so every such victory, not just $15 an hour, but the Amazon tax that you mentioned, all the renters rights victories that we have won, unprecedented renters rights victories that we have won, every single victory has come about despite the either overt or backroom opposition and tactics by the Democrats. And the reason we have won is because we mobilized ordinary people, union members, to fight for it.
Chris Hedges:Yet, the rhetoric of the Democratic Party is aligned with your campaign. I mean, for instance, Biden, when he ran for the presidency, promised that he would work to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. He also promised to cancel student debt. And yet, once in power, of course, I think as your situation illustrates, they work at cross purposes, from certainly what they have espoused during campaigns.
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