The plans of the right wing, the big corporations and the leaders of the Democratic Party in Seattle have failed. The city's ruling class unsuccessfully organized an anti-democratic, racist and sexist campaign to force the removal of Kshama Sawant from the City Council. This is a huge victory for the entire US working class!
International Revolutionary Left wants, first and foremost, to congratulate comrade Kshama Sawant, who will maintain her position as councilor for the militant left in Seattle. And secondly, to congratulate Socialist Alternative, the youth, the workers and all the housing rights activists, for the selfless and exemplary campaign they have carried out for weeks. More than 1,500 volunteers who have visited the districts every day, who have obtained the financial support of 11,500 people, and who have managed to raise a spectacular figure of 1,010,000 dollars for this support campaign!
Those who have concocted the Recall Campaign —Amazon, the great Trumpist tycoons, the Seattle Times…— were counting on the fact that the drop in turnout in these elections would drive Kshama out of her office. But not even placing the vote between Thanksgiving and Christmas has succeeded. The vote in favor of Kshama has prevailed, and in the most working-class districts, nurtured especially by Black and Latino workers, it manages to win with overwhelming majorities of 70% and 80%.
What took place in Seattle teaches us great lessons. The first is that, in this epoch of revolution and counterrevolution, the capitalists and their representatives will use all the means at their disposal to try to destroy and discredit those leaders of the militant left who raise an anti-capitalist alternative to the austerity policies, and who are viewed with enormous sympathy by the workers and the oppressed.
Kshama has been reelected as many as three times as Seattle Councilor, despite the huge amounts of resources mobilized by the magnates —starting with Jeff Bezos—, because she has placed herself on the side of the victims of racist police violence, she has led demands in favor of the $15/hour minimum wage that have culminated in a victory, she has struggled side-by-side with the activists of the Black Lives Matter movement, opening the doors of the City Hall to the movement, and led the Tax Amazon campaign so that this corporation pays the taxes it well should. This is what all public officials who declare themselves to be left wing should do!
And the second and most important lesson is that it is possible to defeat the multinationals, the right wing and their media. It can be done, but only based on mobilization and organization, with trust in the strength of our class and not in the rotten pacts made on the institutional field. As Kshama herself said, after learning of the first results: “If a small revolutionary socialist organization can beat the wealthiest corporations in the world here in Seattle, again and again, you can be sure that the organized power of the wider working class can change society.”
Once again, congratulations.
The struggle continues! We won’t back down!
