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“It’s official: our movement has WON a historic, first-in-the-nation ban on caste discrimination in Seattle! Now we need to build a movement to spread this victory around the country ✊” (Image: @cmkshama)
District 3 representative Kshama Sawant declared victory and said she would next make the battle part of her fight to form a new national political party after the Seattle City Council Tuesday passed her legislation to create new protections against caste discrimination for workers in the city.
In the tumultuous public comment and full council vote, Sawant’s bill faced pushback from only citywide Councilmember Sara Nelson who has voiced her opposition to legislative sprawl on the council and said she was worried about the legal ramifications of the new protections. The final vote was 6-1 with Council President Debora Juarez and Councilmember Andrew Lewis absent from the session.
CHS reported here on the legislation Sawant’s office said will create “first-in-the-nation” protections against caste discrimination. “Caste discrimination doesn’t only take place in other countries. It is faced by South Asian American and other immigrant working people in their workplaces, including in the tech sector, in Seattle and in cities around the country,” Sawant’s announcement read. The Mumbai-born Sawant said the more than 167,000 people from South Asia living in Washington, “largely concentrated in the Greater Seattle area” mean “the region must address caste discrimination, and not allow it to remain invisible and unaddressed.”
After Tuesday’s vote, Sawant said supporters “need to build a movement to spread this victory around the country.”
CHS reported here on Sawant’s January announcement that she would not seek a fourth term so that the Socialist Alternative political group she leads can focus on efforts to create a new socialist political party. Her term will end in December.
Meanwhile, according to the council’s action summary for Tuesday’s session, Sawant did not participate in any of the other votes that followed on the afternoon.
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No surprise that Sara Nelson was the sole ‘no’ vote. It’s both pro-human rights and also doesn’t funnel a single dime to her business.
She could’ve abstained, but she’s not shy about showing the world how terrible a human being and politician she is. Sometimes I think she thinks she’s in Texas.
How dare she doesn’t condemn a problem that doesn’t exist in this country.
Actually it was a courageous vote grounded in sensible reality and motivated by the desire to govern in a focused and responsible way. This legislation came to the fore suddenly, and with little prior visibility to the problems sought to be addressed. As a result, neither the issue nor the potential ramifications of this legislation were fully understood. So, Councilmember Nelson voted ‘No.’ Her vote was courageous because she did it to govern responsibly even though doing so opens her up to charges of endorsing discrimination, or worse, what a terrible human being she is. That is an example of a good politician to me, and I would welcome more like her.
So you endorse her because she’s not afraid to show what a terrible human being she is? Interesting! Curious to see who you’ll support in the upcoming 2024 Trump/Desantos primary. Maybe you’ll swing Cruz just to make things interesting?
Hope she saved all that PPP she pocketed after she fired all those employees before the holidays in 2020. She’s going to need those funds when a serious candidate runs against her.
Denigrate the Councilmember. Denigrating me. Sorry to see you have run out of credible opinions Obvious. I enjoyed debating with you more when you offered factual, well conceived arguments.
Sorry that quoting your response and including factual events about a councilmember triggers you bro.
Good luck with the internet.
Are there really lower-caste Indians here that are struggling? Funny, I’ve never seen an Indian homeless person.
Good lord this loudmouth can’t leave town fast enough. Discrimination is already legislated against and the US doesn’t have a caste system so….
Sometimes Council seems like a cat chasing the
laser light in the corner of the room.
My turn to hold the laser!
I don’t doubt that caste discrimination exists, but I think it must be pretty rare in Seattle. This is just more showmanship and self-promotion for our (fortunately lame-duck) “representative” (ha!) Sawant.
It’s ironic that Sawant introduced this bill considering she has her own caste system. I mean, she wouldn’t condemn anti-Semitism from Omari Garrett that happened in her own district but she’ll condemn Israel training our police even though it isn’t happening. She also led a march to protest the hate crime murder of a Somalian immigrant which never happened (it turned out to be suicide). She seems to have her own caste system going.
Look closer to home. With minimal class mobility in the USA, much less than in Europe, people can easily get stuck in their economic class. It might be argued that America ‘s moribund system of Late-Stage Capitalism is developing into a caste system. Here is a definition of a cast system: “A caste system is a class structure that is determined by birth. Loosely, it means that in some societies, the opportunities you have access to depend on the family you happened to be born into.” That definition looks more and more like today’s America. Do we live in a meritocracy? Only 43% of Harvard students were admitted on merit. Garfield High School Class of 2022,only one kid got into Harvard, and his dad is CEO of Amazon. Inidentally, Indian born…I wonder what HIS social caste he was born into.
^My bad. Amazon’s CEO is not Indian born, I confused him with Microsoft’s CEO, Nadella. My point remains: Some children choose higher class parents than others. Caste in the USA is real, it is nearly invisible, and almost universally ignored. Lack of economic mobility, the stagnation of economic class in the USA, lack of opportunities in rural America, it could be argued, are in part responsible for the rise of populist politicians who bash ‘urban elites’.
Satya nadella’s son went to Garfield High? Somehow I doubt that
Did anyone who has commented so far listen to the testimony? It may be a small number whom testified, but a significant portion of the global population lives under a caste system and there are many who came from those areas, and from their own testimony clearly still face that discrimination here. Add on the notions of Isabel Wilkerson’s work on ideas of US race relations being closely related to notions of caste. I don’t see how making rights more explicit is somehow dangerous
I really dislike Sawant (this is an understatement). I think there are a lot of other more pressing issues that she needs be taking action on that would have a direct impact on- and benefit D3.
However, to those that are asking whether or not caste discrimination is actually an issue in this country, I’ll just leave this article link here.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/opinion/caste-cisco-indian-americans-discrimination.html
What with major tech companies in our area that employ a number of South Asians, it may very well be a problem that many of us haven’t given much thought to.
Exactly. This is a form of discrimination that very few Americans can see because most of us don’t know enough about south Asian culture to recognize the signs of it. I’m not a fan of Sawant either and I’m glad she’s not running again. We need a council member who cares about mundane things like unsafe crosswalks in addition to (although not instead of) racial and economic injustice. But good on her in this case for bringing public attention to a problem that has long flown under the radar in the U.S.
This is a tech industry issue. I witnessed one Indian colleague bragging to another Indian woman about her Brahman (sp?) Husband needing to take 3 showers a day. It did not end well.