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Sawant spoke Thursday in front of 21st Ave’s New Hope Baptist Church, a frequent site for Socialist Alternative media events (Image: CHS)
Socialist Alternative is promoting Thursday’s announcement as the launch of a new initiative — “Kshama Sawant announces Workers Strike Back”
Kshama Sawant, the District 3 representative for Capitol Hill and the Central District on the Seattle City Council, will hold a Thursday morning press conference as her constituents wait to find out if she will seek reelection to a fourth term in office.
“Seattle City Councilmember and member of Socialist Alternative Kshama Sawant will stand alongside fellow community organizers, rank-and-file union members, and socialists to make an important announcement regarding her Council office,” the media advisory sent Thursday morning by her Socialist Alternative political group reads.
UPDATE 10:00 AM: In an op-ed published on The Stranger website, Sawant announced she will not be running for the seat and instead will focus on a new national campaign for higher wages and to form a new political party.
“There is a vacuum of real left leadership, locally and nationally,” Sawant writes. “We need a new party for the working class—one that holds elected officials accountable, that bases itself on social movements, that organizes alongside workers on the streets and in workplaces.”
In her statement, Sawant warned “the corporate establishment in Seattle” not to “rush to mix their martinis just yet, because we are not done here.”
“My Council office will continue fighting relentlessly for working people right up until the final days of my term,” Sawant promised. “We will be bringing rent control for a vote, and alongside our new organization, Workers Strike Back, we will be building our movement for renters’ and workers’ rights. And when this term is over, we will continue to be disturbers of the political peace in Seattle, as well as nationally, whether inside or outside City Hall.”
UPDATE 12:00 PM: In a media event dominated by the effort to launch a Socialist Alternative campaign to create a new national political party in which Sawant attacked the failings of the “Democratic establishment” including progressives leaders like Pramila Jayapal and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic Socialists of America, and even powerful trade labor unions, Sawant said the decision to not seek a fourth term on the Seattle council was based in focusing the strength of her political group on a new national party initiative.
There will not be a Socialist Alternative heir apparent to replace her in District 3.
“Just the vocabulary of heir apparent and picking up an individual’s mantle — that is completely contradictory to actually how working people win victory,” Sawant said.
“If we join resources behind one campaign, it takes away resources from another,” she continued. “So we think the best possible use of Socialist Alternative resources and the powerful solidarity that we bring for working class people is best used at this moment by launching this national campaign.”
Sawant said Thursday the new national effort will include an online news and information component to fill in a “vacuum” in the country and the world’s media landscape.
Earlier in the week, a formidable challenger to any defense by the incumbent announced a D3 run. Joy Hollingsworth is a Central District resident with long ties to the neighborhood and a cannabis farming entrepreneur with strong ties to the legal pot business community who says she will bring her experience in the city as a Black and queer woman in Seattle to City Hall.
The race is also taking shape with the likes of first-time candidate Ry Armstrong who plans to build a campaign on the strength of the city’s Democracy Vouchers program that provides public funding for candidates.
While Hollingsworth and Armstrong have filed 2023 campaigns with the city’s Ethics and Elections Commission, Sawant had not publicly announced any decision about a possible reelection campaign as a string of her fellow incumbents have said they will bow out and not run.
CHS asked a Socialist Alternative representative Thursday morning about the advisory and was told any details would need to wait for the press conference at the Central District’s New Hope Baptist Church, a frequent site for Sawant media events.
In 2019, the last time she had to defend her seat, Sawant launched her campaign in late January. That November, she defeated Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce-backed business community leader Egan Orion in a hugely expensive race that divided District 3.
Sawant would have entered the race this time from a much different starting point after facing down a hard fought recall battle in 2021. CHS examined Sawant’s successful 2021 defense of her seat on the council here as Sawant’s office tabled across the district and went hard on their rent control agenda, centering her political identity in her involvement with the working class. She won that battle but remains the most divisive figure in Seattle politics.
UPDATE: Sawant addressed the recall victory in her event Thursday and said it had no bearing on the decision not to run for a fourth term. “Despite how we have fought back and never sold out, we have won four elections,” Sawant said. “What is remarkable about the recall fight itself, is that no only did we have big corporations, corporate landlords, the Democratic establishment, all of those usual suspects against us — they couldn’t defeat us in any of the previous elections, they couldn’t defeat us in 2019 despite all of the money of Jeff Bezos, they have tried lawsuit after lawsuit, they have brought frivolous, baseless ethics complaints against me, and when nothing worked, they tried the recall attack against us.”
The divisions in the district and some of the fissures Sawant cultivates can run hot. In October, the Leschi area resident lashed out at police for not doing more about threatening incidents targeting her home with bags of suspected human poop.
Socialist Alternative is promoting Thursday’s session as a YouTube Live event entitled “Kshama Sawant announces Workers Strike Back.”
“Socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant speaks at a press conference announcing an exciting new initiative for organizing workers and youth,” the event’s description reads.
Workers Strike Back is described as a national campaign to fight for higher wages, “good union jobs for all,” stand up to “racism, sexism, and all oppression,” attain “quality affordable housing and free healthcare for all,” and to create a new political party.
The campaign will begin in March after events in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, Durham, Oakland (CA), Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Madison, Houston, and, yes, Seattle, according to the campaign.
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Do all council members include the logo for their political parties on their press releases? Is this typical? Because I find it weird. I’d rather she highlight the neighborhoods she represents (which includes mine!) rather than her party or “movement.”
You guys can vote her out. Oh wait, you have don’t show up. She is the winner and can do what she wants. And I am a socialist so I appreciate any extra advertising. I despise the do-nothing Democrats and the awful Republican parties.
“She is the winner and can do what she wants.”
That’s quite a fascist statement.
Press releases containing a party name isn’t fascism. But ok
Saying the winner can do whatever they want literally is.
No, but that statement certainly reeks of it, Jeffrey.
Both socialism and fascism are authoritarian ideologies, so statements like this should come as no surprise.
This has got to be the most misinformed comment I’ve seen in weeks and I’ve dealt with a lot of people in that period. At the very least, if you’re going to make a comment have a basic understanding of the terms you use before you just throw words around that sound good to you together.
No need to vote her out now, she took her ball and went home. Guess she realized Seattle’s infatuation with Socialist demagogues has its limits, and it’s time to fold up the circus tent and get out of town.
Enjoy your souvenirs. The “Fight For $15” sign, the card table full of pre-printed ballots.
Meanwhile D3 asks the important question: Who will block every corner on Broadway Ave yelling at passers-by now?
Guess that’s up to you now. I’m sure there’s a truckload of LaRouche fliers waiting for you somewhere.
Seattle City Council is non-partisan… so, no it is not typical. Indeed if you look at the city councillor’s pages, you’ll note that only Sawant and Theresa Mosqueda mention any party affiliation at all…
A quick Google search shows that political logos are not uncommon with media advisories across political spectrums, so I’m assuming you have this complaint for most other politicians and not just because she doesn’t have the same political beliefs as you…
“an exciting new initiative for organizing workers and youth” sounds more like a marketing campaign than a local politician seeking re-election. Which of course Sawant is – an internationally-funded marketer for Socialist Alternative, who has said before she only represents people “in our movement,” not D3.
I hope her opponents can emphasize the fact D3 has gone without a practical representative for at least four years if not 8; Sawant only cares about local issues if they happen to be profitable fundraising topics for SA. She’s been AWOL on multiple D3 issues in recent months, from homeless crisis, encampments, the spike in crime and the Fent overdose crisis. Silent on things D3 actually needs.
I will be voting against her, and I invite my neighbors in D3 to do the same.
Um she literally said she’s not running again
Wrote the comment before the announcement.
Have you looked at modern political campaigns?!? They are literally using tactics developed from marketing to manipulate voters either for or against them via advertising and social media… This is an effort to actually organize and mobilize people, ask yourself which sounds more like a marketing campaign?
Cue the same VERY tired pro Amazon, pro police, pro chamber backed commenters in 3, 2, 1…
The Amazon candidates are the literal objective grifters but somehow socialist candidates are to them. It’s so funny seeing it. They seem like bots. Amazon has now been funding anti-city council propaganda for a decade and it’s finally paying off.
Cope and seethe, Sawantists.
Otherwise known as your neighbors in D3. The half of us that wanted Sawant gone from the first time she screamed about all those evil Capitalists like Amazon, a local employer that employs thousands in Seattle… While fundraising for herself using money from outside of Washington State. Who’s the real “Corporate Shill” here?
A local “employer” who has laid off thousands, and quickly switched from advertising coding jobs in Seattle to advertising warehouse jobs the moment inflation started rising and their pandemic gravy train ended…
Nah, I voted for her every chance I got. I defended her against her online haters. I emailed her and engaged her supporters about issues in my neighborhood. She never replied and she changed nothing for us in the CD. I’m glad she’s leaving.
So all your sycophantic behavior went unrewarded?
This smells like a fakepost
Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the brown shirt sawant bootlickers.
She will never give up this grift. All she has to do is yell We Need Rent Control! once every four years and a new crop of young people take the bait hook line and sinker. Then she sits back for her term, collects a paycheck, raises funding for the SA cult, and does nothing to make this a reality or address the issues in her district.
Blah blah, then show up at the polls.
We do. And her margin of winning was shrinking with each election. She barely survived the recall effort. She clearly recognized this and decided to leave before she could be voted out.
This is cope.
She’s not running. Didn’t you read the article? You can write her in if you want.
I might have disagreed with most of your positions but I always appreciated your ability to accomplish nothing. You’ll be missed.
They said this day would never come.
Amazingly the people that support her never associated the election of Sawant and implementation of her policies with the decline of her district and the rest of the city. As a resident of Capitol hill with a perspective of over 30 years living there it’s plain to me that Capitol Hill was on a steady course of improvement of livability since the late 80’s until Sawant took office and then began a very rapid decline. Good bye and good riddance. I hope she moves to California.
I agree. And hi to another longtime resident! I voted for her and hoped for better things to come. They didn’t happen, and this neighborhood has really deteriorated. I also heard so many stories from residents, small business owners, who contacted her office on various issues and heard nothing back. She didn’t seem at all engaged with the neighborhood. I wasn’t planning on voting for her again. Hopefully with four new folks on the city council after the next election we will finally see things turn around.
I’m right there with you, I voted for her multiple times, including against her recall vote, but wouldn’t have voted for her again. I agree with her positions, but have come to realize she isn’t a great council member. In good times it was ok to have someone who was focused on issues bigger than the district, but with things going sideways with gun violence and the homelessness crisis, it is obvious the job needs someone with a different skill set, the silence from her office about these issues was too telling. Hopefully our next council member can navigate what is definitely a hard situation, I definitely don’t envy who gets the job.
good riddance to bad rubbish.
LaRouche 2.0 “Now with 98% More Cringe!”
She did jack all to help the small businesses in her districts during lockdown and all I can think of in regards to her actually doing any real work for was her recall. I hope who’s next believes in what they say enough to do some actual work.
Re: actual work, are you going to just forget about her successful fights against CD landlord violations and taxing corporations in the city?
Uh she didn’t do any of that. The council had to work around her to get those in.
Fair enough, the 15 min wage was just before I moved here so I didn’t know she was a part of that
My experience with her has mainly been during lockdown and afterward. I work for a small business in cap hill and it was like no one had our backs and still don’t. I know it’s hard to make change, and that change she did make is impressive, but that was several years ago. Now she seems more interested in a bigger picture than helping more locally, so her moving on to a more national endeavor could be the best.
As a decade-long small business owner that has averaged $55k a year and worked really damn hard to make a good living for my employees, keep the doors open through the pandemic and support our community inclusively and broadly with our services, I sometimes wish I could openly share my story.
I mention my profits because each $.75 minimum wage increase has equaled about $10k a year (that’s 18% of my take home). Since 2017, that’s about $70,000 from me to my employees. Almost all of these employees receive tips, and with those tips, working full time, would make as much as $73k a year. Over the course of the last decade, I’ve averaged between 60 and 80 hours a week for most of the time. The hourly wage I would be making to keep my business alive is somewhere between $13/hr and $17/hr. Does any Sawant supporter give a damn that I don’t make a living wage? In spite of this, as the business has grown, I’ve instituted a profit share, rather than make up for lost time by hoarding profits. Still I get treated like trash in this town as a small business owner, and if anyone bothered to ask, they’d hear a similar story from most business owners.
I fully understand the compulsion to find novel solutions to wealth inequality, but the Sawant era solutions are indelibly creating inequality through inflation, and a handful of other incidental market pressures. I can say that I have always kept my prices low, to actively fight gentrification and furthering of small scale inaccessibility, but my prices have gone up almost 50% across the board while trying to handle this increased cost of labor.
Yes, tax the rich, but her (and her most fervent, spiteful followers’) definition of rich is odd. Rich isn’t always your boss, and if you work at a small coffee shop, bar, bookstore, restaurant, I can promise you they aren’t rich in any meaningful way, when we’ve got 20 somethings rolling into town with a pocketful of code and $150k-$200k a year to work from home. Nevermind all that generational wealth on Mercer Island, or people that are swaying elections with silent PAC money. THAT is the actual rich. THAT is incomprehensible money to someone making a “living wage”.
Tax the highest income meaningfully, build truly strong safety nets with that money, operate with empathy and know your real enemy. Sawant simply created false narratives, piss and vinegar, training the proletariat to bicker and chirp at their neighbors in message boards like these, training them to huck rocks in “protest” through windows bought, installed and re-installed by owners that pay workers the equivalent of a week of their own work just to come work for them. To me, Sawant has become the Trump of the left – she feeds on division and she’s happy to spread falsehoods while she serves her own narcissistic goals. She is not a servant of the people at all, and I voted for her the first time.
I feel for you, my bosses are actually in the same boat as you, but you shouldn’t be made that you’ve had to pay your workers a fairer wage.
Has the government, local and national, failed us in actually doing something about taxing the rich accordingly, or providing small businesses safety nets, etc? For sure. And don’t get me started on rent, which is the actually money sink of the place I work for’s profits (a small, run down space owned by a known slum lord that we rent for almost 10k a month) and I can almost guarantee is the reason for most business owners on the Hill. We need someone to fight on our behalf for rent, too.
But fairer wages for employees that keep businesses running shouldn’t be anyone’s forefront of anger at how Seattle gov has failed small businesses.
This is why I’m excited about I-135 social housing program! Imagine a publicly owned mixed income apartment buildings with fair rents for local small businesses that contribute to the community. Let’s keep the money local and support each other!
Thanks for sharing your story, Sawant was definitely divisive, but she both fought for both a $15 minimum wage (which is still well below tracking inflation, btw) and taxing big corporations in Seattle by the headcount of employees making the highest wages… I understand she could have done more for small businesses, but she was the only council member consistently fighting for renters and the working poor, perhaps place some of your blame on the remaining council members who seem to have also done little for small businesses in this time.
Looks like it’s time to pack up the soap box and hit the road.
Good. I live in D3 and have had to write to her office four times asking for assistance, and I never once received a response from this so-called woman of the people, not even a canned one. And I’m just a working class healthcare worker, not a corporate shill.
First candidate that may present a real challenge among her base and she cuts and runs. Absolutely fearless that one…
She’s just not a good person. All she cares about is herself and her “brand”.
While it’s often tiresome to live among them, we are lucky as a country that so many people who think like her are concentrated into places like Seattle and Portland. Their policies get to be displayed for the utter failures they are.
Laboratories of democracy, as the phrase goes. Our job is to bear witness.
Good riddance.
Bye grrrl! You have done more damage to this community and undermined support for progressive policies with your toxic, Trumpian, scorched earth politics more than you could possibly understand. Time to rebuild the district.
Agreed. This is really good news. Now we can get over all the shrill noise and make the district a better place for all.
That’s too bad. I am just thankful I live in a district where her replacement won’t be a right wing scum.
Finally, a win for the Capitol Hill community.
This sounds like an exciting national campaign to launch Socialist Alternative goals. So why do her supporters look like they’re attending a funeral? Maybe because she is launching herself and Socialist Alternative into political irrelevance? And what better way to hamstring your stated goals than by demonizing almost all your potential political allies? The Establishment Democrats, Democratic Socialists, Pramila Jayapal, AOC, unions, almost anyone of substance who might work with her to achieve the goals of national health care and good union jobs for everyone….demonized. This is so typical of Sawant and Socialist Alternative. It’s our way or the highway baby. Enjoy your political irrelevance.
Now I can’t even enjoy martinis anymore. Thanks a lot.
But the new trending martini is the Capitalist Corporate Shill. Delicious! Drink up!
Joy Hollingsworth – thank you for running in District 3! As another resident (and having first met Joy when she was a first grader at the Seattle public school TOPS) I know she knows this district – and will work to represent us. Look her up!
Our family is excited Joy is running. Sawant saw the writing on the wall. Maybe we will finally have representation at the city level and get at least some of our local issues fixed…like our worst roads and flooded alleys, random and not so random shootings and such.
Skimming down through all this vitriol, it truly is the Year of the Rabid.
How will you cope without Dear Leader Sawant to attack your enemies? Otherwise known to more rational people as your neighbors in D3. You neighbors who have been denigrated as “corporate shills,” “fascists,” and “the ruling class” by Councilwoman Sawant for the past 10 years. Good riddancd to that hateful a-hole. Do you want to catch a clue and apologize for supporting this divisive person’s assault on the rest of us?
Yay! Mixing my Capitalist Corporate Martini and toasting a return to sanity and kindness on the Hill!
When (if) Sawant ever finishes slandering her colleagues and bad-mouthing her constituents, she can begin wooing her base outside of Seattle, where the real support for her hateful drivel lies. We all know she won’t accomplish anything meaningful during the rest of her term. Why should these last few months be any different from the last 10+ years?
Guess that poop in the yard was quite an effective strategy.
The rest of us have had to deal with literal and figurative piles of poop since she won a seat on the city council in 2014 and pulled the city council left to absurd and unsustainable positions such as allowing camping on public streets and parks, centering our society around the victimhood of drug addicts and dealers, and defunding, demonizing and demoralizing police. It is poetic justice that she too finally got caught in the sh*tshow she created.
BEST news I’ve had in quite awhile!! Hopefully her new plans will keep her away from Seattle most of the time. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out, Kshama.
This was always her plan. She never cared about the problems in the district she was supposed to represent and was always focused on a national presence. This announcement should surprise nobody. Hopefully we can elect someone that will actually respond to their constituents and help address the issues we all deal with everyday.
In Seattle, we need balanced candidates that both fight for all classes in the city. Not just the poor and downtrodden and not just the rich. We need someone that can provide a safety net for the poor and protect the wealthy property. Our society, like all societies have a spectrum of people living here. To have a healthy society we need that spectrum. We just need candidates that strengthens our society and city and not someone that only fights for a segment of our society and vilifies the other. Both have their challenges and both can be the victim and the perpetrator.
My biggest concern with Seattle lays in two camps:
Public safety
Building up the least amongst us
We can do both. We can build programs and safety nets for the least amongst AND keep all of society safe.
When you are only fighting for the least amongst us at the cost of everyone else you end up with a candidate like Sawant.
I am hopeful that we can create spaces for graphitti artists to express themselves and not tag our city. I’m hopeful that we can create affordable housing for those that are doing the minimum wage jobs. I’m hopeful we can create a true safety net for those that out of random misfortune end up on the streets.
But we need to address the mental illness crisis playing out on our streets. We need to address gun violence.
Seattle can be a safe city for everyone. We can do this and I believe with the right candidate and the right efforts we could make this city beautiful and place to say we’re proud to live in.
Right now I really don’t feel great about telling people I’m in Seattle just because it’s been such a disaster from a national stage.
Seattle has Charles Dickens social economics playing out on our streets, in our homes and in our businesses. We can and will do better.
I never liked her scorched earth approach just as I despise the far right’s same strategy nor do I care for her tear everyone/thing down rather than build everyone up. The philosophy of “if you don’t agree with me and join our movement you are the enemy” which we see a lot of in national politics these days is just not good governance. Glad to see her finally gone and hope for someone that wants to work for EVERYONE in D3.
We can do so much better. It is embarrassing that our city and district supported the equivalent of Margery Taylor Green for so many years. She ripped the social fabric with her Marxist revolutionary cosplay and we will be dealing with the aftermath for years. She gave a black eye to the progressive movement both locally and nationally.