Seeing that one of their City Council Members is America's leading socialist. There should be no surprise about the state of Seattle.
Why America’s most high profile socialist lawmaker is fighting for her political life
Capitalists will be ‘emboldened’ if she loses recall battle, Seattle’s Kshama Sawant tells Andrew Buncombe
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ant-party-socialist-alternative-b1871606.html
Put in her own words, what is happening amounts to one of the “worst attacks on America’s left in decades”. It is perhaps not quite as high profile or significant as as the 2016 undertaking by the
Democratic establishment to undermine the presidential campaign of
Bernie Sanders. But it is similar, “a full frontal assault on the idea that the working class can fight back”.
Furthermore, warns
Kshama Sawant, if her opponents are successful, then “the right wing and the ruling class and the capitalists will be even more emboldened to carry out further attacks on the left”.
We are sitting outside a coffee shop in
Seattle’s Central District, and the warm afternoon air is suddenly peppered with the language of Marxist rebellion – of elites and workers, of unions and rights, of people coming together and fighting for a revolution.
Sawant, 47, represents ward three on Seattle City Council and, as a member of the Socialist Alternative party, is by many assessments the most long-serving and highest-profile socialist politician in the country.
While Sanders, 79, and the likes of
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 31, may support some socialist policies, both campaigned for the Democratic Party, which despite the wild-eyed claims of Donald Trump and some other Republicans, is not a socialist organisation. (Sanders remains an independent, though he invariably votes with the Democrats.)
By contrast, Sawant’s Socialist Alternative describes itself as Marxist, and seeks to create a mass workers movement that would support free health care and education and lead an “international struggle against the failed system” of capitalism.
Yet, Sawant’s time may be up. The threat she has been talking about is an an attempt to oust her from the council by means of a so-called recall election.
In essence, if her opponents manage to collect the signatures of a little more than 10,000 residents of ward three, an election will be held in which her constituents will be asked if they want to hold onto her as their council member, or have her replaced.
Sawant and her supporters claim the recall is an undemocratic undertaking, backed and supported by “millionaires and billionaires” angered by her pro-working class agenda. Those behind the recall allege Sawant broke the law last summer, during the protests for racial justice that swept the country after the murder of George Floyd.
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