Socialist Elected

Socialist elected to City Council in Seattle

Kshama Sawant of the Socialist Alternative, has defeated a long-standing Democratic member of the Seattle City Council, Richard Conlin.

Some of her issues: a $15-an-hour minimum wage in Seattle, and a “millionaires’ tax” to pay for better city services.

Sawant is a leading figure in Occupy! Seattle - remember my recent Post, Who Says "Occupy!" Went Away?

Here's a quote from there, just so I can say "told you so" -

"Just like "All the Hippies Became Yuppies", which is one of the crazy-making lies that was never challenged, and which led me to start work on my Book Proposal, "The War On The 60s", we have grown used to hearing claims that "Occupy!" was just a flash in the pan, a movement with no program that vanished into thin air at the first crack of a cop's baton."

The estimable Mitch Jesarich had excellent coverage of the Election and its meaning today in "Letters and Politics", with an interview with the brilliant Nation political writer John Nichols, author of "The "S" Word", a history of Socialism in the USA. (You'd be amazed just how much of the stuff there has been, though you wouldn't think it to hear the mainstream media talk.)

Mitch then played a slightly scratchy interview with Kshama Sawant, followed by one of her election speeches, laying out her proposals for the future. Fascinating stuff. You can hear it on the Archive, here.

Kshama Sawant and Political Tactics

A very interesting article by Dominic Holden of "The Stranger", seemingly a professionally put-together Blog from Seattle, lays out the conventional political wisdom of how Kshama Sawant will inevitably shoot herself in the foot when her abrasive Socialist shit hits the fan of the City Council's cosy, long-established Democratic majority.  

Then he moves on, halfway through the article, to a new approach.  How can you dislike a writer who says "Everything I have written so far is sort of true, but it's also bullshit."?

I love it!  Read on....

"Everything I have written so far is sort of true, but it's also bullshit. That framing is designed to put Sawant on the defensive, and it assumes that Sawant must behave like a "Seattle Nice" politician. It's also questionable to criticize a woman politician for being aggressive—men don't generally get that treatment (McGinn notwithstanding).

"We did not run this campaign to be yet another cog in the machine but with slightly shinier moral credentials," says Sawant. "We are here to make real change happen in a highly unequal society in which a tiny elite holds the power, so clearly you cannot be worried about them being against you, because they are going to be."

If she only holds rallies and refuses to work with her colleagues, yes, that's also a problem. However, she hasn't even been sworn in.

What should be offensive to Seattle is not rough language. It should be offensive if some folks attempt to undermine a candidate—and the voters who elected her—before her first day on the job."

The whole article is here.  It's a goodie....