Filing for this year’s Seattle City Council closes today, though many of the races are well underway. All seats on the Council are up for grabs, due to the passage of a district-voting initiative. That means Seattle’s favorite socialist, Kshama Sawant, faces re-election a little sooner than usual.
In honor of her upcoming campaign, we here at Shift would like to share the Top 5 most absurd things Sawant has done and/or said during her first term as a councilmember… Enjoy!
- Sawant’s arrest at a protest in SeaTac over Alaska Airline’s push to block the $15 minimum wage. While being led away in handcuffs, Sawant compared her “life-threatening” situation to “all the best activists in the past and in the present.”
- Sawant’s call for a “militant” movement to stop global warming. Her words, “And what we were talking about last night was that this collective action needs to be channeled into a really radical, militant, nonviolent mass movement that will raise concrete political demands.”
- Sawant’s sponsorship of a measure to change Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day in Seattle. Her resolution stated, “The City of Seattle has a responsibility to oppose the systematic racism towards Indigenous people in the United States.” The City Council passed the resolution unanimously.
- Sawant’s insistence that she is receiving media attention not because of the economic absurdity that is a $15 minimum wage, but because of the energy and passion exhibited by the movement she helped start…. And because “people everywhere are questioning the capitalist system.” According to Sawant, the Cold War gave Communism a bad name, but “a lot of people are rational today, especially the ones who weren’t around in the Cold War.”
- Sawant’s demand that the Seattle City Council send a letter to President Barack Obama demanding that the U.S. cut off military aid to Israel. When the Council refused, Sawant said the letter would only be from her.
