If you’re to believe some of our more conspiracy-minded Facebook friends, you really have to read some Saul Alinsky. His “Rules for Radicals” supposedly explains just about every action President Obama ever took.
While we don’t buy that, the tactics laid out by Alinsky are used for all kinds of Leftist protests. You see it on college campuses when far-left groups burst into speaking events to cause chaos. You see it in Kshama Sawant’s scapegoating of companies like Amazon at her rallies.
They love to disrupt, shout down speakers, and “speak truth to power” by making sure nobody else but them can speak. In normalizing this behavior (there’s a phrase you’ve heard more often in the last 16 months), apparently it’s never occurred to them that, gosh, these same tactics might get turned against them.
But then, they weren’t counting on the iron workers.
A Hard Hat Revolution
Someone who clearly buys into the “demonize and constantly pressure” school of thought is Seattle city councilmember Kshama Sawant, a self-described Socialist. Sawant is the driving force behind a “head tax” on large Seattle employers. While other councilmembers have noted that the tax isn’t targeted only at Amazon, Sawant has used the company as her symbol of greed.
When Sawant attempted a rally in front of the Amazon Spheres last Thursday, members of the Iron Workers Local 86 showed up too – but not to join Sawant’s cause. The iron workers – union laborers who in Sawant’s fantasy vision should be arm-in-arm in solidarity with her – disrupted the rally, chanting “No head tax!” whenever Sawant tried to speak.
It was a taste of her own medicine, one that a lot of people found funny – and not just beleaguered local conservatives. Many who think Sawant is a bit full of it, and full of herself, chuckled. Not to mention, the iron workers looked the part of actual union laborers, in contrast to the Village People laborer Sawant had standing behind her.
Sawant tries for class solidarity, Sawant fails at class solidarity
Sawant tried to make common cause but got nowhere:
Sawant: “Can I make an appeal to my brothers in the labor movement? As you know I am also a rank-and-file member of the labor movement…”
Iron workers: “No head tax! No head tax! No head tax! No head tax! No head tax! No head tax!”
Sawant: “Brothers when we – we can disagree, and we will have disagreements in the labor movement, but if we fight against each other, the bosses win.”
Iron workers: “No head tax! No head tax! No head tax! No head tax! No head tax! No head tax!”
Not knowing what to do, Sawant went to her default play: Appeal to class solidarity. “Brothers, the only people you are empowering is Amazon and the bosses,” she said, but the iron workers weren’t moved.
They’re pro-construction, and strangling tech growth in Seattle strangling future development – their jobs and livelihood. One iron worker told KOMO 4, “[Amazon has] provided more than 1 million man-hours in the last year alone to provide family wage jobs for people in and around this community.”
Sawant has provided them rhetoric and rallies. Is it any surprise these putative brothers-in-arms don’t see things Sawant’s way?
The construction workers were pushing back on the head tax after Amazon announced it is delaying a large construction project in Seattle. Said Councilmember Lisa Herbold, a co-sponsor of the head tax with Sawant, “This was an unfortunate reaction from Amazon and not at all what I would have expected,” in a further sign of the current city council’s utter head-in-the-sand cluelessness.
The iron workers’ willingness to fight back galvanized many who feel Seattle is growing ridiculously left-wing and going downhill into a pit of its own wokeness. Is this the start of “real Seattle” pushing back at the city council’s absurdity? If so, we’ll always remember the guys in hard hats and safety vests who kicked it all off.
GoldwaterConservative5 says
It is about time the Liberal bastion of Seattle and specifically Sawant received some serious push back…….
Bradley Whaley says
The city has created the homeless problem by making Seattle an attractive place for the homeless hence many are moving here to in droves. Seattle police are handicapped by their own city, and the proposal of safe injection sites will only exacerbate the problem. The city has already poured far too much unaccountable tax dollars and the population still increases. It is a literal pipe dream to think that this head tax will solve anything whilst alienating some of the biggest employers in the city. My feeling is that the city council and its mayor are developmentally disabled (to be politically correct) and the only true fix is a wholesale change.
Roberta K. Starkey says
Finally Some People GROW a Pair and stand up to the the King Tuts reigning rogely in Seattle. Their ignorance has DESTROYED everything GOOD which used to be Seattle!!!!
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