(Image: CHS)
This might be a party people on all sides of the Kshama Sawant spectrum would enjoy.
The firebrand socialist representative on the Seattle City Council for the neighborhoods around Capitol Hill and the Central District is marking her final days after a decade at City Hall with a party later this month on Capitol Hill.
The “Kshama Sawant: Ten Years of a Socialist in Office” celebration will take place Thursday, December 14th at the Sole Repair venue on E Pike and will include a performance by Seattle band the Smokey Brights.
In 2013, the Seattle Central and Seattle University economics professor included a promise of a fight for a $15 minimum wage in announcing she would take on incumbent Richard Conlin for his seat on the Seattle City Council. A decade later, she will leave office after that successful upset and a string of political victories that included overcoming an attempted recall in 2021.
The $15 now victory came first in 2014 — though it would take years for the city’s required wage to reach that level. A push for rent control followed but fell by the wayside in 2020 when the city’s shifting political tides put the effort to tax large employers on the frontburner. The pandemic sealed the deal. By that summer, Seattle had a new payroll tax and Sawant, another victory like $15 an hour — a far left movement translated into a version palatable at Seattle City Hall.
But her run of success on those largest initiatives came to an end at City Hall this year as she was preparing to step down from office. In July, Sawant’s final bid for rent control in Seattle fell short at the council.
With a few weeks left in office, Sawant is looking ahead. “After having won four elections and many victories alongside Seattle’s workers and social movements, despite the opposition of big business and the Democratic establishment, Kshama Sawant is leaving office UNDEFEATED!,” the party invite reads. “Join us to celebrate and look toward building Workers Strike Back!”
The free bash is being put on by Socialist Alternative, the political group that has backed Sawant since her first early runs at office, and Workers Strike Back, the nascent campaign to form a new leftist national party that Sawant says will be her focus after deciding not to seek reelection earlier this year.
Sawant will be replaced on the council by the Central District’s Joy Hollingsworth who will be sworn-in in January after her decisive victory in the November election.
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I’d rather cut my feet off than be at that event.
One thing to be said about Sawant, she’s not stupid. Undefeated? Sure, but only just so seeing as she barely eked out a win in her recall vote. I’m sure she, and her reelection campaign, saw the writing on the wall and bowed out, optics intact, before D3 finally handed her a defeat.
But what wins did she have for her district? I don’t see much
She was loud and annoying, can’t take that away from her.
Here’s a few….
180 day notice for rent increase ($10 says the new council puts this on the chopping block). If the tenant can not afford this the agency/landlord must help provide the tenant with funds to move out.
$15 minimum wage
Jump Start tax (which constantly gets raided to pay for SPD bonuses)
I can understand why people don’t like her. But I do hope that renter’s especially see ways that she did help the them. I am cautious about Hollingsworth. IMO she seems to be bought and paid for by the chamber of commerce. I hope I am wrong though. But at the same time I can easily see why and how she was able to beat Hudson.
She ran out in front of the $15 an hour movement, which was gaining momentum already, and loudly claimed it was hers.
She murdered Egan Orion’s bid for D3 Councilmember, successfully describing a 30 year community organizer in D3 as a “corporate shill” because Amazon wrote him a check. Meanwhile most of her money originated from outside of Washington State, yet somehow she’s the “grass roots.”
What else. She got a bunch of Ironworkers to shout her down while she was proclaiming herself “in solidarity with the working man” at some rally downtown once. That was the “no head tax” chant incident. Comedy gold.
She once claimed Boeing should quit building planes and start building buses instead, because planes are weapons of the oppressor and only the ruling class can afford to use them, whereas buses are available to all.
She got a sitting mayor’s family terrorized enough to cause the mayor to decide not to run for re-election, when she led a riot at Mayor Durkan’s private, secret residence — that Sawant leaked, then led, a march on during CHAZ/CHOP.
She tried to get City Council to defund police by 50%; leading to mass resignations at SPD and morale drop among remaining officers, leading in part to the crime wave we now see in Seattle in 2023.
She demanded SPD assign an investigator to the case of the poop bag that had been left in her yard, then denounced police because they did not do so.
To sum up: She was a divisive, angry voice that caused more problems than it solved, and in the rare instances she was right, was still a complete and total jerk about being so. Her presence will not be missed, except by the most radical of her remaining supporters.
Don’t forget the ethics violation she and her campaign acknowledged to conducting and had to pay $3500 to the city.
I wish there was a “like” button in the comments section, because your comment is spot-on!
She sent a toady to the Pulse memorial to hijack the stage and blame the LGBT nightclub massacre on homelessness.
I just wish she had ever deigned to respond to any correspondence from her constituents.
You should have complained about her appearing on RT America (Russia’s now defunct propaganda channel in the United States). A good friend got a very huffy response from one of the staffers in her Socialist City Council Office defending her appearance.
May Ms. Sawant’s political interests bestow upon her a throne of irrelevancy far away! Looking forward to a Seattle City Council concerned with Seattle stuff — like filling pot holes, re-building the depleted police force, and unstuffing a bloated bureaucracy.
A living wage and a tax on Amazon are very much Seattle stuff. She’s accomplished a lot, whether you agree with her or not.
Send Amazon to Bellevue! We don’t need their tax revenue anyways! oh waits https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/seattle-solves-school-budget-shortfall-for-now/
They already have one in Bellevue…
We will be celebrating the wicked, which is gone finally!
Um… Do you mean the wicked witch? Because if so she died in 2013
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Thatcher
Nope. Talking about Kshama. Margaret Thatcher? Not a fan but WTF?
Margaret was the United Kingdoms. Kshama is ours.
Ten years of sloganeering, grandstanding, poorly thought out bumper-sticker-quality proposals, and endlessly strident uncooperative blather have likely killed any hope of electing another socialist to the City Council for a generation to come. Thanks for nothing and good riddance.
Don’t let the screen door hit you on your way out…
the damage that she has done on “behalf” of the voters, so glad she is gone
I can’t think of anything that she’s accomplished in the last couple of years that’s truly benefited the residents of Cap Hill and the CD. Her minions basically try to shut people down and try to dox them. I’ll look forward to one less person from the her party on SCC trying to drag their heels and hope her minions get escorted out of city call by security.
Childish to see her as a two-dimensional cartoon. She ignored our district’s merchants asking for help during the pandemic, but years back she made my own life easier with her renter protection bill capping renters’ move-in costs. And if all ya’ll even wanted to help your neighbors, which you probably don’t, you wouldn’t be able to achieve 1/8 as much as she did w/that bill.
AS a former renter, I’m happy other renters have protections in place. As a resident of her District, i’m annoyed how she’s ignored the cries of the CD begging for more police presence and she’s basically outright refused to support it.
SO pleased she is on the way out. Good riddance!
KSHAMA SAWANT: 10 YEARS OF A COMMUNIST IN OFFICE! Look at her own definition of a socialist and it describes Communist to a T.
Let’s have a party celebrating return to normal in Seattle. The socialist destruction has been done with Seattle and surrounding cities the most expensive in the country due in part to $15 min wage legislation that now has Seattles wage at over $19.00. if you think this doesn’t cause inflation of everything from food to housing to entertainment – think again!
Sawant was the worst politician seattle has had. Her policies have pushed out the middle class in Seattle, and pushed out startups, and businesses. Kshama alongside her extremist have turned our beautiful city into a pigsty.
I am among the many who are delighted to finally be rid of this divisive, obnoxious, lying, terrible, exploitive, counter-productive, and ultimately ineffective and pointless person from D3’s collective lives. To anyone that ever voted for her: I hope some day you grow and mature a little and realize what a damaging terrible mistake you were making.
Go away
The one undeniably positive thing I can say about Sawant’s tenure on the council is that she voted the right way on just about everything. That might have been enough to keep her in office a while longer if she had just been able to muster a smidgen of empathy and service for her less ideologically enthusiastic constituents. If she doesn’t address that grievous personal flaw it will continue to hamper anything she tries to do politically. I hope she eventually groks that. We need people with her energy and passion for justice.
The election of Sawant was a tragedy for Seattle and D3. This one toxic individual pulled the rest of the council off a leftist cliff. I don’t know if Seattle will ever recover. It is a shame that she was able to hold on through the recall with the ballot stuffing tactics using the homeless loophole (you can claim a park as your address and print a ballot on the sidewalk next to the drop box). How do we know they even live in Seattle? She has tainted socialism for me forever. Good riddance.
Everyone I knew eventually ended up hating her. She ended up being a female donald trump. I regret ever voting for her.