We’re Coming For You and Your Rotten System

Описание: PORTLAND: Join me TOMORROW at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne for a discussion of a new book by Jonathan Rosenblum about the unparalleled victories we won in Seattle during my decade as an independent socialist on the Seattle City Council.

Jonathan’s book, We’re Coming For You and Your Rotten System, draws lessons from how my socialist city council office organized and led movements of working people to take on and defeat big business and the rich over and over again. I won four elections and victories such as the nation’s highest minimum wage, the historic Amazon Tax, and landmark renters’ rights. My office also ended the imperialist celebration of Columbus Day and replaced it with a citywide Indigenous Peoples’ Day. My fellow socialists and I organized alongside renters in buildings, forcing corporate landlords to rescind unjust rent increases. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling that repealed Roe v. Wade, my office also won free publicly funded abortion care by increasing the Amazon Tax.

Our example in Seattle runs counter to what we unfortunately see much more often nationally, which is the Democratic Party co-opting movements and leading them into dead ends, leaving working people no better off, or even worse off, than before. In fact, the Democratic Party’s latest shutdown fiasco has thoroughly exposed to tens of millions of working people that this party, just like the Republican Party, represents the interests of billionaires and multimillionaires.

My independent socialist Seattle City Council office charted a radically different course. From the victory in 2014 of the $15 minimum wage that is today up to $20.76 (the highest in the nation), to the Amazon Tax that taxes the wealthiest Seattle businesses hundreds of millions of dollars yearly to fund affordable housing, to the slew of landmark renters' rights, including the $10 per month cap on late fees and the winter and school year eviction bans — my council office was one of the most effective forces for positive change for working people that the U.S. has seen in many decades.

Now I am running for the U.S. Congress as an independent revolutionary socialist to take this same working-class fighting approach to the national level! We need this same independent movement-building strategy more than ever nationally, to show an alternative to the failed leadership of progressive figures like Bernie and AOC. I am running to end to the genocide and famine in Gaza, to stop the deportations and shut down ICE, for free healthcare for all funded by taxing the rich, and for national rent control.

The working-class fighting approach described by Jonathan based on his involvement in my council office will be vital to building the kind of campaign that can send the first revolutionary socialist to Congress.

If you are inspired by what you've heard about our successes and want to learn more about the revolutionary approach that made them possible, join us in Portland on November 20th at 7 PM at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne, and get involved in my independent, nationwide campaign for US Congress.

https://www.kshamasawant.org/events/129/

#socialism #union #protest #democrats #amazon