The Stranger & Chop Suey Present Vote Sawant

Sawant is challenging 16-year incumbent Democrat Richard Conlin for Seattle City Council. Sawant is an economics teacher at Seattle Central Community College and a member of the American Federation of Teachers Local 1789. She was an activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is a fighter for workers, women, LGBTQ people, and immigrants.

In 2012 Sawant won a historic 29% with over 20,000 votes as a Socialist Alternative candidate against Democratic WA State House Speaker Frank Chopp – the strongest vote for an independent left-wing candidate in the U.S. in 2012, and the highest vote for a socialist in decades.

About the Kshama Sawant Campaign for City Council

While big business posted record profits last year, working people in Seattle face unaffordable housing, low wages, slashed social services, and high taxes.

The Democratic Party has run this city for decades. The mayor and all the city council members are Democrats and are representing only a tiny spectrum of political opinion and the interests of the people of Seattle, namely Paul Allen and the richest 1%, along with Amazon, Starbucks, big property developers, and downtown business interests. The 99% have no political representation.

As a city councilor, Kshama Sawant will use her position to help build, unite, and give political voice to the struggles of low-paid workers, youth, people of color, and all those who are shut out by the political machine that runs this city on behalf of the wealthy elite.

The Sawant campaign does not accept any corporate funding. Our financing relies solely on the support and sacrifice of ordinary people and activists.

While the Democratic Party pays lip service to working people, in reality both the Democrats and Republicans serve the interests of a tiny financial aristocracy. The Sawant campaign is an opportunity to break out from the prison of corporate politics.

We need to build a mass workers’ party drawing together ordinary people, youth, and activists from Occupy, unions, and environmental, civil rights, and women’s rights campaigns to provide a movement-based opposition to the corporate political parties.

We live in one of the richest cities in the richest nation on earth. There is no shortage of resources. Capitalism has failed the 99%. Another world is both possible and necessary – a socialist world based on the needs of humanity and the environment. Please support our campaign and join the struggle for democratic socialism!