Perhaps it was a surge in demand that brought down the Seattle Channel’s live stream (or perhaps it was a Comcast/Centurylink conspiracy), but for those of you who missed all or most of council member Kshama Sawant’s Socialist response to the president’s State of the Union address, I’ve embedded the entirety, courtesy of YouTube.
My challenge to my fellow members of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is: Watch Sawant’s speech and tell me what you disagree with apart from maybe your knee-jerk defense of the president and your discomfort at her call for an alternative to the Democratic Party. Seriously… don’t you wish more Democrats would talk this way?
Sure Goldy. No Progressive would ever take issue with a Socialist’s ideas.
So why do you fools continue to be spoonfed and support the Democrat Party? You mock the Tea Party. Yet they actually have put up candidates and taken stands. All you f*cks do is whine whine whine.
Oh, is this Socialist transgender?
TeaBitch sez, “You mock the Tea Party.”
Of course. It’s nothing but a bunch of dumbfuck America-hating racists.
I like the way she talks directly to issues that affect the lives of real people. I don’t like the political theories that she hints at, and I think her housing solution is a poor one, but there appears to be no solution that is likely to be politically acceptable.
I expect we will see her on the national stage in, perhaps, a few short years.
Sawant is an exceptional political leader.
Leadership, by definition, means being out front.
Do I wish more politicians followed Sawant’s lead?
Hell yeah!
She’s an eloquent voice on the left and a much needed critic of mainstream politics.
I fondly wish that her political star continues to rise.
I told the Seattle City Council at a town hall that a lot of workers don’t get overtime. After the town hall, Kshama and Philip both told me Socialist Alternative stands in solidarity with workers who enter into struggle. I was instantly interested. Calvin was assigned to me as a minder and I was presented with a choice: Which is more important? Repealing FLSA exemptions or getting Kshama Sawant elected to the Seattle City Council?
Of course I thought that it would be amazing to not only send a socialist to Seattle’s city council, but a socialist who vocally and passionately fights to repeal exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act. What Calvin was asking was whether I wanted to continue to fight alone, or to have a committed socialist in city hall fighting with me. Of course I chose the latter.
I went all in, tabling for SA at parades and rallies, contributing the maximum, writing blog posts, setting up votesawant.org e-commerce subscriptions, merging pre and post 2013 databases then migrating socialistalternative.org from Drupal to BuddyPress.
Once Sawant was elected (awesome) I again returned to bringing up FLSA exemptions at meetings and online. I was soon blocked from the VoteSawant and SA Faceboook pages and mailing lists, and asked personally by Jessie to not come to a meeting because he was going to talk about 15now and didn’t want FLSA exemption disruptions, which I was cool with.
Soon after, Calvin told me the Seattle Executive Council of Socialist Alternative would not bring repealing FLSA exemptions up for a vote, and that if I did, finally, bring it up for a vote directly, after a full year of respecting Calvin’s request for me not to, the council and their allies would vote the issue down.
Which is fine. It’s ok if Socialist Alternative’s SEC discourages their membership from voting to (publicly) stand in solidarity with workers who are exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act. It would have been apolitical for Kshama to declare her aversion to the issue when we first met, not over a year later.
When I bring this up to SA they highlight their limited resources, and how there are so many other evil organizations out there; Why torment SA when there’s the DNC much less the GOP?
It’s a valid question. Of course I’ll vote for the lesser of three evils. But Kshama looked me in the eye and said she stands in solidarity with FLSA exempt workers. That she still has not said this publicly is genuinely hurtful.
I spoke at Seattle’s town hall on income inequality, Nick Hanauer was on the panel. He took my argument (repeal FLSA exemptions), watered it down (reform FLSA exemptions), and proposed it to the establishment. Now instead of being $24,000 the exemption threshold will be $42,000 or $54,000.
SA and the CWI continue to be silent on this issue. The DNC is at least paying lip service by proposing to raise the thresholds for which workers are exempt.
Once this all went down I looked at SA more critically. SA takes issues, like #fightfor15, and modifies them slightly, like #15now, then recruits via calls for solidarity. It might be healthy in the long run, but multiple hashtags are misleading when #fightfor15 activists, encouraged by SA’s solidarity, are subsequently discouraged for not paying dues, attending meetings, or tabling rallies to promote Trotsky, when instead they could support #fightfor15 organizations like Working Washington or Good Jobs Seattle.
SA is and should be proud of their accomplishments, but they should be more aware of their likeness to the DNC (no term limits). If you know you are not going to stand in solidarity with workers who are exempt from the FLSA, just say so, don’t drag it out.
Now, years later, with Kshama regularly rebutting the President, I still haven’t heard “Fair Labor Standards Act exemptions” (doesn’t mean she hasn’t said it, someone please (thank you) post a link of Kshama supporting the repeal of FLSA exemptions). Obama at least mentioned overtime wages, saying (meekly) we ‘should be giving folks overtime’ or something. It wasn’t much, but it is more on the issue than I’ve heard from The Most Dangerous™.
I guess I don’t understand the point. Sawant talks about the same things Obama talks about, though the specifics are different.
“Represent Millions not millionaires” – check.
“A Joyless Recovery” – check.
“Highest levels of (income) inequality” – check.
“Raise the minimum wage” – check.
“Affordable housing” – check.
“Fracking President” – I think Obama would like to think of himself as the “f*cking President” not necessarily the “fracking President”. I understand the reference, but (big edit) he’s certainly not the worst environmental President in recent memory.
“Provided no vision to address racism” – saywhatDrWest?
“Years of the Democrats doing the bidding of corporations” – this breeds apathy. Apathy caused the “lowest voter turn out” in 2014.
“The financial aristocracy” – “have their tentacles firmly wedded into every nook and cranny” of state and local governments, as well.
“Unprecedented-unconstitutional spying-drones-whistleblowers-et al” – I fail this part of the liberal purity test, too.
This “response” was no more of a response to the SOTU address than any of the others. But thanks for sharing it. I wouldn’t have seen it. I like Kshama. I’m afraid she might be crazy, but I’m not sure about the people I’ve been voting for, either; other than being better than the alternatives.
Sawant says the President didn’t address “the inevitable Republican obstruction” or the “entrenched undemocratic power of Wall Street and Big Business.” Her answer is the same as Obama’s has been: “grass roots movements.” The “Community Organizer in Chief” has been trying to light grass root fires since his acceptance speech. Conservatives mock him for it, and progressives greet it with apathy; often because he has failed all of their personal purity tests. He runs all over the country trying to whip people up, but always gone with the tide. Even the Democrats in Congress took a lot longer to rally behind the “leader of the Democratic party” than I thought they would; my local reps are NOT exceptions. Democrats were still keeping their distance from him in 2014, and it didn’t seem to win them any elections.
But, yes: in general, I wish more Democrats would talk this way.
(the knee jerk was uncontrollable)