From Dave Jamieson at The Huffington Post:
On a recent afternoon in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, hundreds of progressive protesters poured into a pavilion at Seattle University. The demonstration was loosely tied to Fight for $15, the three-year-old, union-backed movement that has workers roiling the service sector with intermittent strikes and corporate shaming campaigns. The protesters were demanding union rights for the Jesuit school’s stable of adjunct professors.
When the microphone was passed to Kshama Sawant, a former adjunct herself who once taught economics in the building where the protesters now stood, the crowd erupted in cheers. The most visible figure in the local living wage movement here, Sawant, a native of India, became the first socialist elected to citywide office in Seattle in decades when she toppled a four-term incumbent in 2013. She quickly played a pivotal role in bringing about Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law, the most aggressive of its kind in any major U.S. city.
According to Sawant, that $15 minimum wage law marked the beginning of a broader social movement. Her message to the troops: Don’t thank the Democratic establishment, the city’s business leaders, the mayor’s office or anyone in Seattle’s ruling class for putting it on the books.
“This did not happen because the government suddenly decided to care about workers,” Sawant said, jabbing a forefinger for emphasis, as she likes to do on the stump. “We made it happen. We left them with no choice. They could either support us or be swept aside into the dustbin of history. That is how it’s going to be.”
In typical fashion, Sawant capped her remarks with a fist and the word “solidarity,” setting off another round of raucous cheers. Once offstage, she grabbed a marker and created her own sign with which to join demonstrators: “I was an adjunct professor making poverty wages. $15 for all workers!”
Like Bill de Blasio in New York City and Marty Walsh in Boston, the 42-year-old Sawant rode into office on a tide of lefty populism, buoyed by the growing concern over income inequality in the U.S. Unlike those Democratic city leaders, Sawant does not fit neatly into the political establishment. She rose out of Seattle’s Occupy movement and identifies as a member of Socialist Alternative, an anti-capitalist, democratic-socialist party. She sees meaningful policy change as something that grows out of the streets instead of city hall.
Read the full article here.