Name: Anonymous 2014-01-01 22:49
Disgruntled voters send rare socialist to US city council
Seattle City Council member-elect Kshama Sawant addressing the crowd during a rally earlier this month to raise the hourly minimum wage to US$15 for fast-food workers. She is one of the few elected socialists in the US.
SEATTLE- People are used to liberals running things around here. But nobody reckoned with Ms Kshama Sawant.
Ms Sawant, a 41-year-old economics teacher and immigrant from India, took a left at liberal and then kept on going - all the way to socialism.
When she takes a seat on Seattle's nine-member City Council on Wednesday, representing the Socialist Alternative Party, she will become one of the few elected socialists in the nation, a political brand most politicians run from.
But Ms Sawant heartily embraces the label. Ask her about almost any problem facing the United States today, and her answer will probably include the "S" word as the best and most reasonable response. Socialism is the path to real democracy, she said, adding that socialism also protects the environment. Socialism is the best hope for young people who have seen their options crushed by the tide of low-wage, futureless jobs in the post-recession economy.
"The take-home message for the left in general is that people are looking for alternatives," she said in an interview, discussing her victory over a veteran Democrat by a margin of 3,100 votes out of about 184,000 cast in a citywide contest. "If you ask me, as a socialist, what workers deserve, they deserve the value of what they produce." '
The daughter of a schoolteacher and a civil engineer, Ms Sawant said she was seared by the disparities between the rich and poor around Pune, India, which is near Mumbai, and where she grew up.
But she was also shocked and radicalised, she said, by finding sharp income inequality in the US, when she immigrated here in her 20s.
Ms Sawant drifted away from computer software engineering, her first love - she once dreamed of being a "math geek", she said - and began studying economics, which she now teaches at Seattle Central Community College.
She lost her first run for public office two years ago, when she challenged a Democrat for a state legislative seat.
But she said she learnt a valuable lesson in targeting voters. This year, she aggressively, and successfully, courted transgender people and other groups.
She holds no illusions, however that a hidden bloc of socialist voters is ready to mobilise for her re-election campaign in 2015. That election could be more complicated for her, as Seattle voters this year changed the council's
composition from all citywide seats to geographic districts for most members.
No one, not even Ms Sawant, believes that a socialist-majority district exists in Seattle. So, she will try to draw support from the disgruntled voters who helped elect her this year. And she is counting on them to feel the same in 2015 as they did in 2013.
"They are just fed up," she said.
The spotlight on Ms Sawant, as one of only a handful of self-avowed socialists to be elected to a city council in a major US city in decades, experts say, could be intense.
"If she remains only an activist, she will be a one-shot wonder," said Reverend Rich Lang of University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle and a Sawant supporter.
But if she moves too far towards the centre, "she will be shot down from the left as a compromiser", he said. "There is tremendous pressure on her."
NEW YORK TIMES
Seattle City Council member-elect Kshama Sawant addressing the crowd during a rally earlier this month to raise the hourly minimum wage to US$15 for fast-food workers. She is one of the few elected socialists in the US.
SEATTLE- People are used to liberals running things around here. But nobody reckoned with Ms Kshama Sawant.
Ms Sawant, a 41-year-old economics teacher and immigrant from India, took a left at liberal and then kept on going - all the way to socialism.
When she takes a seat on Seattle's nine-member City Council on Wednesday, representing the Socialist Alternative Party, she will become one of the few elected socialists in the nation, a political brand most politicians run from.
But Ms Sawant heartily embraces the label. Ask her about almost any problem facing the United States today, and her answer will probably include the "S" word as the best and most reasonable response. Socialism is the path to real democracy, she said, adding that socialism also protects the environment. Socialism is the best hope for young people who have seen their options crushed by the tide of low-wage, futureless jobs in the post-recession economy.
"The take-home message for the left in general is that people are looking for alternatives," she said in an interview, discussing her victory over a veteran Democrat by a margin of 3,100 votes out of about 184,000 cast in a citywide contest. "If you ask me, as a socialist, what workers deserve, they deserve the value of what they produce." '
The daughter of a schoolteacher and a civil engineer, Ms Sawant said she was seared by the disparities between the rich and poor around Pune, India, which is near Mumbai, and where she grew up.
But she was also shocked and radicalised, she said, by finding sharp income inequality in the US, when she immigrated here in her 20s.
Ms Sawant drifted away from computer software engineering, her first love - she once dreamed of being a "math geek", she said - and began studying economics, which she now teaches at Seattle Central Community College.
She lost her first run for public office two years ago, when she challenged a Democrat for a state legislative seat.
But she said she learnt a valuable lesson in targeting voters. This year, she aggressively, and successfully, courted transgender people and other groups.
She holds no illusions, however that a hidden bloc of socialist voters is ready to mobilise for her re-election campaign in 2015. That election could be more complicated for her, as Seattle voters this year changed the council's
composition from all citywide seats to geographic districts for most members.
No one, not even Ms Sawant, believes that a socialist-majority district exists in Seattle. So, she will try to draw support from the disgruntled voters who helped elect her this year. And she is counting on them to feel the same in 2015 as they did in 2013.
"They are just fed up," she said.
The spotlight on Ms Sawant, as one of only a handful of self-avowed socialists to be elected to a city council in a major US city in decades, experts say, could be intense.
"If she remains only an activist, she will be a one-shot wonder," said Reverend Rich Lang of University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle and a Sawant supporter.
But if she moves too far towards the centre, "she will be shot down from the left as a compromiser", he said. "There is tremendous pressure on her."
NEW YORK TIMES