Anarchistic update news all over the world - 20 May 2016 - Part 2
Today's Topics:
1. US, black rose fed: A SOCIALIST ON CITY COUNCIL: A LOOK AT
THE CAREER OF KSHAMA SAWANT By Michael Reagan (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
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The case of Kshama Sawant shows that no matter how good the candidate, business as usual
rules in elected office ---- This article is part of an ongoing series called “Socialist
faces in high places” looking at the left in relation to the electoral path and state
power. ---- 2016 is shaping up to be a year of social movements: Black Lives Matter,
trans-equity, teachers and workers struggles. It is also an election year, and one
candidate, Bernie Sanders, has activists and organizers across the country “feeling the
bern.” But is the enthusiasm justified, will electing good politicians lead to substantial
change? ---- “The question is,” according to Kshama Sawant, Seattle’s socialist city
council member, “How can we build a public movement that would counter business
opposition?” This was Sawant soon after her historic victory where she and her party,
Socialist Alternative, defied expectations and won a tight race against an entrenched
incumbent Democrat, Richard Colin. Her major legislative agenda, “$15Now,” a substantial
minimum wage hike for workers, faced hostility from business interests. Sawant recognized
that they couldn’t do it alone, that it would take a movement of regular people to make
change.
But how far did the minimum wage law go given the tremendous support Sawant’s campaign
generated, and did her repeated electoral success help build social movements as she often
claims? This article wants to go back to Sawant’s central question posed in 2014 – how can
we build social movements to counter business power?
While Sawant and Socialist Alternative claim they are building a movement, they are
instead building a candidate at the expense of building a movement. When labor groups
backed a watered down version of the Seattle minimum wage law, Sawant and her party
followed suit because they had no independent power from which to win a stronger bill. The
result is that Sawant’s most recent re-election campaign represents the politics of
business as usual, with Sawant advocating business friendly reforms like commercial rent
control in order to secure political support and win reelection. Sawant’s political career
shows that pushing candidates without building social movements will fail to win
substantive change. As activists and social justice organizers consider working on
electoral campaigns in 2016 we should reflect on the pitfalls of an electoral strategy.
Sawant’s political career is illustrative.
***
Sawant’s career begin in the streets, with Occupy Wall Street where she was at numerous
general assemblies, protests, and demonstrations. Just months after the Seattle encampment
was broken up and abandoned, Socialist Alternative ran Sawant for the state legislature.
Her campaign slogan, “a voice for the 99%,” attempted to build on the popular momentum
coming out of OWS.
After the collapse of Occupy, Sawant’s campaign manager Ramy Khalil explained their
strategy: “Socialist Alternative argued that the movement could be rebuilt by running 200
independent Occupy candidates across the country.” Sawant’s personal assistant, Ahn Tran,
framed the strategy as a question, “We thought: Why not Occupy the elections?” SA seemed
to miss a major point of the anti-electoral OWS movement. Nonetheless, from here they
would go to build Sawant’s political career on the victories of movements.
In their first electoral stint, SA lost to the well-connected speaker of the state house,
Frank Chopp. On her second run, they targeted an equally well entrenched city council
member, but one who was vulnerable in the political climate post-Occupy. Richard Conlin
was a retrograde corporate democrat. The lone “no” vote on a paid sick-leave bill, he
supported the disastrous Alaskan Way tunnel project, and attempted to pass legislation to
fine homeless panhandlers. Conlin was backed by “coal money, police money, and freeway
money” according to the Stranger who called him a “a green-washing liberal fraud.” What
was important for Sawant was that Conlin’s milquetoast liberalism was no longer sufficient
post Occupy; Conlin, “the longtime liberal,” in the words of the Seattle PI, “became too
conservative for Seattle.”
But the key to Sawant’s campaign victory in 2013, as opposed to the previous year, was
support from the labor movement. In her first campaign against Chopp, Sawant and SA raised
an impressive $21,000, mostly from small contributions. When she ran against Conlin in
2013 major labor unions backed her. A look at her contributors shows that, on the second
campaign, big unions gave big and gave early; SEIU Local 6, PTE Local 17, SEIU Local
1199NW, Teamsters Local 117 and IBEW Local 77 all maxed out their allowed contributions at
$700. (All told candidate Sawant raised a whopping $161,023 for the campaign). Sawant also
won significant endorsements from major local unions including AFSME Local 1488, AFT Local
1789, IBEW Local 46, and CWA Local 37083 and the Seattle local of the APWU. Union support
like this is more significant than just the dollars collected, union endorsements come
with staff, voter drives, phone banking and mailers.
Why did unions turn to support Sawant? Largely for their own reasons. In 2013 they were
engaged in a major battle with area businesses in the city of SeaTac, a bedroom community
of Seattle and Tacoma and the site of the area’s major international airport. The crux of
the battle was the fight to increase wages for workers at the airport to $15 an hour. SIEU
775, the union leading the effort, decided to run a ballot initiative to force employers
to grant a wage increase (companies are still fighting the outcome in court). Meanwhile,
in Seattle itself, other unions were moving forward with the audacious fast food workers
campaign, staging one day strikes and media events to build support for a $15 an hour wage
increase for fast food workers. These were the two major campaigns for the labor movement
in Seattle in 2013; Conlin would do them no favors, and Sawant became their candidate. Her
major campaign plank became the $15 minimum wage, rather than a party for the 99%, and it
defined her candidacy and reflected the interests of her backers.
Sawant and SA’s great success is that they dramatically changed the climate of politics in
Seattle. With Sawant, “$15” became locked in as the legislative agenda for the new city
council. She told the UK Guardian, “The public battle on $15 an hour, that number, has
been lost by business,” she said. “Now the fault lines have gone to: I support 15 but we
have to do it thoughtfully.” The question before Seattle was what would the final
legislation look like? How good would the law be for Seattle’s working families?
Sawant and her allies pushed for “$15 now,” an immediate across the board increase with
some costs offset for small businesses (but importantly small businesses were included).
In this way, Sawant’s legislative agenda was akin to the measure just passed in SeaTac,
won through a massive organizing campaign. In addition to providing for paid sick leave,
measures to promote full time employment and that tips and service fees go to the workers,
the SeaTac law mandated immediate $15 an hour wages for airport workers and yearly cost of
living increases. The SeaTac measure was far more direct and effective than what would
pass in Seattle.
The Seattle law is a complicated mess of exemptions and extensions. The biggest compromise
came when Sawant and SA agreed to define a small business as one employing 250 or fewer
employees. That limit was extended to 500 in the final law. Further, a complicated
timeline of implementation and exceptions was incorporated. If the employer is a “small
business” they have a lower rate to pay; if they provide health care they have a lower
rate; if the worker receives tips, the employer pays a lower rate. As of now, spring of
2016, the minimum wage rate in Seattle is $13.00 an hour for large employers with no
payments toward medical benefits, $12.50 for those large employers who do. It is $12.00 an
hour for “small-businesses” that don’t pay either an equivalent $1.50 toward medical
benefits or in which an employee receives an equivalent $1.50 an hour in tips. For the
small employers that provide either of those services the city minimum wage is $10.50,
just .75 cents higher than the state minimum. Some of the schedule increases don’t
complete until the year 2024.
In the campaign, Sawant herself spoke out against machinations like this. In the $15Now
campaign launch party in January of 2014, Sawant explained that “when we say minimum wage,
we mean all workers. A universal minimum wage is what we are fighting for.” She warned
that corporations and businesses were already building opposition to the bill, and that
they were talking about a phased-in plan over “many, many years,” adding that what owners
wanted was to “do it in such a way that it takes 10 years to get to $15. Then it’s
meaningless.” She said that with the decline in value of the minimum wage over decades,
that workers have “already been phased into poverty; we don’t need any more phasing in.”
Referencing the efforts in SeaTac she argued that there were “many not-so-small
businesses, parading as small businesses,” trying to water down the bill, and she noted
that some of the same businesses that vigorously opposed the SeaTac measure were placed on
the Seattle Mayor’s committee to develop a bill. As was Sawant.
Her critiques were prescient; so why did everything Sawant warned against come to pass?
Why was the minimum wage bill so weak, given all the support Sawant’s candidacy generated?
In the wake of Sawant’s election victory, the new mayor, Ed Murray, quickly put together
an “Income Inequality Advisory Committee.” The committee included Sawant and major
representatives of labor, but also representatives of the city’s major business interests,
like the city Chamber of Commerce and the Capitol Hill Chamber, the downtown Hotel
Association, the hospitality industry, senior executives at banks, and other business
owners. Importantly, the main union representative was Dave Rolf, a leading reform figure
in labor politics, who advocated a style of “entrepreneurial unionism” whereby unions and
progressives “should take a cue from business” and run their organizations like Silicon
Valley startups. His union, SEIU Local 775NW, backed Sawant’s opponent, Richard Conlin.
Rolf was co-chair of the mayor’s committee.
Rolf was a major author and vocal supporter of the final compromise. Rolf told the media,
as paraphrased in Al Jazeera, that “he stood by the ‘delicately constructed’ deal.” When
even more changes were made, adding a “training wage” and weakening enforcement, Rolf sent
an email to Al Jazeera saying he “fully supported” the further compromises.
Sawant, to her credit, came out strongly against it, threatening to take the measure to
public referendum that would create “$15 now” if a stronger bill was not put forward. At a
hearing just four days after the compromised bill was announced, she read an email from a
Domino’s Pizza driver arguing for an “immediate hike” and that “Most of us are one
paycheck away from financial tragedy. Living paycheck to pawn shop is no way to live when
you’re working full time.”
But the referendum never got off the ground; Sawant and SA abandoned the whole effort.
Once Rolf and the unions came out in support of the compromise, Sawant and SA were the
only organized group in favor of a stronger bill. As a small left party they didn’t have
the organizational heft to actually take a referendum to the people of Seattle and get it
passed. That would take canvassers, phone-bankers, funds, ads, and well, a movement. The
major institutional backers of her election campaign, the unions, had pulled back, and she
couldn’t move forward without them. Sawant’s election was made possible by the labor
movement, and her legislative victories and defeats are also explained and defined by the
role of the movement.
Instead of building an independent base of worker support that could either push for a
stronger measure through demonstrations and direct action, or through an organized get out
the vote effort in favor of the referendum (like what happened in SeaTac), Sawant and SA
built a political career rather than a movement. And they were stuck. When the city
council passed a horribly watered-down measure Sawant sheepishly argued it was the best
that was possible. This was the same position her opponent, Richard Conlin, argued six
months pervious during the campaign.
A similar story can be told with Sawant’s recent legislative efforts and her bid for
reelection. In 2015 Sawant was the big money candidate. She broke fundraising records for
Seattle city council races, and outspent her opponent, Pamela Banks of the Urban League,
$419,000 to $330,000. At one point during the campaign Sawant had more campaign
contributions than any other politician in the city. And once again, money came from
unions, this time, from major local unions, their members and leadership.
Sawant’s reelection issue was residential rent control, something critically important in
Seattle. Unfortunately she was outmaneuvered on the city council by her chief political
opponent, Tim Burgess, chair of the council. Burgess orchestrated a vote that put the
council on record supporting residential rent control. In Washington, any municipality
that passes rent control needs to have those laws cleared by the state legislature. The
Seattle city council vote meant that Sawant would have to lobby and cajole state
legislators in Olympia. While potentially beneficial in a long-term struggle for
affordable rent, this would do nothing for the short-term goal of getting re-elected in
Seattle. Sawant abandoned the effort.
Here Sawant teamed up with Seattle businessman and “establishment power broker” Dave
Meinert to push for commercial rent control. Meinert, who opposed Sawant’s “$15 Now”
effort and was on the committee that created the mayor’s compromise measure, has a lot to
gain from commercial rent control. Most of Meinert’s main businesses are in the Capitol
Hill neighborhood where rents are skyrocketing. And he is no small fry; he has “his hands
in nearly every line of business” including, a record label and artist management company,
a number of restaurants and bars including The 5 Point Cafe, Lost Lake Cafe, Big Mario’s
New York Pizza, The Comet Tavern, Grim’s, is the founder and co-owner of the yearly
“Capitol Hill Block Party,” and owns an events and promotions company.
Sawant and Meinert announced their proposal together at City Hall. In a press release,
Sawant defended the measure saying, “There’s a lot of small business rhetoric from
corporate politicians, but little actual policymaking that helps our city’s small
businesses. Commercial rent control, for example, is a policy that will directly benefit
small businesses.” Here it is hard to distinguish Sawant from the rhetoric of a corporate
democrat, in which “small business” means “business” and “jobs” means “profits.”
The reality is that in her bid to win re-election, with no social movement to back her,
Sawant turned to established sectors of power to win support. In her fist election this
included unions, but in 2015 favored business interests like Meinert’s. In this sense
Sawant is representing the business interests of boutique business owners, against another
segment of local capital, commercial landlords, with nary a worker to be found. This is
business as usual politics, with one segment of business using elected representatives to
foist their interests over other segments of business – casting deep shadows on society.
***
Passing a $15 minimum wage in Seattle would not have happened without Sawant. The point is
not to disparage her; it is likely that Sawant is genuinely interested in furthering the
cause of working people in Seattle and believes in the electoral process as a path of
effective change. Our question is why wasn’t the effort for $15Now able to achieve more?
The answer lies in the campaign’s overall strategy of pushing forward a politician, rather
than building power of popular forces.
When Sawant says one thing, and does another, when she runs on a particular platform, and
then helps to implement policies supported by her opponent, she is reflecting the
realities of state power and elected office. Pushing candidates without social movements
that can make them do the right thing is a failed strategy. It has failed in Greece with
Syriza, in France with Francois Hollande, and in Seattle with Kshama Sawant. And, although
exciting, it will also fail with the Bernie Sanders campaign in the unlikely event he is
elected. Putting politicians before movements leaves elected officials, no matter their
intentions, alone in a wilderness of business power.
This is why the OWS movement and the BLM movements are anti-electoral. They’ve learned the
lessons of social struggle from history. The legacy of Dr. King is a case in point. King
knew the importance of keeping his efforts focused on movements of resistance, rather than
running for or holding office. To get the Civil Rights Act he marched on Washington, to
get the Voting Rights Act he helped build a movement in Selma.
Our own moment is marked by movements demanding and winning real social change. The BLM
movement, immigrants’ rights, trans equity, and workers movements are all having dramatic
impacts. Chicago teachers are striking for a “millionaire’s tax” in their city. Seattle
teachers are boycotting onerous and wasteful standardized tests. We should look here for
hope. We don’t have to look to socialist faces in high places for our answers. We are
generating them anew all the time.
Michael Reagan is a historian and community organizer based in Seattle, Washington.
http://www.blackrosefed.org/a-look-at-kshama-sawant/
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