If You Want Kshama Sawant To Stop Coming To City Hall, Stop Trying To Repeal All Her Victories

She's BAaaaAAAaaaCK!

The Seattle City Council held its first meeting related to Council Members Sara Nelson and Cathy Moore’s bill to lower the ethical standards so members can vote in their own financial interest Thursday afternoon. But not before a tense encounter with a familiar face, one many members likely see more often in their nightmares. Former Council Member Kshama Sawant brought her socialist firebrand back to City Hall leading chants, stoking applause, and probably shaving years off the lives of some members of the “civility” obsessed City Council. She and her supporters see the ethical code edit for what it is: Rolling out the red carpet for council’s landlord members to vote to repeal renters’ rights that Sawant and her movement fought for. 

And this isn’t the first time the council has threatened her legislative legacy. The last year and a half of the council’s new, more conservative era has felt like one long, elaborate subtweet, where its members relitigate Sawant's and the left’s previous victories instead of grapple with the fact that they actually don’t have very many ideas to make Seattle a better place to live. 

As it so often does with Nelson, it started with clapping during public comment. She does not like clapping during public comment. She told attendees to stop applauding between speakers so that the meeting could move along quicker. But, predictably, when a grouchy council member tells a bunch of lefties what to do for the sake of telling them what to do, they go full contrarian. Attendees started clapping louder and longer. Nelson, not known for managing her chambers very effectively, escalated the situation to the point where she ordered a recess and threatened to escort people out of council chambers when the “disruptions” continued. I’ll note that Council Member Joy Hollingsworth explained later in the meeting that she supports free speech, but felt like some commenters questioned her blackness, when they "couldn't even name 10 Black people." She may be referring to Sawant shaming her specifically for calling public commenters' behavior disruptive when children and Black people face the disruption of evictions at such high rates. Hollingsworth's office did not respond when asked what comment she was specifically referring to.

But Sawant had a different takeaway from the public comment period.

 ”It's pretty rich and rank hypocrisy for them to talk about decorum and rules at a moment when they're trying to throw the basic ethics laws of the city out the window,” Sawant said in a phone call with The Burner.

Sawant said her and her working class movement won’t back down — this is a fight she knows they can win because they’ve done it before. Last summer, Hollingsworth attempted to permanently enshrine a sub-minimum wage for workers at businesses who employ fewer than 500 people, breaking a key compromise from the Fight For $15. Sawant said the new council may target her bills because they don't like that a socialist advanced them. But she said it's more likely the single out her old bills because those are the policies that hurt the ultra wealthy the most.

But her legislative victories also improve the lives of working people so much, they have no choice but to return to Chambers to defend them, Sawant said. The backlash of touching the minimum wage hit Hollingsworth so hard, she ended up rescinding the bill altogether. 

Sawant believes working people can recreate that same pressure against Moore. And the council’s reaction today shows that.

“ A small scale mobilization, but a mobilization that has a fighting character to it, can have enormous impact,” said Sawant. “So I would urge working people to understand that when these council members attack us in chambers and they go on recess and they act all snippy, that’s them being on the defense. Let’s put them even more on the defensive and let’s win this thing.”

Sawant told The Burner that Thursday won't be the last time Seattle sees her back at City Hall. She'll keep defending the ethics code and she'll have to keep an eye out for any future funny business. When asked if she would run again, she seemed to keep the door open.