“They did it,” TheBlaze.com said on November 15. “Seattle voters elected a Socialist candidate to the city council.”
Kshama Sawant, a member of Socialist Alternative and former Occupy Seattle organiser, defeated four-term Democratic incumbent Richard Conlin. She was finally declared the winner in the November 4 election on November 14.
TheBlaze.com said: “Sawant, 41, is on leave from her post as a Seattle Central Community College professor. She ran her campaign blasting income inequality and supported raising the minimum wage to $15 for all workers in the city.”
Sawant told Associated Press “I think we have shown the strongest skeptics that the Socialist label is not a bad one for a grassroots campaign to succeed.”
An anti-racist activist, TheBlaze.com reported that Sawant told a Seattle rally for slain African American teenager Trayvon Martin: “Racism is necessary for this oppressive system to exist.
“It prevents ordinary people from coming together of different races and turning their fire towards Wall Street, corporate politicians and the ruling elite as a whole … the bankers, the billionaires, the capitalists ― they are the criminals of our society. They are amounting unimaginable wealth by exploiting the rest of us and maintaining their power by dividing us.
“We must reject this divided rule and build an independent united working class movement that will put on trial American racism, sexism, class and gender exploitation, and capitalism itself.”