The latest move from city council member Kshama Sawant and her supporters in the minimum wage fight is this bus ad. Organizers from 15 Now, the group Sawant founded that pushed for the city's new minimum wage law, say it's a response to the city being too slow to roll out its education and enforcement efforts and a way to get the message out to workers about their new wages.

I can appreciate this whole "Get your shit together, city hall" attitude from Sawant's camp, but can we talk about this fucking ad (which matches those they've been running elsewhere, including here on Slog)?

These are some of the same activists who drove the single biggest policy change in the city in the last year, and their ad looks, as someone in The Stranger's offices put it, like it was designed by a "Trotskyist fifth grader with no aesthetic sense.” If 15 Now wants to continue driving policy and being taken seriously in the city, would it kill them to hire a graphic designer?

More importantly, how useful is this bus ad, which cost the group $10,000? It includes Working Washington's employee hotline—good!—but misses a big part of its chance to be useful by not actually listing the wages workers in the city should now be earning.

For comparison, here’s the city’s ad, which isn't that great, but does look like it was made by a professional. And it includes the new minimum wage rate of $11 (for most employees). If the 15 Now ad is meant to do more to educate workers than the city's does, I'm not sure how it does that.

The bad news for Sawant's movement—but good news for your eyeballs—is that you might not even see 15 Now's ads. King County Metro has decided it won't run them because it violates their advertising rules. Specifically, according to Metro spokesperson Jeff Switzer, it violates the ban on “advertising that promotes or opposes a political party, the election of any candidate or group of candidates for federal, state, or local government offices, or initiatives, referendums, or other ballot measures.” While that doesn't explicitly define what constitutes promoting a candidate, Switzer says, “The policy does not allow names of active candidates to appear [on bus ads]."

He wouldn't comment on whether the ad would be allowed without Sawant's name, but said the group is allowed to resubmit it. Philip Locker, a spokesperson for 15 Now and Sawant's reelection campaign director, says the group hasn't decided whether they'll resubmit it.

"This is an educational ad. It's not a campaign ad," Locker says. "The point of the ad is not Kshama Sawant. The point of the ad is to let workers know about the minimum wage and who to call."

If only it wasn't so awful to look at.