News Jan 24, 2023 at 9:00 am

One Candidate Proposes a Slate of Seven Socialists

Sawant is leaving the council, but the movements that made her aren’t going anywhere. City of Seattle

Comments

2

All of her time in office, CM Sawant insisted she was building a “movement.” That “movement” couldn’t save her seat urging the recall election (ballots printed and harvested on the street did that, an effort paid by Socialist Alternative’s nationwide fundraising machine), and can’t save her from losing next November, either. Now, that “movement” can’t even agree on how to proceed.

When someone is that much of a failure at her own self-proclaimed mission, it’s no wonder she was a failure in office as well.

Unless Seattle has a burning desire to get sued by another filthy-rich, right-wing, old white guy over a former furniture store, there’s no need to pay attention to Ms. Sawant any longer. Good-bye.

3

You can always tell the "please take Sawant seriously" articles from the photo. Such articles feature a photo with her mouth shut.

7

Toxicity has left the building. Thankfully.
Hopefully, there will be more viable candidates that won't confuse socialist policies with illegal agendas that help no one. Real socialists can emerge if they are focused on helping people.

9

Does the logic of this article even make sense? Scott lost in 2019 which arguable was the best year ever for progressives/socialist candidates due to the Amazon backlash. In 2021,Oliver and NTK were blown out of their respective races, the latter by a self declared Republican in one of the bluest cities in the country and then the darling Sawant only won her recall by using an army of acolytes to harvest ballots which is not going to be practical at a citywide level.

So given that backdrop there is an idea that if the socialist urbanists can organize and present a unified slate they can somehow win across the board on a platform of less public safety, increased taxes and a massive expansion of government by a council that has consistently shown they have no interest in accountability or transparency as long as you say the right things? The issue here isn't organization or funding, it's that this vision for the city has continually been rejected by voters. The notion that Scott and Oliver were not organized is complete bullshit. They were both political veterans when they ran and knew as much about the political machine here in Seattle as their opponents. They weren't outspent or outworked, voters simply said no. Hopefully that trend continues in 2023 and we get back to candidates who are more interested in how government actually works instead of being an activist hell bent on remaking society in their preferred image.

10

It's cute they think that if they could just get a slate of candidates, they'd win a Glorious Socialist Victory. Not gonna happen.

13

“Matthew Mitnick, who is running to replace Alex Pedersen in District 4, proposes pushing a slate of seven socialist candidates in the upcoming August primary.”

That’s a hell of a political strategy for a ‘top-two primary’ election: a slate of seven nut-jobs rush to out-left one another and divide the progressive vote, while the conservative/moderate team fields a single, reasonably sane ‘Sara Nelson-esque’ candidate with broad-based appeal.

Guess who wins in the General Election?

14

@8 you have an entire global infrastructure of information at your fingertips. Forget all that. Just lie and make up shit. It's just so satisfying to you lunatics isn't it?

Let's take this bullshit one turd at a time shall we:

"During Sawant's rule Seattle experienced skyrocketing crime, shootings, record murders, grew to be #1 in homelessness on a per capita basis"

Wow. Boy it really seems terrible here! But wait. Reality must intrude. On homelessness RATE, NOPE. Never number one. Never.:

With 432 homeless people per 100,000 residents, Eugene in Oregon has by far the highest per capita rate of homelessness. The corresponding figures for Los Angeles and New York City are 397 and 394.
http://www.citymayors.com/society/usa-cities-homelessness.html

Skyrocketing crime? Well you know what happened between 2013 and 2023? Skyrocketing growth! Seattle saw it's largest growth the very year Sawant was elected! Seattle was the number 2 City in growth in 2018. Skyrocketing property values! Skyrocketing income levels! By 2014 Seattle ranked number 3 for salary growth in the nation.

That all happened over the last ten years in Seattle too. You know that record growth always comes with record social problems. It' show it works. Nah. Never mind all that.

Like, I guess if Sawant must bear the responsibility of national crime trends and crime demographics then, by your own idiotic logic, she get a share of the good shit! Hurray for Sawant! My house doubled in value with her as noble head of the All Things That happened in Seattle Syndicate! My income blossomed! Thankyou council member Savant! Thank you! You control everything!

You don't get it both ways.

Oh. But back to "crime!"

I have debunked this claim here a hundred times. But what's one more!

Statistics still go up and down. Recent crime spikes are largely tied to the pandemic and of course the opioid crisis and the explosion of hoe package delivery increasing property crime opportunity. And in order to inform a meaningful picture you can't just look at one or two or even five years but twenty to thirty. But the most solid records tell a a decidedly different story.

According to SPD and FBI records:

Rate of reported crimes in Seattle in 1985 was 1,317 per 100K.
Rate of reported crimes in Seattle in 2015/2017 was ~633 per 100K.

Property crime rate in Seattle in 1985 was 11,426 per 100K.
Property crime rate in Seattle in 2015/2017 was ~5,259 per 100K.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/is-seattle-dying-not-if-you-look-crime-rates-from-the-80s-and-90s/

Golly. That can't be right?

Homicide rates? Seattle’ murder rate is roughly 21% less than the national average. (Homicide rates spiked nationally during the pandemic from 2020 to 2022. Of course clearly Sawant's fault.).

Deaths by shootings in Seattle increased, yes. Shooting increased largely because the rate of gun ownership shot up dramatically during the panic of the Pandemic! Yay guns! Buuuuuuuut over all homicide rates decreased between 2021 and 2022. ut that's just one year. Last five? Up. Last ten? Up slightly? Last thirty? Still way down.

Note: Tacoma, that did not benefit from the evil of Sawant, saw a much larger violent crime increase. How is this possible?!

"Overdose deaths have hit all-time records." As they have EVERYWHERE! OMG! Sawant controls the world!

"The human-trafficking in Seattle--especially on Aurora--is tragically out-of-control. Working class families and working class people want safe neighborhood, the homeless housed, and women not sold in the the sex trade."

The amount sex worker exploitation and human trafficking has ALWAYS been a problem in Seattle being a port city and close to an international border. There were documentaries about it in the 1980's for fuck sake.

So now human trafficking is Sawant's fault? Please detail for me the policies implemented by Sawant that effected human trafficking in Seattle? Trafficking is a FEDERAL crime by the way. And as far as I know the SCC has no ability to influence federal law enforcement budgets or investigations.

But all this nonsense aside. I thought the election of MAGA darling Anne Davison was supposed to fix all this! But according to you it's only gotten WORSE. Golly.

Maybe. Juuuuust maybe these are national issues and trends the solutions (or mitigation) for which may take a whole lot of time and regional and national strategies.

NAH. BURN THE SOCIALIST WITCH!

Next on SLOG. How all your problems are really the fault of AntiFa.

16

@10: Not going to happen without a strong leader to keep them in line. Stalin comes to mind.

@12: Heh! I was thinking of Socialist cooperation in terms of the Molotov-Ribentrop pact.

17

A new wave of Socialism? No.
The progressive issue that has made traction in the last year is Union organizing. No reason to think that won’t continue.
Rent control and more progressive WA state income taxes are forbidden by state law. Those issues are out of the hands of Seattle voters.

18

How embarrassing for her

19

"Modern Socialists don't
represent the working class."
--@someoldewhiteguy @1

I beg to Differ:

here's an olde
Jewish Socialist
on the fawking FOX

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-pGE2LBSUk&ab_channel=BernieSanders

whose Side would you say
Senator Sanders IS on?

22

"It matters what side the working class is on.
They vote for Trump in overwhelming
numbers. They decide who
is their leader."
--@OWG

"There is a lot of discussion about how 'divided' our nation is and, on many issues, that is absolutely true.

But on one of the most important matters facing our country the American people – Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Progressives, Conservatives – could not be more united.

And that is the need to take on the unprecedented corporate greed of the pharmaceutical industry and to substantially lower the outrageously high price of prescription drugs." --Sen. Sanders

they put it on FOX
perhaps the 'work-
ing class gonna sit
up take Notice.

Good on the
damn Socialists

too Bad trumpf
Fails to Represent
the Working Class
in anything Other than
Broken promises & platitudes

they're gettin Connned
but at Least they're
Lovin' it.

24

Sawant's idea that Lorena Gonzalez lost because she didn't run further to the left against Bruce Herrell is an interesting one. If only it could be tested somehow, like say an abolitionist city attorney candidate running against a Republican in the same election. Clearly the abolitionist won, not the Republican, because otherwise Sawant's theory would be completely invalidated by an actual real world event that The Stranger should confront her with, right?

Yet another example that The Stranger is no better than Fox News and constantly lies to its readers.

25

“… giving pro-business council members plenty of time to strike compromises with Democrats to claw back working-class victories, Sawant said in a phone interview with The Stranger.”

Is there any evidence anything like this has been, or might be, underway? Has anyone even talked about reducing the minimum wage, restoring “clopen” shifts, eliminating paid safe sick time? No, no, and no. It’s just more of Socialist Alternative’s slander against the Democrats. And the Stranger simply repeats it without question, because that’s what fearless, independent journalists do: they repeat groundless statements from government officials without question.

Of all the very large number of very negative effects from CM Sawant’s time on the Council, turning the Stranger into the propaganda mouthpiece for Socialist Alternative has been one of the more annoying.

27

The left has been weakened by their alliance with the Democratic Party, and that includes DSA. I don't know its condition at the Seattle local level, but many are increasingly regarding their involvement with electoral politics as just another arm of the Democratic corporate elites manipulating and controlling the shepple, often with fashionable, yet ultimately shallow, identity politics. Sawant, IMV, has long seen much further; my observation is that she attempted to work within DSA (since it does indeed have good people -- I'm not knocking DSA individuals per se, before some random DSA member defensively jumps in), but from my observations in social media discussions, they wound doing a lot of the same stuff to Sawant that the Democrats usually do when you get anyone with a bit of genuine unadulterated spine and common sense. And now, her position is open, so suddenly they like Sawant and want to cash in. My point, basically, the fact that this article seems indirectly, yet almost entirely premised on DSA as the organizing answer -- and seeing as the Stranger is ultimately an arm of the Democratic Party too -- does not bode well for Seattle. DSA's publication is basically Jacobin which has also, at times, been linked in foreign policy to the CIA and bolstering up Biden's appalling sociopathic road map. Yes, they have good stuff, the Overton window has shrunk to such pathetic levels, it's not hard, but people need to wise up as to the whys and hows the proverbial left is almost non-existent in America, at this point. Sorry to be so pessimisstic but there's a big trust factor that's gone - face up to it- it's called the Democratic Party.

28

"Politicians Are Like Diapers, They Need To Be Changed Often"

29

The labor movement is gathering steam and gaining strength and time is on their side.

There is no stopping it. They will not stop no matter what tricks the billionaires and their sold out politicians pull. Review labor history and what they did to give us unemployment insurance, weekends, ban child labor, the 8 hour day, etc.

In the past fifty or so years labor has been sabotaged by billionaires and politicians who want labor crushed and want more access to cheap labor no matter what the cost.

The labor movement can change that and the fight for our better society has just begun.

30

@29: Not so much the billionaires. Just remind CalPERS Aand the other working class pension fonds where they hsve their retirement funds invested and they become conservative very quickly. Perhaps still maintaining a facade of fighting the good fight for the cause. But you can't fight the teachers and firefighters who flip to the business section every day to check their fund values.

Remember that "workers own the means of production"? Forget billionaires. Pension funds are the largest class of capital owners in our economy.


Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.