Comments

1
Priceless = someone who endorsed a third-party candidate for president telling the rest of us what's "dangerous and irresponsible"
2
Of course we're not really sure that this was actually written by Ms. Sawant. Remember that guest editorial from "Rob McKenna"?
3
It is dangerous and irresponsible to use sophistry..
4
CM Sarandon certainly does like to speechify.
6
so @1-5, do you not agree with civil disobedience in response to racist, totalitarian decrees? or you just mad? either way cool snark! plus 1 for yous today!
7
@ 5,

Oh stop with the total bullshit false equivalencies. She's using her position to try to help people during a national crisis in which illegitimate fascists have seized control of our federal government and are attempting to implement a racial, religious, and ethnic cleansing scheme. The only response has to be fierce non-violent resistance and non-cooperation.
8
CM Sawant here clarifies what she meant by ordering the SPD to block ICE, and none of what she says involves direct conflict between the SPD and ICE. So which of her suggestions/demands are disagreeable?
9
@6 As I wrote, it is dangerous and irresponsible to warp an argument. They are not "totalitarian decrees", they are obnoxious, disgusting decrees. They can be fought in court, which happened. They are not fiats.

We have to follow the rule of law, no matter if we vehemently disagree with the law, or how at times how law enforcement has to carry out repugnant actions via other law enforcement agencies.

I have no problem with protests, I have no problem in fighting in the courts, but demanding that the SPD refuse to comply with ICE, is the wrong path. There are other ways to fight xenophobia and Islamophobia than demanding the SPD not to comply with other Law Enforcement Agencies..
10
I'd like CM Sawant to clarify one thing, please? She says "the mayor should declare publicly that SPD will not be used against peaceful anti-Trump protests anywhere." Suppose armed gangs of Trumpies show up in force at a peaceful anti-Trump protest and start beating the shit out of peaceful protesters? Would she deny the peaceful protesters the police protection that their tax dollars have paid for? I ask this in all seriousness, as I consider it a plausible scenario. I wonder if she has thought it through.
12
@ 11,

Your argument sounds like every excuse that people have used to justify sadistic abuses carried out against racial, religious, and sexual minorities in this country, from slavery to Jim Crow to spiteful "Defense of Marriage" acts. "It's the law" is not a justification for amoral scapegoating and cruel, inhumane behavior.

If RepubliKKKans actually gave a damn about fixing immigration, then they would reform the legal immigration process, which has been broken for decades. Instead, they use the broken system as a political weapon of racist rage.
13
If Sawant actually cared about the immigrants in danger of deportation thanks to Trump, she wouldn't have spent most of 2016 trying her best to ensure his election. I can't see how anyone could possibly take her seriously on this issue in light of all her hard work on his behalf.
14
@ 11,

Also, our system of government is clearly a failure. It has legalized bribery under the euphemism of "campaign finance," prioritizes the supremacy of geography over population in representaton, and it continuously produces disastrous outcomes that leave 90% of us worse off every year.

I hate to repeat myself, however the Twitler regime is packed with lying fascists, predatory billionaires, and internet troll conspiracy kooks. It is a kleptocratic kakistocracy that lost the popular vote by millions and is totally illegitimate.
15
@5 @11
The logic of your argument would put you on the wrong side of the most important Civil Rights tactics (Rosa Parks, lunch-counter sit-ins, etc), on the wrong side of the women's suffrage movement, and the wrong of every serious resistance to bigoted and authoritarian governments throughout history. Nowhere have such policies or regimes been defeated by respecting illegitimate laws. The entire 2016 election, capped off by Trump's victory, was a clear demonstration of how deeply corrupted, dysfunctional, and illegitimate our entire political system has become. In this era, tosay we should rely solely on the existing political institutions (courts, legislatures, etc) to protect us is a "dangerous and irresponsible" proposition. That approach will doom us to deepening cycle of nationalism, bigotry, violence, and environment disaster. We should applaud the few politicians, like Sawant, who have the vision and historical understanding to recognizing what this moment calls for: Organized mass resistance and a bold alternative, unifying vision for our sick society.
17
Sawant is right to resist Trump,
But it's not his Xenophobia, Islamaphobia, or even his racism and sexism that earns mandatory resistance: it's his kleptocracy and erosion of foundational political systems that represent "existential" threats. The rest - those are vile, but nonetheless "valid" political stances whose popularity waxes and wanes over time. They do not threaten the republic for multiple future generations.
18
Good Morning @11 Ken,
You have a point. I disagree with Ms. Sawant. The Seattle Police Dept. is here to serve & protect. The officers are law enforcement officers. They aren't here to be civil disobedient. I believe Ms. Sawant is overreaching in her demands to the mayor. Sure, people are allowed to demonstrate but the SPD are bound by duty.

Also regarding Pres. Trump's Immigration policy. Granted one may quibble with it. But, it's my understanding that Pres. Obama deported nearly 2.5 million people:

http://www.salon.com/2017/02/11/obamas-l…

I'm pretty certain many were Muslim & brown. I find it odd that there's nary an outcry on Pres. Obama's policy vis-a-vis Pres. Trump's.

19
@15 How about passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. I have no problem with civil disobedience, and Dr. King besides countless others went to jail for Civil Disobedience during the Civil Rights era, to make sure the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed.

It also took the government and Lyndon Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, besides many others. It finally took 67 senators to pass a comprehensive Civil Rights Act for over a hundred years. It also took the US Supreme Court to overturn Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) with Brown v. Board of Education, (1954)

Whether the our Democracy is corrupt or crass, and our elections are corrupt, it is still the only system we got. We have to constantly work on it to make it work right. The way to make it right is to defeat Republican House Members, with Dave Reichert and Jaime Herrera Beutler for a start.

There is a difference between civil disobedience and demanding that law enforcement refusing to cooperate with the law and judicial rulings. If Kshama Sawant wants to spend a couple months in the King County Jail for blocking ICE facilities or blocking the Federal Building in Downtown, it is up to her. There are ways to fight Trump, and the best ways are in the courts and at the ballot box. Basically if 30k votes went the other way in three key states, we would not being having this discussion, but how Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the pocket of Wall Street.
23
Make America Sharia.
24
As abhorrent as I find the rising xenophobia and stupidity in this country, I believe that in the end, resistance is futile. The Borg are here. Armed, stupid, hateful, cruel. And not even Councilwoman Sawant will be to able stop them. I say this because intelligence is a highly heritable trait. The smart marry and beget the smart, and the stupid marry and beget the stupid. Unfortunately, these days the smart beget far fewer children than the stupid, who breed like rabbits, and it's only a matter of time before their numbers overwhelm us. The average IQ in the US peaked decades ago, and as we descend further into ignorance, fear and hatred, the hallmarks of stupidity, the Donald Trumps of the world will take over. Today it's immigrants. Tomorrow they'll be coming for us. Simple math.
25
@24

Source, please. Just because you're a PUMA doesn't mean you can make up facts like the alt-right.
26
#25: I just did a quick search on "IQ scores over time" and got twenty million hits. The data shows that IQs are going up in some countries and down in others. In our country, the scores are generally going up in urban areas and down in rural ones. That's because smart people move to cities and mate with other smart people, begetting little smarties, but in far fewer numbers than those who never leave home, who beget far more little dimwitted rubes just like themselves. The data also shows a direct correlation between IQ and family size. More kids means dumber kids, with even lower IQs than their parents, and with futures as dim as their wits. Angry, bigoted, stupid, mean little genetic retrogrades who hate everything about us, growing in numbers that have now given them the political clout to do all of the idiotic and dimwitted things they've always talked about. The End Times, only in a way that the stupids will never understand. And Councilwomen Sawant's words are a tinfoil hat against the avalanche that's coming our way.
27
"It Is Dangerous and Irresponsible" to write editorials in national magazines advising people to not vote for Clinton. Same with having rallies against clinton.

Everyone knows voting against Clinton is voting for Trump.

Why are we still listening to CM Sawant? This is what she wanted, this is what she campaigned for. She put her own political interests over the city.
29
Uh, @26, all those bigoted people shitting out kids, eh? Do you not know (somehow) that white people have the lowest birth rate? Lol

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/05/1…
30
Sawant is not one for facts. Those who voted for her are fools. She is looking out for number one, and not that isn't the low wage earner, or the 1%. It is herself, her union ties, and any idiot who is willing to put a microphone in her face to give her the attention she craves. She is doing very little to help the city. We heard her grandstanding while Obama departed more immigrants than any president in us history right? No? She is calling for you to give up work and making money for yourself and your family do you think she will pay you back by raising taxes. Nope. I like how she still calls it the 99%. Really 99%? Lets keep making things up Sawant it makes you sound smarter.
31
@28 Idiot in Shoreline: You can leave anytime.
33
#29:
Figured you'd show up and post something THAT nasty and stupid. What did Kshama ever do to you?
34
We ought to do absolutely everything we can to resist a fascist like Donald Trump, except vote for or contribute to or otherwise support the only alternative to stopping him getting into office in the first place.
35
First Sawant makes a short remark that you knee-jerks interpret as uncharitably as possible so you can go into histrionics over her supposedly wanting to order cops to risk going to jail.

So now she comes back and gives a detailed, nuanced proposal that is clearly intended to protect Seattle citizens to the maximum legal extent, particularly protesters and immigrants. Sawant's obvious intent is to craft a policy that doesn't put cops in an impossible position. You might disagree and give an alternative legal interpretation, being the Internet Lawyer you are. But again uncharitably misinterpreting her intent only makes you look like a an old fud.

Sawant's only power is to back the Democratic majority into exactly this kind of hipocrisy. As with wages and housing, she's doing nothing but shaming self-identified progressives into walking the walk.

Saying higher wages or relief for renters was impossible or illegal only empowers Sawant's third party leverage. If you want your Democrats to set policy, rather than reactively follow Socialist Alternative's agenda, then your Democrats need to get out ahead. "No we can't" and "it's too hard" and "Republicans won't let us" are precisely the tactics that have failed every time. Democrats belatedly do the heavy lifting to raise the minimum wage, and Sawant gets the credit because they wouldn't have had the balls without her.

You don't have to copy her proposal, but you'll end up with the voters forcing you to if you don't show some balls too, and counter with something just as badassed. If she's such a dummy, the Democrats out to have no trouble coming up with something that's both 'adult' and bold.

It's not voodoo: it's a simple case of delivering what the citizens of the city want, and that includes civil disobedience to Trump that isn't mere street theater. It has to make a difference and it has to stick.

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