Superb vote for Minneapolis socialist

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... Climate talks short on action ... Socialist wins Seattle election Socialist Alternative candidate Ty Moore and his supporters ran a spectacularly successful 2013 cam­ paign for Minneapolis City Council, coming in second within a field of six in the first round of a ranked vot­ ing system. He received 42% of the vote, only 229 votes short of his only significant opponent, Alondra Cano, who squeaked into office with 47%, both run­ ning for an open seat.

Cano was the official choice of the city’s Democratic Party, doing business in Minnesota since 1944 as the Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) party. Cano was also endorsed by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Minneapolis Central Labor Union Council. Moore, however, was endorsed by the 30,000-member state council of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), overwhelmingly composed of immigrants, mainly from Latin America and East Africa, as well as a large number of African American workers.

Moore, 36 years old and a former city bus driver, foregrounded his campaign with the demand for a $15 an hour minimum wage, as did his comrade Ksha­ ma Sawant in Seattle. Also in the forefront of Moore’s socialist campaign were demands to stop home fore­ closures and evictions, defend immigrant rights, and block giveaways to corporate interests like the city’s $678 million donation to New Jersey billionaire Ziggy Wilf for a new football stadium.

Moore’s campaign literature called for ending “our city’s reliance on coal, nuclear, and gas energy. Lower utility prices and rapidly transition to a renewable energy grid by taking the for-profit utilities, Xcel and Centerpoint, into public ownership under democratic control.”

His energetic and enthusiastic young supporters blanketed the ward with lawn signs urging a socialist vote for “People over Profits,” and went door to door with the same messages.

Moore’s long record as a committed fighter for com­ munity and human rights, especially in the immigrant rights and anti-foreclosure struggles, won him broad support from activists in the ward. Some 20 Latino ac­ tivists signed a statement of support for Moore after he was attacked for running against Cano, a woman of Mexican origin. He was officially endorsed by So­ cialist Action, the Green Party, Occupy Homes MN, and Democratic Socialists of America, as well as SEIU.

In the month before the election, Socialist Action organized a packed public forum supporting Moore’s campaign, at which historians Peter Rachleff and Dave Riehle spoke about the history of socialist workers in Minneapolis who were elected to office in the last cen­ tury. Veteran trade unionist Bud Schulte gave a fund appeal, which raised some $2500.

The elections in Seattle and Minneapolis gave spec­ tacular and inspiring expression to the findings of a recent Pew Research Center poll, in which 49% of people in the 18-29 age bracket said they have a posi­ tive view of socialism and only 43 percent reported (continued from page 1: “UN talks neglect actions to avoid climate catastrophe”)

the power is in our hands.”

Rita Shaw, a supporter of Socialist Action who was at the rally, said that there were around 500 people in the hall, and it was standing room only. But more interesting than the numbers were the labor representatives who spoke despite the fact that they had supported her op­ ponent. This included King County Labor Council Execu­ tive Director David Freiboth and a representative from SEIU 775NW. Shaw thought the most important thing about the night was Sawant’s emphasis on building broad coalitions all over the city to start talking about winning the $15 an hour minimum wage.

Two nights earlier, Sawant’s opponent, Democrat Rich­ ard Conlin, who had held the City Council office for 16 years, conceded the election. Sawant was behind on election night but was confident that the later votes, which tend to be from independents and non-voters, would put her over the top. As of this writing, votes are still being counted, and she has received 93,168 votes, which amounts to 50.63 percent of the total.

Her grassroots campaign was rooted in the move­ ment for the $15 minimum wage and a millionaires’ tax to fund public transit and rent control. Sawant teaches economics at Seattle Central Community College and was an organizer for Occupy Seattle. She was arrested during foreclosure fights and supported the mass move­ ment against coal trains and the building of the Gateway a negative view. Somehow, the generations-old inocu­ lation against socialism by the master class has been overcome by a new virus, at least in these two cities.

Until now, with very few exceptions, no socialist can­ didate for public office since World War II had gotten over 1 or 2% of the vote in any election in this country. And it is clear the outcome is no fluke.

In many ways the Seattle and Minneapolis results are “apples and oranges.” In Seattle, Sawant won in a citywide election in which all the intermediate classes voted alongside the working class. Minneapolis’ 9th Ward, on the other hand, is a working-class district with the largest population of Latinos in the city. Broadly speaking, it is about 1/3 African American, 1/3 Latino, and 1/3 white.

About 35% of the eligible voters participated in the (continued from page 1: “UN talks neglect actions to avoid climate catastrophe”)

Going into overtime, conference participants finally agreed to a faint-hearted system of pledg­ ing emissions cuts. The U.S. chief negotiator, Todd Stern, placed his greatest hope in “peer pressure.” In other words, the pledges are to be voluntary, with no binding commitments, as usual. With the Obama administration held firmly in the back pocket of the Energy Giants, this comes as no sur­ prise.

There was also general support for a new treaty mechanism to deal with the human costs of ex­ Pacific Terminal. She has pledged to give most of her $120,000 city council salary to social movements in the Seattle area.

Sawant is a member of AFT Local 1719, and they endorsed her along with CWA local 37083, APWU of Greater Seattle, IBEW Local 46, and AFSCME/WFSE Lo­ cal 1488. A majority of the King County Labor Council voted to endorse her, but two-thirds was required for an official endorsement.

A statement election night from Socialist Alterna­ tive stated, “U.S. capitalism is in a deep economic and social crisis. The political establishment is discredited, and their system of government appears broken. Deep anger is growing against inequality, racism, sexism and homophobia. Environmental destruction is worsening.

“The situation is crying out for an alternative. We ur­ gently need a party of working people, connected to social movements, fighting unions, community organi­ zations, Greens and socialists. As a concrete step to get there, we should form coalitions throughout the country with the potential to come together on a national level to run 100 independent working-class candidates in the 2014 mid-term elections. The unions who supported the Moore and Sawant campaigns and many others should run full slates of independent working-class candidates in the mid-term, state, and local elections.”

One of the things that grabbed the attention of workers was this campaign’s relentless attacks on the Democrat­ ic Party, which her opponent Richard Conlin personified.

socialistalternative.com (Above) Ty Moore.

election. It is impossible to get a statistical estimate of who voted by ethnicity or race, not to mention those residents whose status barred them from voting. Of the eight precincts in the ward, Moore carried four, but it would take a house by house analysis to figure out precisely why.

Nonetheless, it is plain and unmistakable that his­ tory was made in Seattle and Minneapolis in Novem­ ber 2013. Socialist Alternative made a bold initiative, based fundamentally on the historic perspectives and experiences of American Trotskyism. And this time the masses were ready to listen. The task of the social­ ist movement is to study this marvelous experience and go forth and do likewise. n treme weather, but nothing definite was decided upon. There are other meetings scheduled in Lima, Peru, next year and in Paris in 2015, where repre­ sentatives are expected to replace the now defunct Kyoto Protocol, but they will very likely only con­ tinue to stall on taking significant action.

One should not hold one’s breath in anticipa­ tion of real results. Instead, the world needs a powerful mass movement that demands “System Change, Not Climate Change” to bring down the fossil-fuel based capitalist economy and the rot­ ten ruling class, which profits from environmental destruction. n In my union workers have been so disgusted by Demo­ cratic governors who are throwing huge tax breaks at corporations and then crying that their states are going broke that they found Sawant’s criticisms of the Demo­ cratic Party to be quite enticing. As a result, we sent a letter to all the SEIU locals in Washington State encour­ aging them to endorse the Sawant campaign. Now the workers will continue to watch closely Sawant’s activi­ ties in elected office.

The day after the victory party, Sawant sent out an email to all her supporters, saying, “This is our fight, all of us.” She called on all her supporters to stand in solidarity with Boeing machinists at their rally that afternoon. She pointed out the Democratic-controlled state legislature had recently called a Special Session to offer Boeing $8 billion more in tax breaks while demanding draconian cuts in wages and benefits.

At the rally she spoke about the Boeing CEO’s threat­ ening to leave Seattle. “The only response we can have if Boeing executives do not agree to keep the plant here is for the machinists to say: the machines are here, the workers are here; we will do the job, we don’t need the executives. The executives don’t do the work, the ma­ chinists do. We can re-tool the machines to produce mass transit like buses.”

Socialist Action hails the victory of Kshama Sawant, along with Socialist Alternative candidate Ty Moore in Minneapolis. Although there are political differences among socialist groups, which can be discussed in the course of our common work, this election must be rec­ ognized as an important victory for the entire socialist movement. n SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2013 3

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lutionary socialists and all others who would challenge capitalist rule.

Egypt, among the most important and strategically lo­ cated nations in the Middle East, was a living laboratory that tested the conflicting and contending ideologies that today seek basic social change in Egypt and around the world.

On balance, as the three essays assert, the revolutionary mass mobilizations that forced Mubarak’s resignation and demanded economic reform, democracy, and justice were essentially without any organized leadership or in­ stitutional forms other than small groups of radicalizing youth and students, intellectuals, and democratic-mind­ ed reformists of every stripe. With few exceptions all believed that their objectives could be achieved through new elections and the goodwill of whoever won. There was a single exception. The Muslim Brother­ hood, while sometimes persecuted and in part operating on the fringes of “legality,” maintained over decades a mosque-based infrastructure and the loyalty of some 10 million members. While they were latecomers to the Tah­ rir mobilizations, their election apparatus far surpassed all others. And, they were joined in the June 2012 Morsi election campaign by a “front” of some five “socialist” organizations, including the tiny Revolutionary Socialist group, that sought to portray Morsi and his Freedom and Justice Party as a democratic alternative to the candidate