Kshama Sawant’s inauguration speech

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We reprint below the inauguration speech of Socialist Alternative member Kshama Sawant, who was elected Seattle’s first socialist city council member in almost a century. Socialist Action hails her election as a victory for the entire socialist movement.

My brothers and sisters, thank you for your presence here today.

This city has made glittering fortunes for the super wealthy and for the major corporations that dominate Seattle’s landscape. At the same time, the lives of working people, the unemployed and the poor grow more difficult by the day. The cost of housing skyrock­ ets, and education and healthcare become inaccessible. This is not unique to Seattle. Shamefully, in this, the richest country in human history, 50 million of our people—one in six—live in poverty. Around the world, billions do not have access to clean water and basic sanitation and children die every day from mal­ nutrition. This is the reality of international capitalism. This is the product of the gigantic casino of speculation created by the highway robbers on Wall Street. In this system the market is God, and everything is sacrificed on the altar of profit. Capitalism has failed the 99%. Despite recent talk of economic growth, it has only been a recovery for the richest 1%, while the rest of us are falling ever farther behind.

In our country, Democratic and Republican politi­ cians alike primarily serve the interests of big business. A completely dysfunctional Congress DOES manage to agree on one thing—regular increases in their al­ ready bloated salaries—yet at the same time allows the federal minimum wage to stagnate and fall farther and farther behind inflation.

We have the obscene spectacle of the average corpo­ rate CEO getting seven thousand dollars an hour, while the lowest-paid workers are called presumptuous in their demand for just fifteen.

To begin to change all of this, we need organized mass 4 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 2014 movements of workers and young people, relying on their own independent strength. That is how we won unions, civil rights and LGBTQ rights.

Again, throughout the length and breadth of this land, working people are mobiliz­ ing for a decent and dignified life for them­ selves and their children. Look at the fast food workers movement, the campaigns of Walmart workers, and the heroic activism to stop the Keystone XL pipeline!

Right here in SeaTac, we have just wit­ nessed the tremendous and victorious cam­ paign for fifteen dollars an hour. At the same time, in Lorain County, Ohio, twenty-four candidates ran, not as Democrats or Repub­ licans, but as ‘Independent Labor’ and were elected to their City Councils.

I will do my utmost to represent the dis­ enfranchised and the excluded, the poor and the oppressed—by fighting for a $15/hour minimum wage, affordable housing, and tax­ ing the super-rich for a massive expansion of public transit and education. But my voice will be heard by those in power only if work­ ers themselves shout their demands from the rooftops and organize en masse.

My colleagues and I in Socialist Alterna­ tive will stand shoulder to shoulder with all those who want to fight for a better world. But working people need a new political par­ ty, a mass organization of the working class, run by—and accountable to—themselves. A party that will struggle and campaign in their interest, and that will boldly advocate for al­ ternatives to this crisis-ridden system.

Here in Seattle, political pundits are asking about me: will she compromise? Can she work with others? Of course, I will meet and discuss with representatives of the establishment. But when I do, I will bring the needs and aspirations of working-class people to every table dress, on Jan. 28, Kshama Sawant, the newly elected socialist city council member in Seattle, gave her re­ sponse. It can be viewed at http://www/youtube.com/ watch?v=Lh7LBtrBq1g.

Throughout her talk, Sawant underscored the hypocrisy of Obama’s new populist rhetoric. She began by noting that although Obama made “deepening inequality” a ma­ jor theme of his speech, the growth of poverty has become a hallmark of his own presidency. Some 95 percent of the gains in income during the so-called economic recovery, she stated, have gone to the wealthiest 1 percent. “Obama’s focus on income inequality is an admission of the failure of his own policies to rectify such inequal­ ity,” said Sawant. And this admission “has been forced by outrage over the widening gulf between the super-rich and those of us who are working to create the wealth of this society.”

More specifically, she said, this admission has been forced by the rallies and pickets of fast-food workers and low-wage workers demanding a minimum wage of $15 an hour. These protests, she stressed, are the only reason that politicians are now discussing the issue. However, Obama’s call for a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour, or $20,000 a year “for those who are lucky to have a full-time job, is not a ticket out of poverty for working families.” Sawant pointed out that under Obama “while the crim­ inals of Wall Street are bailed out, courageous whistle­ blowers like Edward Snowden are hunted down, and the unconstitutional acts that he exposed are allowed to con­ tinue.” Also, “Obama claims to be ending two wars, while he continues to intensify a brutal campaign of drones in multiple countries, killing hundreds of innocent civil­ ians, to say nothing of U.S. soldiers returning home with permanent medical conditions and declining benefits.” Obama’s broken website, she said, “is a symbol of the broken hopes of millions who believed his promises for affordable health care.” “Obama says that climate change is a fact,” Sawant not­ ed. “Here’s another fact: climate change is getting worse and worse on his watch. There has been a massive increase in incredibly destructive practices like the use of coal and fracking.” Leadership against the XL Pipeline, she said, has not come from him and Congress but by courageous protesters in the streets.

The socialist council member also pointed out that Obama shouts, “Fix the immigration system!” while “he is the president with the record number of deportations.” “My brothers and sisters,” Sawant concluded, “these problems are not new, and they are not an accident. Work­ ing people have faced nearly four decades of wage stag­ nation and rising income inequality. … Four decades that show that neither party [Republicans or Democrats] is capable of solving these problems and that they funda­ mentally represent the same interests—the interests of the super-wealthy and big corporations. “We will make progress only on the basis of a funda­ mental and systematic change. We need a break from the policies of Wall Street and corporate America. We need a break from capitalism. It has failed the 99 per­ cent. … We need our own political party, independent of big business and independent of the parties that serve big business.” n I sit at, no matter who is seated across from me. And let me make one thing absolutely clear: There will be no backroom deals with corporations or their political servants. There will be no rotten sell-out of the people I represent.

I wear the badge of socialist with honor. To the nearly hundred thousand who voted for me, and to the hun­ dreds of you who worked tirelessly on our campaign, I thank you. Let us continue.

The election of a socialist to the Council of a ma­ jor city in the heartland of global capitalism has made waves around the world. We know because we have re­ ceived messages of support from Europe, Latin Ameri­ ca, Africa, and from Asia. Those struggling for change have told us they have been inspired by our victory. To all those prepared to resist the agenda of big busi­ ness—in Seattle and nationwide—I appeal to you: get organized. Join with us in building a mass movement for economic and social justice, for democratic social­ ist change, whereby the resources of society can be har­ nessed, not for the greed of a small minority but for the benefit of all people. Solidarity. n Upper line in graph (left) shows that U.S. minimum wage, when adjusted for inflation, has drastically declined since high point of 1960s.