Fighting the Corporate Duopoly at the Ballot Box (w/ Kshama Sawant) | The Chris Hedges Report

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shama sawant a socialist who served for over a decade on the seattle city council and launched a national coalition called workers strike back to organize for a twenty five dollars an hour minimum wage build grassroots labor unions especially in corporations such as amazon and advocate for a shorter work week without a cut in benefits and pay is running for congress she is attempting to unseat adam smith a tool of big business who is funded and subservient to the israel lobby shamma since she was first elected in twenty thirteen to the city council has been a fierce advocate for the working class she has fought tenaciously against the billionaires who have destroyed the our democracy she has denounced our endless wars and the genocide in gaza calling for an end to military aid for israel the billionaire class has pumped millions of dollars into city council campaigns to defeat her it orchestrated a recall vote in twenty twenty one which she fought off and won her current campaign for congress is part of her long commitment to wrest power from the hands of the global ruling class shama advocates a massive green jobs program that can employ millions of workers in clean energy and prevent climate catastrophe along with public ownership of the big energy corporations only the bosses profit from divisions within the working class she notes she opposes anti trans legislation and the right wing attacks on the lgbtq people she calls for legal safe free abortions for all who need them and an end to racist policing putting police under the control of community boards with full power over department policy hiring and firing she advocates rent control with no rent increases above inflation as well as a massive expansion of publicly owned high quality affordable housing by taxing the rich we're dying from unaffordable health care she notes as the pharma bosses and for profit health insurance industry profit from our sickness a centerpiece of her campaign is the call for free state of the art medicare for all owned and democratically run by working people she also understands that the democratic party has betrayed us and is captive to the war industry and the oligarchic and corporate elite even so called democratic party progressives in congress she notes have been domesticated by the party hierarchy and have nothing of substance to offer to voters shama in her decade as a member of the seattle city council has an impressive track record she helped win a fifteen dollars minimum wage for workers pushed the council to tax amazon and championed renter protection as the chair of the renters and sustainability committee she organized demonstrations for marriage equality participated in protest to end the wars in iraq and afghanistan and and was a strong supporter of the occupy movement she is an active member in the american federation of teachers local seventeen eighty nine fighting against budget cuts and tuition hikes joining me to discuss her congressional campaign is shama sawan let's begin with the obvious question why are we running against i think they have now two democratic candidates running against you but just explain the impetus for your campaign yeah

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the stakes could not be higher chris for the working class and a lot of what you said resonates with the moment we are in a national and international emergency for the working class for the planet we are at the precipice of climate catastrophe of climate apocalypse we are seeing endless war slaughter and genocide and in the middle east with palestinians yemenis lebanese iranians iraqis you know just endless communities of people being butchered and at home in the united states in the richest country in the history of humanity we are seeing half of americans saying they can't any longer even afford groceries let alone have affordable housing any kind of decent health care good we're seeing young people being drowned in student debt and we're seeing a crisis of such epic proportions that at this moment what we need more than anything else are historic breakthroughs for the working class and those breakthroughs unfortunately and i hope we'll talk more about this in this conversation those breakthroughs are not coming through the labor leadership i mean right now members of workers strike back are at labor notes which is this most important labor conference that happens once in two years right now it's happening in chicago and workers strike back members and volunteers for our campaign are reporting that in those discussions the leadership of labor notes is not even allowing them to ask questions by voice you're supposed to send in only notes this is the kind of censorship and the lack of real debate and discussion that's happening in the labor movement and it is the labor movement is in a stranglehold of what i call business unionism meaning an overwhelming majority of the labor leadership being aligned with the bosses having made peace with the bosses which also means making peace with the bosses parties you know being aligned intertwined with the bosses parties which is both the democratic and republican parties both of these parties are parties of the war mongering genocidal billionaire class the democratic party contrary to what we are told by corporate media is not a lesser evil it is one of the two most powerful parties of global capitalism and so what we need as i said is breakthroughs and we've shown through our example of the city council when i was the revolutionary socialist on the city council that actually it is possible and we need to it's gravely necessary that we have leadership where we are able to use even one elected office in such a way that we can build mass movements actively mobilize and organize a mass of working people and union members into action to winning actual victories and at this moment we don't need any more status quo politicians we don't need business as usual in congress what we need is something that will disrupt the bipartisan warmongering anti worker pro billionaire agenda in congress and that is why i am running as a revolutionary socialist for the us congress and as you said chris i am fighting my campaign is fighting to end all military aid to the israeli state to end weapons and tech for genocide and imperialist war we're fighting to stop the ai data center and mass layoff juggernaut we are also fighting to shut down ice and the detention centers to win free health care for all funded by taxing the rich to win national rent control and a massive expansion of affordable housing all also funded by taxing the rich and for a twenty five dollars an hour national minimum wage

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let's talk about the democratic party i know from having followed your political career that it's the democratic party that has been the engine to try and destroy you politically that was also true for ralph nader when i worked for ralph so let's talk about the kinds of things the democratic party has done and is doing to thwart your campaign and then let's talk about the you know the bankruptcy of the democratic party itself in particular focusing on the progressive wing of the democratic party

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yes so my main opponent as you mentioned earlier chris is adam smith he's a twenty nine year incumbent in congress and he's a classic example i would say just an absolutely classic example of an illustration of one of the key features of our times which is the chasm between the fury that working people feel against the democratic and republican parties with both parties having approval ratings in the toilet and yet a very high incumbency rate in congress how do you explain the two absolutely contradictory facts right i mean if the vast majority of working people hate congress then how is it that these people are getting elected and how is it that somebody like adam smith gets to be in congress for twenty nine years almost thirty years i mean he's been in congress as long as the republican susan collins from maine has been and so the only way to explain that is that there has been for decades and it still isn't other than the exception of my campaign there hasn't been any real left militant working class challenge to the democratic and republican parties and that is what's so unique about our race that we have an actual revolutionary socialist running against genocidal democrat a revolutionary socialist not only with a powerful program of demands that are extremely popular among the american working class all the way from seattle to florida but also a socialist with a track record of having gone up against the billionaire class and yes the democratic party and as you said chris seattle is not a republican stranglehold it's a very left leaning city and the party that controls the politics of this city the party that represents the chamber of commerce and all the corporations that are headquartered here like starbucks and amazon and t mobile that party is a democratic party so yes the democratic party was always at war against us and it reminded people that this is class war we are capitalism is class war we didn't choose it to be so working people didn't choose the system but this is the system and our only choices are we you know sit down and accept the class war from the billionaire class against us which is the status quo under capitalism or we stand up and go to class war back against the billionaire class and their political representatives and that is exactly what we did using my one elected office and so even the seattle times which hates my guts they stand for the billionaire class they were forced to admit that my first election victory in twenty thirteen was a referendum on dollar fifteen an hour because unlike all these other election campaigns of the democratic and republican parties i was not running on personality or personal narratives i was running on actual concrete demands and it was not about well elect me and make my career i am not a careerist i'm the antithesis of a careerist instead our campaign said we are fighting for dollar fifteen an hour to tax the rich and for renters rights and for rent control if you want to win those things for your own family for your coworkers for your friends then you need to join us campaign that we ran in twenty thirteen was a call to action for fifteen dollars an hour and when i won the election against the most powerful democrat that year in the city it became a referendum on fifteen dollars an hour and provided the momentum for us to actually win fifteen when i was when i took office i launched the fifteen now movement that is the same principle that is the same fighting strategy that we are using now for our congressional campaign and we are seeing not only adam smith but also another democrat in this race and adam smith i mean just to be very clear adam smith is awash in his record is drenched with the blood of over a million iraqis who have been killed in the war on iraq and also the palestinians who have been slaughtered in the genocide in gaza because this guy hasn't met a war he did not like he's one of the remaining five democrats in the house in the us congress who voted for the war on iraq but he has also voted for tens of billions of dollars for the genocide in gaza he voted to ban united nations food assistance to gaza he voted to create and fund ice but what is most important for us to remember is that adam smith is you know he is caricaturely villainous but he is not an exception to the rule he represents the agenda of the democratic party one hundred and seventy three democrats voted to fund the genocide in gaza including fifty six members of the so called congressional progressive caucus and a strategy the democratic party often uses and which is exactly what they're using in this race is to run another democrat you know they're not able to launder adam smith's reputation i mean they are trying to but it's impossible for them to do that because he is so clearly a warmongering candidate of palantir and andy and the billionaires and also the zionist lobby like aipac aipac was his biggest funder in his last election in twenty twenty four they're not able to sell him as something else and so although they're trying their best to but so what they're doing is they're running another democrat in this race and the whole establishment as a whole the democrats and republicans together have made sure that there's only one and their strongest republican candidate running in this race unlike in other years this republican actually said publicly i'm paraphrasing him but he said publicly that he was recruited to run in order to keep me from getting into the general election not to defeat adam smith in any way he's run against adam smith many times and he has you know he has never the intention was never to defeat adam smith because adam smith is as one commentator said he sounds more republican than republicans themselves and so the idea here is to keep the revolutionary socialist out of the general election and that is what the democratic party is trying to do

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that's not a new tactic they've run you know so called progressive democrats against you before but just lay out for people who don't know some of the nefarious moves that the democratic party has made throughout your career to try and drive you from

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office first of all it's hard to describe what the democratic party has done without also explaining what the labor leadership has done because they've been in lockstep and it's not just here this is not an unusual case this is true throughout the united states where the labor leadership is in lockstep with the democratic party and so when we were campaigning for fifteen in twenty thirteen the labor leaders i mean some of the labor leaders did join us the left leaning militant labor leaders but they were the exception to the rule for the most part the labor leadership was overwhelmingly opposed to my campaign calling for fifteen and they would literally come up to me and shout at me saying don't call for fifteen we don't want to be held to that but obviously we didn't accept that and that is the first lesson the first lesson is if you want to win anything you cannot bend to the gatekeepers because when you have opposition against a working class agenda that opposition doesn't come in the form of jeff bezos i mean obviously jeff bezos is looming behind the scenes but it's not like jeff bezos comes and tells me personally i'm not agreeing to a dollar fifteen minimum wage or the amazon tax the people who try to to block the working class movements are gatekeepers who come in the form of labor leaders or so called progressive democrats and that is what happened throughout and the bedrock the backbone of our success you know the success of my fellow revolutionary socialists and i in seattle was that we refused to cave to the gatekeepers and we refused to do that despite an ongoing campaign of character assassination against me they will call you know they say she's not a team player she's divisive i mean i'm not looking to be a team player on team genocide and team billionaires you know so i wear that proudly as a badge of honor but the point is that we never caved in to all these personalized attacks against us because we knew that ultimately our loyalty is to the working class and the working class did strongly agree with our demands which is the basis of all our election victories and i won all my elections as you said on the city council we were never defeated precisely because we never sold out and we never stopped fighting and the democratic party was always opposed to every single victory that we have won and in fact it's not that they were a minor hindrance that they opposed everything viciously just to share a quick anecdote when i first took office in january twenty fourteen two of the most powerful democrats came to my office sat me down and told me it's all well and good you have rabble roused your way onto the city council but we are here to tell you city hall runs on our terms and you are not going to win any minimum wage increase let alone fifteen and less than six months after that we had one hundred and fifteen see that is the kind of psychological warfare that the democratic party uses where you know they they target the leader of the movement and they try to get them to back down by actually threatening or intimidating them also one of the tactics that the democratic party uses when you're in elected office and i experience this every single day is this sort of it's like being in a mean girls episode you know they ostracize you socially they they try to make you feel like you're isolated that you're that you are not welcome all of that and it is so crucial because without this we cannot win it is absolutely fundamentally crucial that the leadership of the working class movement be completely clear this is not about you you are not there to make friends you are not there to have a comfortable work day no the whole point is that if you are fighting for the working class you in the halls of the power of capitalism which is what a city council or us congress is they don't exist to give working class people better lives these are institutions of the capitalist state they exist to defend capitalist interest and so when you go there you are not going there among colleagues you are going there and the people who sit next to you are your class enemies you are there to fight for the working class and so you have to be unbowed and unbroken in the face of all of this and this is not these are not exaggerations this is exactly what it looks like and it takes what i did what we did in order to win against the democratic and

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republican parties those tactics have worked quite effectively in domesticating figures like aoc in

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congress yeah actually yes you're absolutely right in fact in a moment in a rare moment of honesty actually aoc you'll remember this chris she was asked why didn't you fight for force the vote you know there was a demand on on the squad at least then they were called the squad the most left leaning members of the us congress they were asked you know you have the numerical balance of power to withhold your vote from you know this was in early twenty twenty one against nancy pelosi being speaker because the democratic party had a majority in that year and forced the vote on medicare for all withhold your vote until you get a vote on medicare for all and aoc and all the so called progressive democrats they absolutely refuse to do it and then later when kevin mccarthy the republican was due for speakership and the maga republicans actually carried out force the vote for their very right wing and very anti worker reactionary goals but the point is that they used the force the vote tactic to great avail for their ends the politicians like aoc were asked you said this couldn't be done but they did it the maga republicans did it why didn't you do it and so in response to that in a rare moment of honesty aoc admitted that had she done that she would have incurred what she called quote unquote relational and reputational harm and she's right in the sense that the democratic party goes to absolute war against you if you dare to fight for the working class and that is the whole point if you are fighting for the working class you will become enemy number one of the democratic party so it is up to you if you want to be a leader of the working class then you have to embrace that enemy number one status as something that is necessary and in fact as i said as a badge of honor if the democratic party started being happy with me chris i think i would worry that i was doing something gravely wrong and i would have to examine my own record that is the for me that's an indication when they are against me it's an indication of me that i'm actually standing up for the working class and that is why the whole concept of careerism is the death knell of working class movements when leaders of supposedly leaders of the working class look at politics and it's not just politics in city hall or congress but also labor leadership or so on if you look at these positions as to you know positions that are meant to advance your own career that is when you start selling out because in order to advance your careers whether in the labor movement or in the in congress or city hall you have to curry favor with the democratic and republican parties you have to be somebody who's acceptable to the billionaire class to the chamber of commerce and that is when selling out actually happens that is that is what it looks like and that is why if you are going to actually win for the working class it does need leadership that is not careerist you can't have a little bit of both it doesn't work that

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way is the democratic party with their betrayal in particular the nafta and thirty million mass layoffs that devastated american families that gave us trump but the bankruptcy i thought was on full display with the leaked postmortem by the dnc it was kind of an amazing document utterly tone deaf utterly disconnected from the democratic base seventy seven percent of whom want to stop arms shipments to israel and i think this bankruptcy is very very dangerous as we move towards a kind of full out police state or fascist

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state it really is and that autopsy the fact that they tried so hard to suppress it the fact that it got leaked and that the fact that it confirmed everything that both our analysis was you know yours and mine analysis was revealing but also statistical evidence i mean you know let's not forget some of the statistical and crucial statistical evidence here which is from the exit pol in twenty twenty four that of the nearly nineteen million people who had voted for biden in twenty twenty but refused to vote for kamala harris in twenty twenty four of them the vast majority of them said that the genocide in gaza and the cost of living crisis were the top two reasons why they refused to vote at all i mean these are nineteen million people who voted for biden but then refused to vote at all it's not like they voted for trump these are just votes and that kamala harris and the democratic party straight up lost and now you have a new parade of the same old same old you know gavin newsom all of these candidates amy klobuchar and whoever else all of these corporate candidates these are especially when you look at amy klobuchar's record you know she's also some another one who has voted to fund the genocide and all of these gavin newsom recently has made anti trans statements so whether it is ending the wars winning universal health care public health care or defending the lgbtq community against right wing and trumpy attacks none of these goals are going to be fulfilled by having any faith in the democratic party and just to give you a concrete example chris from this race you mentioned earlier that there's another democrat in this race so here's what's going on in my race on the one hand you have adam smith who is an out and out warmonger and representative of the billionaire class who needs to not only be thrown out of office he needs to be on trial for war crimes but then you have this other democrat melissa chowdhury and there's a lot of confusion about her in the district a lot of people want to believe that she is a progressive democrat but the reality is and also she is muslim and so people want to believe that she's against a genocide because of her identity and she certainly in my view uses her muslim identity to present herself as against a genocide but here's the reality the reality is that the words genocide israel palestine occupation appear nowhere either on her campaign website or in any of the speeches i've heard and i've heard her speak many times including on her social media she never talks about any of that she is not campaigning to end all military aid to the israeli state she is not campaigning to end the occupation she's not talking about ending the ai data centers she's not talking about the need for universal public health care and as a matter of fact i found even more revealing evidence from a recent candidate interview that she and i were both at where she is and i brought this up on her website she refuses to talk about lgbtq rights and she is standing by that in fact that is even more just gravely disturbing to me because and it should be to all of us because not only is this now the twenty first century but this is happening in washington state where right now in november there are going to be two extremely anti trans bills horrific bills that have been put forward by the right wing and i am campaigning against those bills i'm openly campaigning against those bills and i have a long track record of having fought for the lgbtq community and won many victories including being the first elected representative in seattle to have stood with trans pride here in seattle the first trans pride happened the same year that i was first running for the city council in twenty thirteen and i was the only candidate that raised willing to support trans pride and i spoke at transport and i proudly spoke at trans pride i also won consecutive years of declaring seattle's trans pride day through our people's budget campaign from my office i won millions of dollars for lgbtq senior community for lgbtq mental health services and health centers and so on and here you have a candidate who wants to be seen as progressive who is refusing to support the lgbtq community the words abortion rights don't appear on our website either and i saw in one of her questionnaires she talks about how abortion should be rare i mean those are the words of a conservative democrat this is what the democratic party is running as an alternative to adam smith and that is why we have to be very clear and i want voters in the ninth congressional district of washington state to be very clear there is only one progressive campaign running and that is mine and you have two democrats and one of them is running as somewhat of an adam smith light and also i also want to share some other things about her which are quite scandalous one of those things is that adam smith as you know chris he's not only just an out and out warmonger he has been violently opposed to the anti war movement and when the protests were going on at columbia university and new york university with very courageous students and faculty fighting against a genocide he called the anti war protesters left wing fascists and demand that they be arrested and he's carried out that demand there was an anti war peaceful anti war protest at one of his public town halls that included workers strike by members and even the police said that there was that police told the media that there were no assaults or anything happening they were just handing out flyers in fact there's video of these activists being arrested while peacefully handing out flyers on a public school campus public college campus and then later on adam smith's office slapped false charges on these some of these activists and this question came up at the candidate interview and it was really just just i was just really flabbergasted i was nonplussed and i was really really just alarmed to see this supposedly progressive candidate melissa chowdhury actually joining adam smith in condemning those activists in that interview and we have to be very clear that if anybody is joining in attacks against the anti war movement that is not an anti war candidate this is somebody who is running to make a career in the democratic party and in fact i have to say everything about her reminds me of the role that elizabeth warren played elizabeth warren if you look at her what she stands for on paper it's all progressive but what role did she play in twenty sixteen in the democratic primary you know sorry in twenty twenty when you had all of the other candidates you know the center centrist candidates drop out in order to make way for biden only elizabeth warren remained why did she remain in the race she was there to take votes away from progressive votes away from bernie sanders to clear the way for joe biden that was the role she played in and that was her role at that moment and bellisa chaudhary's existence in this race in our race reminds me of that except that i think it's giving melissa choudhary too much credit to even compare her to elizabeth warren because even on paper choudhary's program is nowhere you know there's no aspect of her program that can be called progressive so one of

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the problems with third party candidates is that they don't have any real base although of course i have supported third party candidates going back to two thousand and i think you get the importance especially of building a militant labor base that without that base we're just not it's almost window dressing or a kind of boutique activism can you address that

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issue the situation we're in chris is that we have a stranglehold of the democratic and republican parties which are the representatives the political premier political representatives of the capitalist class the stranglehold of those two parties and especially of the democratic party in every sphere of political organizing so we are not in a situation where we could say well electoral politics sucks i'm going to organize in the labor movement it doesn't work that way but because everywhere you go the power of the capitalist class appears in the form of as i said gatekeepers and so even in labor organizing if you say i don't want to be part of electoral fights i want to be in labor organizing what is happening in labor let's look at what happened in the days in the lead up to january twenty third when one hundred thousand people protested in minneapolis against the murder of activists like renee goode and these are courageous people fighting against the ice terror in our cities and obviously bottom line is we're fighting for the immigrant families who are being targeted by trump's ice and first of all let's not forget that ice itself was created and funded by both democrats and republicans i mean there's a graph that hopefully we can show on this program where if you see the funding for ice and customs and border patrol departments you know it's on an ascendancy throughout across democratic and republican presidencies across the years when the democratic party or the republican party had a majority in the us congress it is a bipartisan agenda and that bipartisan agenda the pro capitalist bipartisan agenda that shows up in the labor movement as well and so when it was at a moment when ordinary people were saying we need a general strike i mean i've been an activist and an organizer for now nearly seventeen years never before never before january of this year had i seen just ordinary workers who have no access to the unions and all because you know ninety percent of workers aren't unionized right now talking about a gender strike it was a pivotal moment the anger against ice terror was a really unifying force and it was a perfect moment for the labor leadership to actually organize even if not a general strike at least major strike actions in minneapolis you know what the labor leadership was doing they were busy sending emails to their members saying hey here's the language from your contract that has the no strike clause and you might get fired if you go on strike so better be careful you know i mean i'm paraphrasing obviously but this was the message that they sent and so there is scandal upon scandal here the first scandal is that we are at a moment in labor history of america where the majority of labor contracts have no strike clauses no labor leader has any business accepting a no strike clause because going on strike and shutting down the profit machine of the capitalist class is the only real weapon that that the working class has against this brutal machinery of capitalism and war and cost of living crisis and so giving away the only real weapon that we have is a criminal act by the labor leadership and that's the situation we're in right now so not only that that scandalous and then the scandal upon that scandal is for labor leaders to instead what they should have done for january twenty third is ignore those no strike clauses that they themselves put but they should ignore that because that's what the moment called for it and organized strike actions regardless because no strike is illegal the only question is whether a strike succeeds or fails that is the question and that's what the west virginia teachers showed in twenty eighteen their strike was technically illegal because it's a republican stronghold right to work state but they went on strike regardless and they won historic victories and they had to defy their own labor leadership the leadership of nea and afd in order to continue that strike and that's the kind of fightback we need but the tragedy chris is that that was the one exception i mean and that was eight years ago we need that type of rank and file militant action and we need breakthroughs for that type of militant action and that is why i'm running for congress not because i think that we are going to be able to reform congress or reform capitalism no i'm a revolutionary socialist i don't think capitalism can be reformed i think capitalism needs to be overthrown and replaced with actual democratic ownership by workers of all society of all the you know all the commanding heights of the economy that is the only way we will be able to actually stop data centers and save the the planet to be a habitable place for human beings and other animals but it's a question of where we get the breakthroughs from and those breakthroughs are not going to come anywhere unless we have leaders who are willing to actually challenge the domination of the democratic and republican parties and that's what we are doing through this campaign just as we did throughout when i was on the seattle city council

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but i think when you were on the city council your power you were only one figure on the city council i can't remember how many they had but the power you wielded was that you had a strong grassroots movement and i've heard you speak before and it's why you founded workers strike back that we need political representation but without those movements were essentially neutered absolutely

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absolutely i mean and it is impossible to decide which is more important they go together you need the mass movements the masses to be mobilized you cannot win any victories i would not have won any victories had i not had tens of thousands of seattle's workers on my side but neither would have we won any victories had we not had the leadership that my office provided but it was crystal clear who's on our side who's not what is the strategy what are the tactics in order to actually do this i mean just to give you an example a couple of concrete examples of why the leadership is just as crucial and it's not about figures it's about the ideas it's a question of what ideas dominate the movement that that's going to decide whether we are going to succeed or fail because at the end of the day you know the capitalist class you know these are the billionaires the multimillionaires and now elon musk a trillionaire they have all the wealth because they own practically every square inch of planet earth they have all the wealth they have all the political clout they have the institutions of the state like the police and like all the other machinery that they use to repress us and even they will even use violence if they need to so the balance of forces the status quo of capitalism is that the balance of forces is completely stacked against the working class the only way we can win is if we have a strategy of tipping the scales in favor of ourselves and against the bosses and the only way of doing that is to have leadership that is crystal clear about the need for the you know about the strategy of the movement and so just to give you a concrete example why leadership is so crucial for working class movements is that when we when we launched the fifteen now movement you know we and we launched it through my office after i took office in january twenty fourteen and there was huge momentum there was really wind wind in our sails at that time and every new poll opinion polls were showing we had more and increasing support for fifteen from the working class of seattle throughout that whole time many of the labor leaders they were actually in direct contact with the business entities with the chamber of commerce who were viciously opposed to any minimum wage increase let alone fifteen they didn't want to give an inch they absolutely didn't want to give an inch and they were pretty naked in their hatred and contempt of working class people and many of the labor leaders were in direct communications with these business leaders and there was a moment when the support for fifteen dollars an hour was just unbelievably high at that moment one of the main labor leaders came to this labor caucus meetings we used to have that they were forced to include me in because obviously our campaign and my office had initiated and led this movement and at that meeting this labor leader said look i've talked to these business guys look guys we're not going to win fifteen we're not going to get fifteen in fact they've told me you got to accept eleven you got to tell your people to accept eleven otherwise we're winning nothing it's like oh i'm so sorry this is all we can do and all the other labor leaders you know there were lots of tears shed as well like saying oh wow i guess we can't i guess we have to give in it was quite something to witness that moment of shame in the labor leadership it took me and i'm not sharing this story as self praise i'm sharing this as a concrete example of what kind of leadership our movements need that took me to stand up and say it's absolutely shameful that you are all this is all a contrite thing you're all shedding tears but what you're really doing is allowing big business to have their way allowing the billionaires to have their way at a moment when support for fifteen is sky high and if you go ahead with this betrayal i will hold a press conference tomorrow and i will name names that is what it took to get them to back down because they were actually afraid of being exposed to to the eyes of working class people and during the tax amazon movement we were you know we had launched the tax amazon movement coming out of my twenty nineteen election real reelection victory where we defeated amazon's million dollar money bomb and we won the election and we turned my inauguration in twenty twenty into the launch of the tax amazon movement and it was you know we had lots of support and then the george floyd rebellion happened obviously and we continued campaigning both for blm and for the rebellion and for amazon tax we connected the two and then you had a whole array of blm what i call misleaders i mean they were blm leaders but they were really blm misleaders who started talking about how the amazon tax is not a black issue and that they said shama is not black she needs to sit down and let black voices prevail which is classic gatekeeper language for doing the bidding of the democratic party and big business and then you had then dsa leaders following them and saying yeah shema really should back down you know the socialists should back down you know we should let black people lead and we said this is not the voice of black people this is the voice of ngo leaders who are looking to make you know a little bit of money for their ngo's in our in return for selling their soul to the democratic party we're going to go to ordinary black people and ask them what they think and not just black people obviously it was a multiracial working class movement so we defied the gatekeepers and that's what it took we went to the protest themselves and to the rank and file of the george floyd rebellion protest movement we went there with our clipboards saying we need an amazon tax to fund affordable housing and we asked the rank and file of the movement do you think we should have an amazon tax and people were like fuck yeah i want to defeat amazon i want an amazon tax the affordable housing crisis disproportionately hits the black community and the clipboards were practically flying out of our hands that's how eager people were to sign it and we collected thirty thousand signatures in three months at the rate of ten thousand signatures a month for our tax amazon ballot initiative because it became a credible threat that if the city council didn't vote on our amazon tax we were going to go directly to the voters and we had phenomenal support and a strong chance of winning that's the credible threat that it took to force the chamber of commerce and jeff bezos and the democratic party to concede to our amazon tax demand and at the same time would we have been able to do it without tens of thousands of working class people getting involved and actively fighting absolutely not so the two things go together the leadership and the movements and the leadership of the movements those are the criteria for working class

A

victory great and we need leaders like you who don't sell out and i've watched been involved with your career since twenty thirteen and i know you won't how can people find you can you give us a website this is a

B

district wide campaign obviously and also a national campaign because so much is at stake and look we have to it is it is up to it is it is the bottom line is the way things change politically is not by some politician getting elected and passing a bill and then you know incremental no that's all nonsense the way things change in society the way we can win substantial shifts in society and right now concretely what are those those are things like winning an end to all military aid to israel you know ending the genocide ending the forever wars imperialist wars winning free health care for all funded by taxing the duties these are concrete things that we need we need to shut down ice we need to cancel student debt we need to fight actively to protect the rights of the lgbtq community we have to fight against islamophobia all of these things they don't happen none of these things happens through this bill or that bill or this congress member or that congress member it happens through mass movements it happens through a mass rebellion organized nationally and so the strategy that we used as you were explaining chris of building movements using our office that is the reason we won we didn't win just because we had one office we won because we had an office that was used in service of building mass movements that's what we need in congress so if we can win even one office in congress that is willing to defy the labor leadership and to break the stranglehold that business unionism has on working class movements and to use that office to actually build mass resistance and mass rebellions that is what we need that is urgently needed and that is why i would say that every person who is watching this who agrees with this program of demands and who agrees that we need a fundamental shift away from the billionaire class in american society then you have a stake in this campaign no matter where you live it doesn't matter where you live and that is why our campaign chris has the incredible distinction of being an independent party openly revolutionary socialist campaign and yet having raised over six hundred thousand dollars which is more than two and a half times just in the primary election that is which is more than two and a half times that any progressive challenger of adam smith has raised in their entire primary plus general campaign it is an incredible campaign on the ground and we have eight and a half times more donations than adam smith does in our district even though obviously he has a lot more money because he has apac and ai and crypto money and health insurance ceo's donating to him but we have the support of ordinary people in our working people in our district and we have donations from all fifty states and also washington dc and puerto rico so people who are watching this need to support this campaign go to kshamasawant dot org and click on donate also volunteer we have people volunteering from across the nation some people are actually also taking time off and visiting here to canvas on the street we have people from the bay area and so on and so we need all of this support immediately because let me tell you the democratic party's strategy is to keep me out of the general election that is their goal because if i get into the general election then it becomes a head to head matchup between me and a genocidal democrat named adam smith they want to avoid that head to head matchup at all costs because the chances of us winning they just exponentially catapult if i get into the general election so their strategy is to keep me out of the general election and that's why likewise our strategy has to be to fight to get us into the general election get this campaign in the general election the primary is on august fourth so we have under two months to do this time is of the essence it is i would say at this moment this is a do or die campaign this is the only campaign that shows any sliver of daylight for a breakthrough for mass resistance by the working class and that is why everybody whether you belong in a union or not i think it is our moral and political duty to make sure that our campaign gets into the general election so that we can actually have then a fighting chance of getting into congress and at this moment it is crucial that not only people donate but also people try to come to seattle if you can because canvassing is very important and the reason it's important is that the corporate media has carried out you know is trying to carry out a blackout against our campaign because even if they attack me it actually helps our campaign so they're trying not to talk about my campaign at all and unfortunately a lot of the so called progressive media are also not talking about our campaign there are also media that say well electoral doesn't work and that's why they're not supporting us but that actually ends up helping people like aoc if you are angry at aoc you should actually be helping our campaign because we have a track record of never selling out so i hope people join us in this campaign and help us fight for and win every possible vote so that we can get into the general election

A

great thank you shama i want to thank max diego noel and thomas who produced the show you can find me at chrished substack dot com