As the billionaire-backed, right-wing recall continues in Seattle against socialist Councilmember Kshama Sawant, more labor unions are responding to the calls of rank-and-file union members and endorsing the Kshama Solidarity Campaign. UNITE HERE Local 8, which represents around 5,000 hospitality
Kshama is fucking awesome. Idk why she isn't held up as a model for socialist in public office. She certainly has used her office to help build movements and embarrass the liberal establishment in Seattle. She only takes a small portion of her salary and donates the rest (I think 40-50k out of like 120k,,?).
It feels like the correct amount of "working within the system to make real change" combined with not being beholden to bourgeoise parties. I saw her interview on Bad Faith but I wanna read more about her strategies & SA in general, are there any stories I should check out? Including left critiques?
Well they're a Trotskyist party. Tbh, I think that is a reason why you don't hear much through DSA channels but the two work in coalition with each other too (like her recall campaign now). They're in an international with the CWI (committee for a worker's international). They do require more of their membership vs DSA in terms of activism and political education. They also use democratic centralism.
Thanks for the overview :biden-nibble:
I'm torn on this. On one hand, it's good for gauging how serious politicians are about what they preach.
On the other hand, I don't think we want this as a litmus test. I'm fine with (good) politicians having financial security, and requiring people to live in financial precarity before we take them seriously is real "here you are critiquing capitalism on your iPhone" energy. It's also a mistake to equate socialism with living one emergency from disaster. And of course no one with real wealth is going to be held to this standard -- at most, it'd serve as a tool to browbeat PMC socialists into giving away pretty modest earnings (which would help some people immediately, but isn't going to bring us any closer to socialism).
I think that they've tacked it to the median income of a local skilled worker. That's how it's described anyway. I take your point but it's seems pretty fucking cool to me that a working class politician doesn't take more than the people they represent. I mean I don't personally have a problem with say Bernie having a lake house etc. But in the eyes of the public politicians are extremely out of touch and making 6 figs as an individual seems to make most politicians careerist in the worst way possible. Also PMC deserves to be brow beat and paying high salaries to politicians doesn't bring us any closer to socialism either.