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.
She only takes a small portion of her salary and donates the rest (I think 40-50k out of like 120k,?).
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.
Lee Carter and Kshama are fantastic. They do exactly what elected socialists should be doing.
The recall rules in Seattle are so phenomenally bullshit I would recommend reading into them more on your own. Basically they've leveraged 6 "charges" against her, currently being processed through the courts (2 charges have been dropped on the first round) and it will go through to the state Supreme Court where Kshama's lawyers expect at least one to be approved. Not because its a valid claim, but because "To approve a recall effort, state courts merely have to conclude that recall petition charges, if true, would constitute malfeasance or a violation of an official’s oath of office. But the court is expressly barred from considering “the truth of the charges.”
Once passed, the recall campaign has to get a certain number of signatures on a petition (in this case I believe it's around a quarter of the total number of voters in her last election--an extremely low bar for the recall campaign). Then it will move to a formal recall vote. At no point in the process do they give her the chance to defend herself against the charges and Amazon/chuds/democratic neolibs get a free second chance at the election.