Kshama Sawant, a revolutionary socialist, has been elected to the city council of Seattle, United States. Kshama’s platform included support low-paid workers’ fight for a $15/hour minimum wage, increased rent controls, and a tax on millionaires.
Her victory is all the more impressive for the fact that she beat a heavily-favoured Democratic incumbent, who had been a sitting councillors for 16 years and who had significantly greater financial resources.
Sawant said: ““These exciting results show a majority of voters are fed up with the corporate politicians who have presided over the widening chasm between the super-rich and the rest of us”.
Sawant previously worked as a part-time economics lecturer, and has promised to take an average workers’ wage when in office. She is a member of Socialist Alternative, the US section of the Committee for a Workers’ International, represented in Britain by the Socialist Party.
