When Kshama Sawant was running for a seat on the Seattle City Council in 2013, she made the fight for $15 an hour minimum wage the centerpiece of her campaign.
Democrats thought she was crazy.Voters went to the polls to vote for Sawant and $15 an hour. She became the first socialist to win a Seattle wide election in almost 100 years. Within a year of her election, the $15 minimum wage became law. (It’s now more than $20.76 an hour, the highest minimum wage in the country.)
Sawant says the Democratic Party is a party of genocide and billionaires and she doesn’t trust those who give it cover. That’s why she’s running as an independent for Congress against the genocide funding Democratic member of Congress from Washington’s 9th Congressional – Adam Smith.
“Across the nation for several years now, but much more so in recent months, ordinary people, millions of working and young people, are absolutely fed up and angry at the status quo,” Sawant told Capitol Hill Citizen. “In an unprecedented turn of events, historically for the United States, a majority of working people in America are now opposed to the Israeli state and the genocide in Gaza, and are angry at the fact that both Democrats and Republicans are both are war-mongering parties of the billionaire class.”
“In Congress, the funding of the occupation and the genocide has been a bipartisan project, and there’s real an- ger at both parties funding of the genocide. There is deep anger roiling through American society about the cost of living crisis, and more and more data emerging about how the uber rich have become so much richer, even richer than before, and working and poor people in oppressed communities are struggling to get by.”
“In the midst of all this, we saw Donald Trump winning a second election, despite leaving office the first time as the most unpopular president in United States history. All of this shows that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are able to serve anything close to what working people need, because they both serve the billionaire class. They are both subservient to the war mongering agenda of imperialism. And in this context, it is so crucial that the fighting strategy that we demonstrated so successfully in Seattle for ten years when I was on the city council, is desperately needed to be focused on the Congress.”
That is why I am running agains Adam Smith, who is a genocidal war mongering Democrat. He has been in Congress for nearly three decades. He voted for the Iraq War. He has voted to send tens of billions of dollars to the Israeli state. Adam Smith has the blood of now over half a million Palestinians on his hands. He also has the blood of a million Iraqis on his hands. He also has a long track record of being not only a general among the war hawks, but also a dogged advocate for corporate America. He supported George W. Bush’s bailouts and then continuation of the bailouts under Barack Obama of the big banks and the very corporations and the billionaires and the hedge fund owners who caused the Great Recession.”
“While millions of homeowners were facing foreclosures and millions more were facing job losses, he was selling them out to the big corporations. And by contrast, my track record on the Seattle City Council shows that I have a fighting strategy that absolutely works. Even when you have one single office that belongs to the working class, that is led by a fighting strategy, you can win.”
Why is it that progressive media outlets focus on Democratic progressives, but pretty much ignore your race?
“It’s like Chomsky said – limit the frame of debate between the Democrats and Republicans so that you are forced to think that actually one of them is on your side more so than the other, when in reality neither of them is. The other example of such a phenomenon is most of the labor leadership. In principle, the labor leadership represents the organized working class. But in reality they engage in business unionism, which translates into making deals with the bosses. And they are tied at the hip to the Democratic Party. They carefully engineer and control how much debate is allowed.”
Unlike Mamdani, you made a choice not to run as a Democrat, but to run as an independent because you want nothing to do with the Democrats?
“That’s right, I’ve never been a member of the Democratic Party. I’ve never run as a Democrat. I’ve always run as an independent socialist.”
“That is what explains why even magazines on the left like Jacobin or many other publications will not focus on what we have done in Seattle, because we do represent a different strategy than say that of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York). You will see Jacobin printing a lot about AOC, and then they’ll cover us very sparingly. These progressive publications want to limit the terms of the debate.”
“They prefer to put forward the example of an AOC who espouses certain progressive ideas. You can see from the time she was first elected – she has completely capitulated to the Democratic Party. CHC: You are saying it’s the Democratic Party that’s the dividing line.”
“I support all of the demands that Zorhan Mamdani and AOC have put forward. But if you look at their actual track record, it’s mostly them talking about it and not winning anything. What the left media do is present the idea that it’s possible to win big victories for the working class and a substantial improvement in standards of living without confronting the Democratic Party. They might say something critical, but for the most part they try to make peace with the Democrats. It’s actually unfortunate to allow the working class to think that it is possible to win on that basis. All of history shows that it’s not possible.”
“I’ll give you one simple example. When we started pushing for a $15 minimum wage in Seattle, I was considered crazy for talking about it. All of the Democrats, all of the big business leaders, they were so smug and arrogant. They literally told to my face – you’re crazy if you think you can win. There is no way you’re going to win any minimum wage, let alone $15 an hour. And less than six months after I first took office, we had won $15 an hour. Why did we win? I used my office to expose the Democrats by name. People in our movement came to City Hall and they didn’t come and say – please, council, please vote yes on 15. Instead what our movement said – shame on you for opposing 15 in the first place. And if you vote no, we will throw you out because you are exposed as somebody who serves corporations and not working people. That’s the clarity you need, where you actually put a price tag for every single politician who refuses to stand with working people. You put a price tag on their own political career where they fear the movement more than big business. To force them to do something that will benefit working people, you need to take the battle to them. The battle has already been presented, because capitalism is class war against the working class. It’s not like we can choose to avoid conflict. We are already at war, but we’re losing.”
[For the complete q/a format interview with Kshama Sawant, get your print copy of the August/September 2025 issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen.]