Kshama Sawant for Congress

The upcoming midterm elections have “progressive” Democrats crawling out of the woodwork and presenting themselves as champions of affordability and a sane alternative to Trump. Things are plenty costly and insane right now: ICE thugs terrorize whole cities, the abduction of a foreign president, war in Iran and soaring gas prices. It’s anyone’s guess what atrocity will be next. The only certainty is that the Democratic Party isn’t going to do a damn thing about it. Trump’s return was made possible by liberal Democrats like Biden, whose “woke” talk nauseated workers and whose economic policies suffocated them. Over the past year, the Democrats have offered mild criticism and toothless court suits, but nothing that might actually put the brakes on Trump.

If working people are to defend themselves against the onslaught, let alone actually improve their lives, they will have to wage a collective fight under their own steam in opposition to both parties. This round of elections offers a candidate who provides a genuine rallying point for all those looking to begin such a fight. Kshama Sawant of Workers Strike Back (WSB) is running as an independent for the U.S. Congress to represent the 9th Congressional District in Washington state against incumbent Democrat Adam Smith, a war hawk and major recipient of AIPAC money who regularly rubs shoulders with the rich. Everyone in the workers movement should mobilize support and votes for Kshama to maximize her campaign’s potential as a launching pad for working-class resistance.

Sawant, a former Seattle city council member, describes herself as a revolutionary socialist who stands “on the tradition of the Russian Revolution: the single most important event, thus far, in modern human history.” She denounces this country’s vicious ruling class as the enemy of progress and the “dumpster fire of a party,” the Democrats, noting that the “Democratic and Republican parties as a whole represent American capitalism and have been agents of bloody imperialist wars, coups, and regime change missions.” In a refreshing change of pace from most of the left, which fawned over Democrat Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor, Sawant is clear that as early as his victory speech Mamdani began lowering expectations from what he promised on the campaign trail. And she points to the reason for this: “When you become part of an organization, a political organization, that is controlled by the billionaires, it’s the billionaire’s agenda that holds sway, not our agenda.”

Her election platform consists of a series of readily supportable demands, such as shut down ICE, end all military aid to Israel and free healthcare for all, and Sawant views her campaign as a vehicle to build a militant mass movement, recognizing “there is no avenue for us to win anything substantial for the working class without declaring war on the bourgeoisie, on the ruling class.” This is all very promising, and socialists of every stripe should do everything they can to make Sawant’s campaign as strong as possible. The splintering of the left has greatly reduced its influence in the working class, and we need to take every opportunity to turn this around, not least by working together toward common goals while debating the best strategy to achieve them. Sawant herself recognizes the crisis of the left and invites others to participate in her campaign without hiding their criticisms.

In this spirit, we offer a few of ours. There is no doubt that working people need a militant mass movement against the billionaires and their parties. For that matter, some sustained working-class struggle would be a good start. But this raises the question of how to bring it forth. Talking up the potential of a general strike to, say, stop ICE and denouncing business union bureaucrats for their subservience to the Democrats and refusal to violate contractual no-strike clauses is not enough. Today, the working class is demonstrably on its back foot, by and large keeping its head down and divided by race, national origin and every other which way imaginable. These divisions, fueled by the bosses and reinforced by the bureaucrats, are major barriers to collective action on the scale of a general strike. The only way to begin to prepare powerful militant action is to actively combat these divisions. This requires patient explanation of why a fightback in defense of immigrants is crucial to every other section of the working class without any hint of moralism. Years of liberal browbeating as conditions got worse drove a wedge between many workers and immigrants, black people and other oppressed groups. WSB’s class-struggle unionism, or greater militancy alone, provides no tools to bridge these divisions.

The problem of liberalism and its toxic influence on the working class is not limited to the Democratic Party, and the answer to liberal Democrats is not to go ultra-liberal. But unfortunately, the vast majority of the left does just that, including by boosting the Green Party as WSB has done. Yes, the Greens are antiwar and endorse many of the same reforms as socialists, but their strategy revolves entirely around trying to convince people of all class backgrounds to “do the right thing,” not trying to mobilize workers to fight for their distinct interests against the ruling class. These are two fundamentally different approaches, which will yield fundamentally different results. The mixing of banners with liberals in recent decades is precisely what has put the left in crisis and made it all but irrelevant to the working class. In its own way, WSB proved this point during the 2024 Seattle-area Boeing strike, which if escalated and won could have been a game-changer for all labor on the eve of the presidential elections. Instead of viewing this major class battle as “ground zero to punish Kamala Harris and defeat her,” WSB sent its cadre off to Michigan to stump for the Green Party’s Jill Stein, whose eco do-goodism and flights of fancy are a big turn-off for the vast majority of workers.

Despite these and other differences, we urge all those committed to repelling Trump’s attacks and waging war on capital to marshal their forces in Sawant’s campaign. PSL rallied behind Sawant in 2021 when she faced a right-wing recall election while serving on the Seattle city council and should do so again. Socialist Alternative needs to set aside its sectarian animosity toward Sawant and energetically build her campaign. Those in the DSA who oppose the Democratic Establishment should advocate that their organization throw its resources behind her. The broader the reach of her campaign and the stronger its impact, the better for the working class and the left. Vote Kshama Sawant for Congress!