Response to Kshama Sawant

On April 26, Kshama Sawant issued a statement calling our organization "reckless" & "damaging."

The statement was aimed at Movement for Kshama, a Marxist-led organization which is supporting Kshama’s independent socialist campaign for Congress in Washington’s 9th Congressional District. Movement for Kshama is a united front of socialists and workers, many of whom have disagreements with Kshama but also understand that a victory for her campaign would be a step forward for the workers’ movement.

Kshama is pretending she doesn’t know who we are: DNC wreckers? Agents of her opponent, Congressman Adam Smith?

Kshama knows exactly who we are. Her statement is a dishonest political attack on our organization and on revolutionary socialists.

The Democrats are busy taking an axe to public services in Seattle, including the cancellation of the Ballard light rail extension and threatening cuts to healthcare, housing & education. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has dropped her campaign promise to fight for free childcare & shut down surveillance cameras. Democrats have failed to take action against ICE or protect victims of police brutality. In the last 5 years, they have INCREASED the Seattle police budget by $123 million.

Kshama should be using her campaign to fight against these attacks by the Seattle and King County Democratic Party, including Mayor Katie Wilson. Activists and socialist organizations have urged Kshama to use her campaign to mobilize against these attacks, but she has not.

Instead of fighting to stop the Democrats’ cuts, Kshama is using her $500,000 war chest to make social media posts, create Instagram graphics, and send emails to her national list attacking other socialists with Movement for Kshama.

Unfortunately, Kshama has a pattern of sectarianism, which HAS done damage to her campaign. But it’s not just her: there is a crisis of both sectarianism and opportunism on the left.

Most of the left has refused to support Kshama’s campaign. There has been total silence from self-described socialist organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Socialist Alternative (SAlt), the Revolutionary Communists of America (RCA), and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL).

A whole wing of the “socialist” movement has chained itself to the Democratic Party.

Last month, Seattle DSA voted against even having a debate about endorsing Kshama’s campaign, while voting happily to endorse Democrat Jaelynn Scott. Central Indiana DSA has refused to support the new Socialist Party of Indiana, while endorsing Democrat Jackson Franklin. New York DSA won’t support Andre Easton’s independent socialist campaign for Congress, but endorsed strikebreaking Democrat AOC again.

Even the “left wing” of DSA like the Reform & Revolution Caucus have refused to support Kshama’s campaign. Yet their members argue for “critical support” for sellouts like AOC. Only the Labor Militant and Just Break Already caucuses in DSA have taken a principled stance.

Labor Notes, the supposed “left” of the labor movement, has banned a member of the left caucus Teamsters Mobilize from attending this year’s Labor Notes conference. But Labor Notes had no problem inviting the Chicago Mayor, Democrat Brandon Johnson, to deliver a keynote address in 2024, right as he was preparing a crackdown on anti-genocide protesters ahead of the DNC.

Socialist Alternative, Kshama’s former organization, endorsed DSA Democrat Zohran Mamdani (who hired Zionist police chief Jessica Tisch and endorsed Hakeem Jeffries), but has yet to say anything about Kshama’s campaign.

The Revolutionary Communists of America are sticking their heads in the sand until the revolution comes to them.

Other organizations like the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) are just hopelessly sectarian. They have not been silent (give them credit!), but they have been hostile to any working-class campaign not run by the SEP and their World Socialist Website.

Kshama’s recent statement is also sectarian: it is an attack on the only revolutionary socialists who ARE supporting her campaign: Labor Militant, the Spartacist League, and Seattle Revolutionary Socialists, all of whom have been involved with Movement for Kshama.

So why is Kshama attacking us?

Movement for Kshama was launched by 5 former members of Kshama’s organization, including her former campaign manager Em Smith and 3 former campaign staff. We launched it after Kshama & the leadership fired these staff members and suspended two of them from her organizations, Revolutionary Workers (RW) and Workers Strike Back (WSB).

These members were suspended and fired after raising political disagreements with the campaign leadership, including objections to a months-long campaign against a dedicated member that was characterized by a series of ugly personalized attacks. These personal attacks were a substitute for much-needed political debate within the organization.

Kshama and the Revolutionary Workers leadership carried out a series of undemocratic maneuvers to suppress debate inside the organization, including bureaucratic and draconian suspensions. Several elected leaders quit the organization in protest, and founded Labor Militant.

We think that the members of Workers Strike Back should demand answers, and fight to reverse these suspensions, including the undemocratic suspension of an elected member of the National Coordinating Committee (NCC).

Unfortunately, most WSB members aren’t even aware that the suspensions happened. The suspension of an elected leader was carried out during a 30-minute meeting of the NCC, and was never communicated to the members. Rank-and-file WSB members have been kept in the dark for almost 3 months.

We have many political disagreements with Kshama, RW, and the leadership of WSB. But despite our disagreements, we urged them at the time to work together to build Kshama’s campaign.

Instead, Kshama and her campaign told us to get lost. They explicitly banned us from attending campaign events. They told us that if we wanted to support the campaign, we would have to do so independently.

So we did. We launched Movement for Kshama.

Since its launch, Movement for Kshama has raised money through a Super PAC, which allowed us to raise and spend money independently of Kshama’s campaign. We have had no communication with the campaign whatsoever. All of our work has been done independently, and is 100% legal.

This is a *working-class* Super PAC (a fact Kshama withheld in her statement). We have received donations from more than 400 working people, overwhelmingly from Washington state. Our median donation is $5.

Kshama’s public attack on us isn’t about our signature-collection efforts, or any concern over legal consequences for the campaign. If that was all, they wouldn’t have needed social media graphics and a national email campaign. Her campaign released this statement because they don’t want us to support the campaign at all, with or without a Super PAC. This is an attempt to smear us and undermine support for our efforts.

The left cannot respond to every disagreement with dishonest attacks and refusing to work together. This is how we got here, where the left is splintered into 1,000 organizations that act like competing small businesses.

Kshama’s sectarian attacks have not helped her win support from the rest of the left. She has alienated thousands of would-be supporters. But we can’t fight sectarianism with yet more sectarianism. Workers and the left need to unite to elect Kshama. We need to support EVERY working-class effort to break with the capitalist Democratic Party and build a party of our own.

Kshama’s campaign announced a target of 5,000 ballot signatures. We hope she reaches that goal. We were forced to suspend our signature collection, since Kshama’s campaign will not accept them. We refuse to mislead working people. But we will not suspend our support for the campaign.

Our work has expanded far beyond campaigning for one election, so we have also voted to legally dissolve our working-class Super PAC (which was launched at a time when Kshama’s campaign was the organization’s primary purpose), and continue building a broader movement through United Front for a Workers’ Party. We hope Kshama will end her sectarian attacks, and work to build a unified movement.

Kshama calls herself a revolutionary socialist. A revolutionary socialist would use her campaign to fight against the brutal attacks on working people from both parties, including the attacks currently being carried out by the Democrats in Seattle and King County.

We have many disagreements with Kshama, and we have no problem saying so. Socialists need to be willing to accept criticism, especially those who want to lead the movement. And we need to be open and honest when we disagree.

At the same time, we can’t allow disagreements to get in the way of taking steps forward for the workers’ movement, and a victory for Kshama would be a massive step forward. Our enemies are Adam Smith, the Democratic and Republican parties, and the opportunist leaders of the socialist & labor movement.

We urge all working people to organize support for Kshama’s campaign. Socialists should demand support from their organizations. Rank-and-file union members should organize for endorsements in their unions, and expose sellout union leaders in LiUNA, AFSCME, IAM, AFGE, and others who are supporting Kshama’s strikebreaking opponent, genocidal Democrat Adam Smith.

We need a united front to elect Kshama Sawant and other independent socialists, and build a workers’ party that can take on both capitalist and imperialist parties.

We urge all socialists and working people to join us. Reach out at movementforkshama@gmail.com or movementforkshama.org.