Kicking off Sunday’s fiery rally for 15 Now, a new group pushing for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, MC Katie Wilson declared: “What we are witnessing now is a rebirth of the left in this county.” It was a remark that framed the two and a half hours to follow.
Speaker after speaker at downtown’s Labor Temple marveled at what Philip Locker, a spokesperson for the Socialist Alternative party, called the “breathtaking” momentum toward that goal—and his warnings of battles ahead.
“There’s going to be a propaganda war,” Locker asserted, contending that big business will attempt to “confuse” and “undermine” workers. Jess Spear, a 15 Now organizer, similarly warned of the “lies” that will be told by “big business.”
We got to this point because of “heat in the street,” SEIU 775 vice-president Sterling Harders told the crowd, her face lit by a ferocious energy and her arm frequently gesticulating. Much more of that heat is going to be necessary now, she said.
But as Wilson alluded at the beginning, the minimum-wage movement is a symbol of something bigger in the eyes of many people at the rally. Many of them are activists, far to the left of the Democratic party, who have dreamed of a real socialist-style uprising for many years. Finally, as they see it, their day has come.
And so Robby Stern, a veteran of Students for a Democratic Society, a radical group from the ’60s, resurrected an old sing-songy chant.
One special guest was Joe Higgins, who flew all the way from Ireland, where he serves as a socialist member of parliament. A firebrand, he denounced the “criminal” policies of “neo-liberalism,” called for the working class to take control of private resources, and said that a minimum-wage victory in Seattle would resound around the world because it would happen “in the heartland of capitalism.”
At his remarks, newly elected socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, who had sat impassively through much of the proceedings, smiled and clapped vigorously.
Sawant’s upset victory in November gives her a chance to take her ideas to the mainstream. She has already had great success with the minimum-wage issue, which she ran on and which has been adopted by the mayor and virtually all city council members. Buoyed, she shows no inclination of watering down her socialist ideals to court further mainstream acceptance. Quite the reverse.
Achieving a $15 wage is an important step, she said when she finally came to the podium as the very last speaker. But it is only the first step, she stressed.
Next up: fighting for rent control, a municipal tax, and “breaking our ties with those who have betrayed us again and again.” That would be the “two big business parties,” the Democratic and the Republican. E nshapiro@seattleweekly.com
