Why are they targeting Sawant? [View all]

The Urban League is going after the only leftist and the only woman of color on the Seattle City Council. Rather than challenging the pro-corporate advocates of neoliberalism, whether Democrat or Republican, who increasingly dominate U.S. politics, this well-known liberal organization is expending its energy on defeating the left.

Pamela Banks, president of the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, announced this month that she will run in the next municipal election against City Council member Kshama Sawant, the Socialist Alternative candidate who won national attention for her successful 2013 campaign.

Sawant has been a leading figure in the Fight for 15 campaign, a national movement to demand demands a living minimum wage of $15 per hour. As Salon.com pointed out, she was one of the few officeholders in the U.S. to "openly and unapologetically criticize" Israel's war crimes against the Palestinian people. She is also in a virtual dead heat for the highest approval rating citywide of any City Council member, and has far and away the most name recognition, according to a poll published last October.

Because of her election success and her principled left-wing stands as a City Council member, Sawant has become an important symbol throughout the country that a democratic, anti-racist, feminist, socialist alternative to the Democratic Party is possible. Yet Banks and the Urban League want to pull down this symbol.

Read more: http://socialistworker.org/2015/03/17/why-are-they-targeting-sawant