New York, NY: Kshama Sawant, the only Socialist on the Seattle City Council, traveled to New York seeking support for Bernie Sanders On April 9th. Sawant, a member of the Alternative Socialist Party, identifies with Sanders who describes himself as an avowed Democratic Socialist with the watchword “political revolution” as his main campaign slogan.
In a “Clinton v Sanders” New York proxy debate between supporters of Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Sanders, held at the Judson Memorial, a radical church on Washington Square in the Big Apple, opponents lined up in a vehement debate about their respective candidates’ positions, Slate.com reported. Seated among prominent nationally recognized personalities, Sawant, sought New Yorkers to support the Vermont Senator to be th next President of the nation.
Kshama Sawant had addressed one of Bernie Sander’s biggest rallies to date last month, the evening before Washington State voters delivered a whopping 73% victory for Sanders. Kshama Sawant fired up the crowd with a fist of solidarity before saying “Sisters and brothers, are you feeling the Bern?!”
She went on to say, “It’s really amazing how Bernie’s campaign has transformed the entire landscape of US national politics. His anti-corporate insurgent campaign has made gains that have been stunning enough to deny Hillary (the Wall Street and Wal-Mart candidate) the straight up coronation she thought she deserved….It’s not just young people in general, it’s young women. Women who were told by Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, ‘If you don’t support Hillary, you’re becoming complacent about reproductive rights.’ Women who were told by Madeline Albright that ‘there was going to be a special place in hell for them’ if they supported Bernie against Hillary.’ I think there’s a special place in hell for Madeline Albright. Look at the results in Michigan which defied all polls, where both black and white working class people, when they cast their vote for Bernie, spoke out against the massive de-industrialization that has gone through the mid-West because of NAFTA and those shitty trade deals the Clinton’s were responsible for. And Arab Americans, Muslims, voted in large numbers for Bernie, because they respect a real challenge to imperialism. But, my sisters and brothers, the most profound sign of our times, is the support for Socialism. This is America, this is the belly of the capitalist beast and we have millions of people saying socialism is not a dirty word, capitalism is a dirty word.”
Writing in the Huffington Post on March 2, under the headline, “Bernie vs Hillary, What’s a Feminist to do?” Sawant argued fervently for Sanders. She sees women’s rights clashing with ‘corporate interests’ time and again, she said, even on issues such as $15 minimum wage where women council members voted for ‘sub-minimum’ wages most affecting women. “Do these women not consider themselves feminists? I think they do, though I won’t speak for them.”
“If the question is one of policy and not of identity, can there be any doubt that Bernie Sanders is the real feminist in this race?” Sawant proclaims, declaring that “Feminism, solidarity and socialism are interconnected and inseparable.”
