Update: See livetweeting (and hopefully soon video) from her swearing in speech in a new diary here.
Update 6:55 AM 1/7: The above diary has scrolled off. Here's the video of the swearing in and her speech.
----- Original diary.
Kshama Sawant will become a Seattle City Council member today, an event which one might think would be of little consequence, yet is attracting international attention.
Local reporting notes
The largest turnout ever for a Seattle inauguration ceremony is expected at City Hall Monday for the swearing in of Mayor Ed Murray and City Councilmember Kshama Sawant... The ceremony is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. in City Hall.
and as the Seattle Times notes
The City Council has been fielding media inquiries from national and international news outlets including CNN, Fox News, The Guardian of London, The New York Times, The Times of India and Al-Jazeera International.
The biggest draw, like moths to a flame, is the 'S' word. Unlike Obama, Savant really is a member of the Socialist Alternative Party. She was even born overseas, albeit not in Kenya. The Tea Party, if it still existed other than as a bunch of Koch-paid-for shills, would be tossing ton casks of Indian tea into the Seattle harbor at a hundred barrels an hour for these affronts.
The Kochs and their allies have more to worry about than tea. The threat Sawant portends is not really the 'S' word so much as the number '15.' Sawant has been a leader in the Fight For $15 (per hour minimum wage) campaign in the Seattle area, and now that cause will receive heightened attention across the country and around the world.
From a must-watch Democracy Now interview:
Sawant is an economics teacher and former Occupy Wall Street activist who ran on a campaign to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Fight for $15 fever, which began a little more than a year ago with a few demonstrations and rallies, is now infecting mainstream Democratic office holders and candidates. Very few are willing to "go all the way" to $15 (e.g., Daylin Leach, a Congressional candidate who
posted a diary today, favors
increasing Pennslyvania's minimum wage to $12/hr), but as the fever spreads, the wage hike politicians are willing to support keeps increasing.
The one percent know that quite possibly THE most effective and passable legislation that would effect a transfer of wealth the other way would be a significant increase in the minimum wage.
Of course Sawant brings a challenge to the Democratic party as well. When push has come to shove, The Democratic establishment has almost always ended up backing the fat cats of Wall Street, not the little guy on Main Street, regardless of rhetoric to the contrary and the recent emergence of the "Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party."
"The important thing about running as a socialist is, for one, to show that there is a definite openness for clear alternatives, not only to the big business parties, but the system that they represent, the capitalist system."
Look out.
11:51 AM PT:
11:52 AM PT:
3:08 PM PT:
3:21 PM PT:
4:20 PM PT: Her swearing-in speech is done. Great speech, from what I could tell.
"Capitalism has failed the 99%."
4:25 PM PT: