On Thursday, April 22, the King County Superior Court finalized ballot language for the recall effort against Councilmember Kshama Sawant, upholding the Recall Campaign’s preferred version of the synopsis which obscures the fact that the allegations against Kshama are simply that…allegations.
What you may not realize is that under Washington State’s recall law, charges do not need to be proven and the accused party is not given any ability to dispute their truthfulness.
Kshama did not break the law. Nonetheless, despite the recall process explicitly saying that courts do not decide on innocence or guilt, the way that the charges will now appear on the ballot makes them appear as statements of fact upheld by a court. This is profoundly undemocratic.
It is no accident that two of the three charges against Councilmember Sawant are for unambiguously standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, with the remaining charge connected to her leadership in the Tax Amazon movement. We should be clear: this attack against Kshama is part of a broader assault on democracy which includes 81 anti-protest laws currently being introduced around the country.
Let’s take a closer look into the three charges.
The charge relating to Kshama’s support for the Tax Amazon movement alleges that she illegally spent public resources on the issue of taxing big business because…Tax Amazon later filed a ballot initiative which ultimately did not even go on the ballot? To borrow a phrase from the dystopian Orwell novel 1984, Councilmember Sawant is being accused of a ‘thoughtcrime’.
This is not only puzzling, but it presents a dangerous precedent – how can working-class elected representatives organize on progressive issues if these issues may sometime in the future result in a ballot initiative?
The second charge relates to the fact that Kshama let protestors into City Hall last summer. Kshama does not deny that she opened the doors of City Hall to community members for a masked, one-hour Black Lives Matter rally in an empty and ventilated City Hall. The rally provided a powerful shot of confidence to the movement, pressuring the Seattle City Council to pass a first-in-the-nation ban on chemical weapons just days later. But the fact that the Supreme Court ruled against Kshama on the basis that this anti-racism rally was “not city business” raises a serious question: if City Hall is not welcome to the people it is supposed to represent, then who exactly is it for?
The third and final charge alleges that Kshama used her official position as a City Councilmember to “lead” a protest march to Mayor Durkan’s private residence. Police accountability activist Katrina Johnson, whose cousin Charleena Lyles was shot 7 times by the Seattle police, rejects this dishonest narrative: “This [charge] is completely false. The rally was organized and led by families, like mine, whose loved ones have been killed at the hands of the Seattle Police department. Kshama was the only City Councilmember to speak at our rally, and she spoke powerfully in solidarity with us since Charleena was killed…”
As undemocratic as this ruling is on its face, what’s equally striking is the sharp contrast between the recall against Kshama and the recall cases recently thrown out by the same Court.
In October, the Washington State Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the grassroots recall of Amazon’s Mayor, Democrat Jenny Durkan, who oversaw the vicious police crackdown against Seattle protesters. Among other dangerous weapons, Seattle police under Mayor Durkan used teargas during a respiratory pandemic, which can increase the spread of the coronavirus and cause long-term harm in individuals with asthma or other respiratory conditions.
The same court also dismissed the recall case against the COVID-denying Sheriff of Thurston County, John Snaza. Snaza refused to require his police officers to wear masks, putting ordinary people in even greater danger than usual at the hands of the police.
This ruling is highly political: it is an attack against Kshama for unambiguously standing with the Black Lives Matter movement and working people. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the courts for justice any more than we can rely on the police.
While Kshama is not in fact guilty of any crimes, there is one thing she does plead guilty of — something she has never attempted to hide. From day one of taking office, Kshama has been unshakably accountable to working people.
From helping to win the first $15 minimum wage of any major U.S. city to taxing Amazon, Kshama has always been clear that as an elected representative, she cannot serve two bosses: she cannot be accountable to both big business and working people. In the view of Seattle’s corporate establishment, there is no greater crime.
To wealthy for-profit real-estate developers and top evicting landlords like recall donor John Stephanus of Epic Asset management, Kshama is guilty of using her seat to win a series of landmark renters’ rights victories, limiting their ability to gouge their tenants. To Amazon, which unleashed a staggering sum of nearly $1.5 million against Kshama and other progressive candidates in 2019, Kshama is guilty of making them pay (a small part of) their fair share through progressive taxes to fund affordable housing and green jobs. And to anti-union, Republican, corporate executives donating to the recall like Frank Shrontz, the former CEO and chairman of Boeing, Kshama is guilty of fighting unambiguously for working people.
Corporate elites donating to the recall already include members of three of the five Washington State families described by Forbes as “billionaire dynasties,” the McCaw, Pigott, and Nordstrom families. After three failed attempts to defeat Kshama in democratic elections (despite unleashing increasingly massive sums of corporate cash), big business and the right-wing want a do-over.
They have a new trick up their sleeves this time: to use this recall to a low-turnout special election that skews wealthier, whiter, and more conservative. The Recall Campaign manager openly admitted that he does not want the recall to appear on the higher-turnout November general election ballot.
The recall campaign will now move forward in their attempt to gather roughly 10,700 valid signatures from residents of Kshama’s District 3. With the recall already demonstrating an eagerness to blur the line between fact and fiction, we can expect them to further ramp up their disinformation campaign.
This Recall Campaign is a dangerous attack on the right to protest, with deep ramifications for working people in Seattle and beyond. We have no choice but to fight back.
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