{"id":1101,"date":"2023-06-27T17:02:43","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T00:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/?page_id=1101"},"modified":"2026-02-03T17:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T01:28:10","slug":"not-yet-the-soviet-of-washington","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/not-yet-the-soviet-of-washington\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Yet &#8216;Soviet&#8217; (2023)"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"1101\" class=\"elementor elementor-1101\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-08a3643 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"08a3643\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-42bb6b5\" data-id=\"42bb6b5\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-2536ea9 elementor-widget elementor-widget-image\" data-id=\"2536ea9\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"image.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"556\" src=\"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screenshot-2023-06-27-at-4.30.47-PM-1024x556.png\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-image-1104\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screenshot-2023-06-27-at-4.30.47-PM-1024x556.png 1024w, https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screenshot-2023-06-27-at-4.30.47-PM-300x163.png 300w, https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screenshot-2023-06-27-at-4.30.47-PM-768x417.png 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-e6f17a8 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"e6f17a8\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>Sawant (center) poses with striking teachers of the Seattle School District. Sawant was always on the side of workers on strike.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-898b9e5 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"898b9e5\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-a2cb3d4\" data-id=\"a2cb3d4\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-2716b0d elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"2716b0d\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p><em>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I think I was the first in the Seattle media to pay attention to Kshama Sawant. In 2012, she was an economics instructor at Seattle Central Community College, an activist in the anti-capitliat &#8220;Occupy&#8221; movement and a first-time candidate for public office. In that year&#8217;s open primary election, she filed to run for the state legislature against Democrat Jamie Pedersen, who represented Seattle&#8217;s left-leaning 43rd District. Against Pedersen, she listed her party preference as &#8220;Socialist Alternative,&#8221; a Trotskyist party. Seattle&#8217;s &#8216;alternate&#8217; weekly, <\/em>The Stranger, <em>thought she was running in the wrong race. The Stranger urged its readers to write in her name against the other representative in the 43rd, Frank Chopp. Sawant came in second in both contests and chose to run against Chopp, who was the speaker of the House. She lost, but she got a respectable 27 percent of the vote. <\/em><\/p><p><em>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The next year, 2013, she ran citywide against incumbent Councilman Richard Conlin, a liberal \u2014 and I wrote about her again. She beat Conlin, and over the next decade was re-elected in her central Seattle district. After a decade in office, in 2023 she announced that she would not run again. I wrote a piece for the Liberty web page partly about her, partly about myself, and partly about the political history and identity of Seattle. The web page posted it February 11, 2023.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-2408187 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"2408187\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-203aeeb\" data-id=\"203aeeb\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-inner-section elementor-element elementor-element-3f2c2ed elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"3f2c2ed\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-50 elementor-inner-column elementor-element elementor-element-7418642\" data-id=\"7418642\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-989729c elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"989729c\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p><span style=\"caret-color: #000000; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Here in Seattle, our Trotskyist city councilwoman,\u00a0<\/span><a style=\"caret-color: #000000; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.seattle.gov\/council\/sawant\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">Kshama Sawant<\/span><\/a><span style=\"caret-color: #000000; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">, announced that she\u00a0<\/span><a style=\"caret-color: #000000; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thestranger.com\/guest-editorial\/2023\/01\/19\/78821484\/why-im-not-running-again-for-city-council\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">will step down<\/span><\/a><span style=\"caret-color: #000000; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0in December 2023. She will have been in office for ten years, having been supported by voters four times.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">Seattle is a capitalist city. Amazon was founded here in the 1990s and now has more than 50,000 employees in the city. Other tech company operations here include Tableau, F5 Networks, SAP Concur, Cray, Meta, Google, Adobe, Zulily, Redfin, Dell, and Getty Images. Starbucks is based here. In the suburbs are the headquarters of Microsoft and Costco Wholesale. Boeing, which was founded here, has most of its commercial airplane operations within 15 miles of the city.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Last year, the median household income in Seattle was $110,800. That\u2019s higher than New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. It\u2019s 57% above the national average. The median house here costs about $800,000. In 2020, the Seattle-Tacoma area was ranked No. 2 among US urban areas, after San Francisco-San Jose, in the ownership of Teslas. There is a Tesla on my block.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Why would such a city vote a Trotskyist into public office?<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She never explicitly ran as a Trotskyist, but she didn\u2019t cover it up, either. Seattle City Council is a nonpartisan position, but right from the start she proudly called herself a member of\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/internationalsocialist.net\/en\/\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">Socialist Alternative<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">. If you looked up the party\u2019s web page, or its entry in Wikipedia, you could see what kind of party it was. But how many people did that? How many people today could define what a Trotskyist is? One in a hundred?<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It was the media\u2019s job to explain it. In Seattle, that would be the job of our TV stations \u2014 but on second thought, forget them \u2014 and our daily newspaper, the\u00a0<i>Seattle Times<\/i>. After I wrote about Sawant for a web page called\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.postalley.org\/\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">Post Alley<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">, I had an email exchange with one of the\u00a0<i>Times<\/i>\u00a0reporters who had written about Sawant for years. Sawant had always called herself a socialist, and that\u2019s what this reporter had called her. He admitted to me that he had heard her called a Trotskyist, but that he really didn\u2019t know what that was.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0You might think: Really? Couldn\u2019t he look it up?<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For many years, I worked for city newspapers, including that one, and I can guess the answer. Newspapers are not interested in the details of ideologies. To them, political ideologies are religions. Noise in people\u2019s heads. The media will cover what religious people do, especially if they are causing trouble, but beyond the most superficial statements, they avoid examining the actual beliefs. You will have heard references to Shia and Sunni Muslims, but have you ever seen on TV, or read in the mainstream press, clear descriptions of what Shias and Sunnis believe? Probably not.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With \u201cTrotskyist,\u201d there is a reluctance even to use the term. Trotskyism is a subset of communism, and in America today, if you call someone a communist who doesn\u2019t welcome that label, you\u2019re engaging in McCarthyism and (to use leftist terminology) red-baiting. You will be accused of these sins even if you are right.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At newspapers \u2014 at least the city dailies I\u2019ve worked for \u2014 the rule is that you can label someone a socialist, a communist, or a Trotskyist, only if that\u2019s how he labels himself. Otherwise, you can\u2019t.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If you\u2019re a writer for a daily newspaper, and, for example, you want to sneak the c-word past your editor, you can drop hints. In a feature story on Kshama Sawant published in the\u00a0<i>Seattle Times<\/i>\u00a0in 2014, the paper&#8217;s political reporter noted that she had two dogs, named \u201cChe\u201d and \u201cRosa.\u201d I saw right away what he was doing; I was interested in ideologies, and knew what Trotskyism was, and I had danced around the same taboo myself. In 1999 I had written a feature story in the\u00a0<i>Seattle Post-Intelligencer<\/i>\u00a0about a woman who led protests against the World Trade Organization. She told me \u201coff the record\u201d that she was a socialist. \u201cI could say that in Canada, but I can\u2019t say it here,\u201d she said. (This was 23 years ago.) My story never called her a socialist, but it included the odd fact that on her wall she had a print of a Diego Rivera mural of industrial workers. That was the hint I sneaked by\u00a0<i>my<\/i>\u00a0editor. Probably it had no more meaning to 97% of readers than the names of Sawant\u2019s dogs. (If you don\u2019t get the joke, google each of the dogs&#8217; names with \u201cAND communist.\u201d)<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I know, I know \u2014 expecting the average reader to pick up hints like this is like expecting them to play Beatles songs backwards and listen for secret messages. Well, sometimes we play games.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0That Kshama Sawant was a Trotskyist was never a secret at city hall. The political people all knew. One of them told me, \u201cI thought\u00a0<i>I<\/i>\u00a0was left, but she\u2019s\u00a0<i>really<\/i>\u00a0left.\u201d But the city hall people in Seattle were all good progressive Democrats, and they weren\u2019t about to red-bait a member of the city council. That wouldn\u2019t be Seattle Nice. (They would treat a right-winger differently, I think, but there haven\u2019t been any of those at city hall since sometime deep in the past century.) And so Sawant stayed and stayed on the council, eventually becoming the longest-serving member.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She was not the only Marxist who ran for office here, but she stood head and shoulders above the rest of them in her political skills. She knew how to define an issue and when to confront an opponent with a pointed question. She cared nothing for the unwritten rules of Seattle Nice. She would pack council meetings with her acolytes to shout down the progressives who were too chicken to go all the way. She got away with this partly because she was on the left, like them, only further out, but mainly because they had more inhibitions than she did. They also had a natural respect for a politician who had won her seat in a public election, as they had.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In city elections, Sawant\u2019s zealots provided a winning \u201cground game\u201d of signs and knocking on doors. In elections, which here are all by mail, her cadres registered voters up to the last day and took their votes on the spot. That\u2019s legal here, though there were dark rumors that many of the new voters weren\u2019t. As far as I know, nothing nefarious was ever proved. In every election, the ballot count would start out with Sawant four, five, or six points behind her bland and hapless opponent, and every time she would squeeze over the line a few days later. Every time, her people seemed to vote at the last minute. In her last election \u2014 a recall attempt, set up by her opponents \u2014 she squeaked by with 50.4% of the vote.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In November 2023, she would have faced a stronger opponent than she had ever had \u2014 an opponent who has already announced \u2014 and almost certainly she would have lost. Instead of facing that opponent, she has decided not to run.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Still, the question persists:\u00a0<i>why<\/i>\u00a0did people in this capitalist city vote for any kind of a socialist again and again? Part of the answer is that they are already on the left. A\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.seattlechamber.com\/clientuploads\/Documents\/Advocacy%20Documents\/22-8681_The_Index_-_Fall_2022_(10-17).pdf\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">2022 survey of Seattle voters<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0found that 7% identify as socialist \u2014 Sawant\u2019s carefully cultivated fanbase \u2014 and 61% identify as Democrats. Seattle Democrats are predominantly Bernie Sanders Democrats (unlike most suburban Democrats). Only 12% of Seattle voters identify as Republicans. The rest are independents.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The left has a long history in Seattle. A radical heritage tends to replicate itself; people learn from parents and teachers. Like-minded people on the outside are attracted and move in. I know of several of those, and also of others who gave up on Seattle\u2019s politics and moved out. In the past 30 years there has been\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/02\/18\/1081295373\/the-big-sort-americans-move-to-areas-political-alignment\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">a political sorting-out<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0all over America, and nowhere more than right here.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Socialism was brought to Washington Territory in the 19th century by the Germans and Scandinavians. In the depression of the 1890s, the new state (admitted in 1889) elected a governor of the People\u2019s Party, a left-wing party that railed against bankers, bondholders, and the gold standard. In 1912, the high point of the Socialist Party in national elections, Washington gave 12% of its votes \u2014\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/1912_United_States_presidential_election\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">twice the national average<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u2014 to quasi-communist Eugene Debs.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In February 1919, three months after the end of World War I, labor unions in Seattle reacted to pay cuts in the shipyards by staging the\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/labhist\/strike\/\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">first and largest general strike<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0in US history. The unions shut down the city for five\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-50 elementor-inner-column elementor-element elementor-element-8395426\" data-id=\"8395426\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-fe8c1b7 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"fe8c1b7\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p><span style=\"color: #222222; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; font-size: 12pt; caret-color: #000000;\">days. For them it was a disaster, and it wasn\u2019t until the New Deal years that they recovered. In the past 65 years, unions have declined in Washington as elsewhere, but at 18% in 2022, union membership in Washington is third highest among the states. (Hawaii and New York are No. 1 and No. 2.) And the center of union strength in Washington is Seattle.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In the 1930s, the \u201cRed Decade,\u201d the Democratic Party\u2019s national chairman, Jim Farley, was quoted as saying, \u201cThere are 47 states of the Union and the Soviet of Washington.\u201d The \u201cSoviet of Washington\u201d was a reference to the Washington Commonwealth Federation, a group inspired by socialist Upton Sinclair, who ran for governor of California as a Democrat in 1934. All through the last half of the 1930s, the Commonwealth Federation sent a band of supporters to the legislature to push state policy to the left.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Within two years of its founding, the Commonwealth Federation was a Communist front. One of its leaders, the pro-Soviet leftist Hugh DeLacy, was elected to the Seattle City Council in 1937. In 1939 he refused to criticize Stalin for his alliance with Hitler, and in 1940 he lost his seat. In 1944, when Stalin had been rehabilitated as &#8220;Uncle Joe,&#8221; DeLacy was elected as a Democrat to Seattle\u2019s seat in Congress. That\u2019s the seat now held by Pramila Jayapal, who heads the Progressive Caucus.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Over the decades, most of the radical left\u2019s gains in the Evergreen State were reversed. The People\u2019s Party of the 1890s died out. The General Strike of 1919 failed. In 1946, with the alliance with Stalin over, Hugh DeLacy lost his Congressional seat to a Republican. The more moderate left made permanent gains. With the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, formerly Republican Washington\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Political_party_strength_in_Washington_(state)\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">became a Democratic state<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">, which it has been, for the most part, during the 90 years since. After 1932, Washington has had only three Republican governors. All were moderates \u2014 what would today be called RINOs. The last of them, John Spellman, left office in 1985. The last time Washington voted for a Republican president was for Ronald Reagan in 1984.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">In 1999,\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/libertyunbound.com\/liberty_issues\/liberty-magazine-february-2000\/\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">the left came back riotously<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0for the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, along with tens of thousands of AFL-CIO protesters. In 2011, there were the\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Occupy_Seattle\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">Occupy<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0protests, and in 2020, the\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/libertyunbound.com\/wanting-isnt-the-same-as-getting\/\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Libertarians have a history here, too, though a lesser one. In 1972, Washington was one of the two states that placed the new Libertarian Party\u2019s presidential ticket, John Hospers and Tonie Nathan, on the ballot. The other state was Colorado. Much of the reason was the ballot access laws, but part was also the relative strength of libertarian ideas in the West. Forty years later, in 2012, Washington and Colorado were the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Another example of relative libertarian strength: in the Republican caucuses of 2008 libertarian Republican Ron Paul had the second-best showing in Washington (22%), after Montana (25%) \u2014 higher than North Dakota (21%), Maine (18%), Alaska (17%) and Minnesota (16%) \u2014 though Paul\u2019s strongholds were the rural areas, not Seattle.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Almost everywhere the left is stronger in cities, and it is the same in Washington. The cities are where civilization makes most of its progress and also where it makes most of its mistakes. Cities are also where the news and opinion media are, and where we interpret our world.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Consider the words the big city media uses for political outliers. The simplest comparison is with \u201cfar right\u201d and \u201cfar left,\u201d both of which put their subjects beyond the pale. In the past year (February 4, 2022\u2013February 4, 2023) the\u00a0<i>Seattle Times<\/i>\u00a0has used \u201cfar-right\u201d almost eight times as often as \u201cfar-left.\u201d It is not a far-left paper; it has never supported Kshama Sawant. The imbalance is standard in American journalism. At the\u00a0<i>New York Times<\/i>, which is a\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.allsides.com\/media-bias\/media-bias-chart\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">center-left<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0but not far-left paper, the ratio of \u201cfar-right\u201d to \u201cfar-left\u201d during the same period is 9 to 1. The\u00a0<i>Washington Post<\/i>, another center-left paper, used the term \u201cfar-left\u201d only four times in that period: a ratio of 38 to 1.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Here\u2019s another marker. Seattle has the United States\u2019 only large\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Statue_of_Lenin_(Seattle)#See_also\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">statue of Vladimir Lenin<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0in a public place. A local businessman rescued it in 1993 from a junkyard in Slovakia, where it was about to be melted down. He brought it to Seattle and installed it in 1995 in the Fremont district, a bohemian outpost that now has the Seattle offices of Adobe.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 It\u2019s not that Seattle people celebrate Lenin. They don\u2019t. (Well, maybe Sawant does.) If they think about the statue at all, it is tongue-in-cheek, a jab either at those oh-so-serious Reds or at the anticommunists who took them so seriously. I appreciate the Lenin statue as the road sign of a failed ideology. The notable thing, though, is that the people of Seattle have allowed it to stand. If it were Robert E. Lee, they would not.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Of course, the Lenin statue is dwarfed by Seattle\u2019s monuments of capitalist success. For half a century, including the time of the General Strike and the Red Decade, Seattle had the tallest office building west of the Mississippi \u2014 the\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithtower.com\/\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">Smith Tower<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">. (You can see it in the first episode of\u00a0<i>The Man in the High Castle<\/i>.) Since 1985 it has had the 76-story\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/columbiacenterseattle.com\/\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">Columbia Center<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">. For the past 60 years, Seattle has also had the\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.spaceneedle.com\/\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">Space Needle<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">, built alongside the city\u2019s 1962 World\u2019s Fair as an unsubsidized private project on private land. Early Seattle had a strong entrepreneurial culture that was revived in modern times by Microsoft founder Bill Gates \u2014 and thousands of people have moved here to work for, and to create, the new companies. Washington has an unusual number of billionaires, partly because of the state\u2019s lack of a personal income tax (though the Democratic legislature has recently passed a capital gains tax.)<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Businesspeople don\u2019t often think in terms of political systems. More often they think of costs. Seattle\u2019s leftist baggage is not a cost they welcome, but it\u2019s one they have been able to bear. Like most people, they have political sentiments. Only a few people in this city have a worked-out political theory, and most of those are not libertarians.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Twenty years ago, I was at one of Jeff Friedman\u2019s seminars at Princeton. Jeff was a libertarian, and the seminar I attended was for libertarians. He admonished us not to think of people on the left as evil. \u201cWe have a theory that highlights certain facts, which causes those facts to jump out at us,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have that theory.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Libertarians have a theory. I imbibed it, as did so many others, from reading Ayn Rand, which I did in junior high back in the 1960s. At the University of Washington, half a century ago, I met a cadre of guys who had been introduced to Ludwig von Mises by a public high school teacher in Bellevue, Washington. We all had our theory, sometimes proudly taking it to strange extremes. I backed away from that much theory when I went to work in mainstream journalism, where my job was to find and tell stories of the world around me, not the ones in my head.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At about age 40, I began writing on the side for\u00a0<i>Liberty<\/i>, much of the time as a critic of \u201cplumb-line\u201d libertarian radicals. Reduced to a slogan, my philosophy could be summed up in a description Louis Rukeyser of PBS-TV\u2019s\u00a0<i>Wall Street Week<\/i>\u00a0once gave me of his philosophy: \u201cI\u2019m for liberty and what works.\u201d To a plumb-liner, I\u2019m a libertarian in name only. A LINO. But compared with an ordinary American, I\u2019m unusually ideological. Like Jeff Friedman, I \u201chave that theory.\u201d Most people don\u2019t have one. Not being interested in theories, they are slow to recognize an exotic species like a Trotskyist when it confronts them in the woods.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If Kshama Sawant ran again for Seattle City Council, her voters would likely throw her out, because she has irritated them too many times with her shrill rhetoric. It\u2019s tempting to squeeze a big message out of this, and declare that after nine years, the people of Seattle finally recognize what a Trotskyist is, and why such a theory strikes at the root of their wellbeing.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Some of them have a sense of it, I think.<\/span><\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\">\u00a0<\/p><p style=\"margin: 0in 0in 6pt; line-height: 16.866667px; font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Calibri Light', sans-serif; caret-color: #000000; color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', serif; color: #222222;\"><em style=\"caret-color: #7a7a7a; color: #7a7a7a; font-family: Roboto, sans-serif; text-align: center;\"><span style=\"caret-color: #000000; color: #000000; font-size: 14pt; font-family: 'Bookman Old Style';\">\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a9 2023 Bruce Ramsey<\/span><\/em><br \/><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sawant (center) poses with striking teachers of the Seattle School District. Sawant was always on the side of workers on strike. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I think I was the first in the Seattle media to pay attention to Kshama Sawant. In 2012, she was an economics instructor at Seattle Central Community College, an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1101","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1101"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1670,"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1101\/revisions\/1670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bruceramsey.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}