Elaine Thompson/AP Photo
Protesters rallied for fair wages in view of downtown Seattle, in April 2015. Seattle became the first major city to adopt a $15 minimum wage, and the Fight for $15 campaign grew, winning $68 billion in raises for 22 million workers.
This year, Seattle’s city elections are a key testing ground for one of the most important questions of our time: Will working people triumph over unbridled capital?
Earlier this month, Amazon dropped $1 million into the Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy, the political-action arm of Seattle’s Chamber of Commerce. Amazon aims to unseat progressive city council members like Kshama Sawant, and prevent pro-worker candidates like Shaun Scott from winning office. In total, Amazon has donated $1.45 million to elect its handpicked candidates this year in the city the mega-corporation calls home.
Seattle’s working people can set the course for decades to come—something they’ve done at critical junctures in the past.
The 1919 General Strike set off a wave of solidarity that united workers across industries to fight Gilded Age plutocrats and set the example for nonviolent strikes and protests to improve workers’ lives.
Eight decades later, as corporate trade pacts threatened our jobs and our environment, the 1999 World Trade Organization protests helped forge alliances between labor, community, and environmental groups that laid the groundwork for holding multinational corporations accountable and stopping the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. That foundation gives hope for a Green New Deal with good union jobs that leaves no one behind in the 21st century.
It was workers in the Seattle suburb of SeaTac—including members of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA from Horizon Air and Alaska Airlines—who refused to listen to the critics and came together to win the first $15 minimum-wage ordinance in the country, in November 2013.
After the victory in SeaTac, the fight moved north to Seattle. Despite opposition from some of the world’s most powerful corporations, Seattle became the first major city to pass a $15 minimum wage—an effort championed by newly elected councilperson Kshama Sawant. From there, it spread to dozens of cities, states, and provinces around North America, and some 22 million workers have won $68 billion in raises as a result of the Fight for $15 movement.
The reinvigorated working people’s movement has continued to grow and win.
More than 30,000 West Virginia educators and school personnel from all 55 counties stood together on the Capitol lawn in Charleston and won major improvements for themselves and their students while launching a “Red for Ed” strike wave across the country. Thousands of hotel workers and grocery workers from New England to San Diego stood shoulder to shoulder—with community standing next to them—to achieve major gains in their pay and benefits.
Around 48,000 autoworkers at General Motors ratified an agreement to end a five-week strike. A key demand in that strike was the end of a two-tiered system that treats a large portion of the workforce as second-class. Employers from Amazon to public universities use these two-tiered systems to shortchange one group of workers despite their doing similar or even identical work—a battle our union is fighting at places like Horizon Air, where flight attendants are paid as much as 45 percent less for the same work their peers at Alaska Airlines perform because it’s classified as “regional.” At the same time, 35,000 Chicago teachers and school staff are on strike fighting another core battle for basic fairness, demanding the city provide librarians, counselors, nurses, and affordable housing for the students they serve.
Everyday people driving these campaigns are pushing against corporate consolidation and exploitation across the board, from real estate to private prisons. As we come together, we’re winning fights for fairness on issues from union contracts and a higher minimum wage to tenants’ rights to criminal justice reform.
As these victories build working-class solidarity and power, our opponents—the corporate elite, the tech giants, Wall Street, the real-estate tycoons—are preparing to use their vast resources to stop our momentum. Big business sees working-class confidence growing, and they are willing to spend big money to stop it.
This November, that effort is at the core of Seattle’s municipal elections.
Last year, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—whose personal wealth grew $87,500 per minute in 2018—bullied the city into repealing a hard-won tax on the city’s largest businesses that would have funded housing and public services. This year, he and his corporate allies are pouring money into an effort to unseat working-class champions like Kshama Sawant and buy the city government.
Over the last eight years, we’ve seen remarkable progress in many parts of the country. As workers have won victories in our workplaces and communities, we’ve dramatically moved the debate about what’s possible. In places like Seattle, the advocates on the outside and reformers inside government have joined forces to create the possibility of transformative change.
On the other hand, if Amazon and its corporate friends win, it will embolden modern-day robber barons everywhere.
What happens in Seattle will reverberate outward. We are in a critical moment, and we must stand together as working people to ensure that our rising movements continue to grow, from the picket line to the voting booth to a fair and just society for our children.
