2014 Seattle City Council Socialist Alternative Inauguration Speech
(as delivered January 6, 2014)
My brothers and sisters,
Thank you for your presence here today.
This city has made glittering fortunes for the super
wealthy and for the major corporations that dominate Seattle’s
landscape. At the same time, the lives of working people, the
unemployed and the poor grow more difficult by the day. The cost of
housing skyrockets, and education and healthcare become inaccessible.
This is not unique to Seattle. Shamefully, in this, the
richest country in human history, fifty million of our people – one in
six – live in poverty. Around the world, billions do not have access to
clean water and basic sanitation and children die every day from
malnutrition.
This is the reality of international capitalism. This is
the product of the gigantic casino of speculation created by the
highway robbers on Wall Street. In this system the market is God, and
everything is sacrificed on the altar of profit. Capitalism has failed
the 99%.
Despite recent talk of economic growth, it has only been a
recovery for the richest 1%, while the rest of us are falling ever
farther behind.
In our country, Democratic and Republican politicians alike
primarily serve the interests of big business. A completely
dysfunctional Congress DOES manage to agree on one thing – regular
increases in their already bloated salaries – yet at the same time
allows the federal minimum wage to stagnate and fall farther and
farther behind inflation. We have the obscene spectacle of the average
corporate CEO getting seven thousand dollars an hour, while the
lowest-paid workers are called presumptuous in their demand for just
fifteen.
To begin to change all of this, we need organized mass
movements of workers and young people, relying on their own independent
strength. That is how we won unions, civil rights and LGBTQ rights.
Again, throughout the length and breadth of this land,
working people are mobilizing for a decent and dignified life for
themselves and their children. Look at the fast food workers movement,
the campaigns of Walmart workers, and the heroic activism to stop the
Keystone XL pipeline!
Right here in SeaTac, we have just witnessed the tremendous
and victorious campaign for fifteen dollars an hour. At the same time,
in Lorain County, Ohio, twenty-four candidates ran, not as Democrats
or Republicans, but as ‘Independent Labor’ and were elected to their
City Councils.
I will do my utmost to represent the disenfranchised and the
excluded, the poor and the oppressed – by fighting for a $15/hour
minimum wage, affordable housing, and taxing the super-rich for a
massive expansion of public transit and education. But my voice will be
heard by those in power only if workers themselves shout their demands
from the rooftops and organize en masse.
My colleagues and I in Socialist Alternative will stand
shoulder to shoulder with all those who want to fight for a better
world. But working people need a new political party, a mass
organization of the working class, run by – and accountable to –
themselves. A party that will struggle and campaign in their interest,
and that will boldly advocate for alternatives to this crisis-ridden
system.
Here in Seattle, political pundits are asking about me: will
she compromise? Can she work with others? Of course, I will meet and
discuss with representatives of the establishment. But when I do, I
will bring the needs and aspirations of working-class people to every
table I sit at, no matter who is seated across from me. And let me make
one thing absolutely clear: There will be no backroom deals with
corporations or their political servants. There will be no rotten
sell-out of the people I represent.
I wear the badge of socialist with honor. To the nearly
hundred thousand who voted for me, and to the hundreds of you who
worked tirelessly on our campaign, I thank you. Let us continue.
The election of a socialist to the Council of a major city in
the heartland of global capitalism has made waves around the world. We
know because we have received messages of support from Europe, Latin
America, Africa and from Asia. Those struggling for change have told us
they have been inspired by our victory.
To all those prepared to resist the agenda of big business –
in Seattle and nationwide – I appeal to you: get organized. Join with
us in building a mass movement for economic and social justice, for
democratic socialist change, whereby the resources of society can be
harnessed, not for the greed of a small minority, but for the benefit
of all people. Solidarity.
Seattle MICROSOFT and DADDY WASH D.C. BIG LIEYER. Global conglomerate has cost the world earth a ton of stupid, when indeed we could have moved the enlightenment reality into high gear, GOOD CHANGE in the City that was only Seattle via a marketing ploy _ Longview _ WA first 'planned' city in USA and was to be the Capitol of Washington making perfect sense the PORT, ah hem not exactly bright bulbs in the thinking stuff, until now and ELIZABETH WARREN, YES POTUS#45!
ReplyDelete