Seattle’s socialist councilmember shares her solutions to Seattle’s problems after narrowly avoiding ouster in December.

After narrowly defeating a widely watched recall attempt in December, Seattle city councilmember Kshama Sawant called the result a progressive victory over big-business influence. 

The victory by the council’s longest-serving and only socialist member presented something of a counter-narrative to the general election, which took place a month earlier and saw city leadership tilt slightly to the right, suggesting a possible new approach to longstanding problems. 

Since then, Sawant has continued legislating from a socialist playbook now very familiar to Seattleites.Over her 8-year tenure, Sawant has helped to increase Seattle’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, secured more protections for renters and was a leading voice in the push for a new tax on business. 

For this episode of the Crosscut Talks podcast, we spoke with the councilmember about how she plans to legislate after the recall attempt, whether the change in city leadership is impacting her approach and what she thinks it will take to address the city’s biggest problems.

This interview was recorded at 10am PST on February 16, 2022.

---

Credits

Host: Mark Baumgarten

Event producers: Jake Newman, Andrea O'Meara

Engineers: Seth Halleran, Resti Bagcal, Viktoria Ralph