Welcome everyone. My name is Emily MacArthur. I'm a member of Worker Strike Back and Revolutionary Workers and I'll be your MC this evening or afternoon.

Um, if you've ever been to one of our rallies before, you know that we don't just kind of sit and passively listen to the speakers. There will be some exciting speakers today, but we also want to make them feel like we're all here in solidarity. And so, it's kind of a lot of chance and a lot of energy from the room. So, I'm going to run through a couple of the chants we're going to use today so we're all on the same page before we get started.

Uh, so uh, one that I think is really important um, some of you may have heard uh about a protest that Worker Strike Back members staged at an Adam Smith um town hall. Uh, and it goes a little something like this: Adam Smith, you can't hide. You are funding genocide. So you're going to do that one with me a couple times and then we'll go through uh the next couple ones. So we'll do each one three times.

So, Adam Smith, you can't hide. You are funding genocide.

Adam Smith, you can't hide. You are funding genocide.

All right, we're getting warmed up. Remember, we have out of town visitors and they're not used to the cold, rainy weather. So, we got to make it feel warm in here.

Um, so we've also got, I think, some really important uh uh demands that are the foundation of this fighting campaign. And a lot of the uh the chants are along those lines as well. So, the next one's going to be:

What do we want? Free healthcare.

When do we want it? Now.

What do we want? Free healthcare.

When do we want it? Now.

What do we want? Free healthcare.

When do we want it? Now.

What do we want? Healthcare.

When do we want it? Now.

All right. I'm feeling it. All right.

So, uh, this one's also, I think, a really important one at this moment as we're seeing Donald Trump send, uh, you know, basically, uh, companies of armed men to abduct our neighbors. Um, So this is when:

Immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do?

Stand up. Fight back.

When immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do?

Stand up. Fight back.

When immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do?

Stand up.

When immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do?

Stand up.

Hell yeah, we do.

Uh, and then I've got one more important one I want to run through. Uh, and that's, you know, how many of you pay too much in rent? All right. Pretty pretty big majority of the room. So, this one goes:

Rent control, rent control, make our housing affordable.

All right. Thank you so much. That was a really good warm-up for me to feel everybody's power in the room. So, as I said, welcome. Thank you for coming today for this historic rally to elect independent socialist Shamas Sawant for Congress. You'll get to clap a lot today, so I'm going to keep plowing through these opening remarks, but we are now over two years into the genocide in Gaza. It's a genocide that both Democrats and Republicans have backed with tens of billions of dollars in funding. Shyama's campaign is demanding an end to all military funding for Israel and an end to the brutal occupation of Palestinian lands. Shamba is a proven fighter for working people who has won historic victories like the highest minimum wage in the country, the Amazon tax, and unprecedented renters rights.

Shamba's opponent, Adam Smith, has overseen 28 years in office. Years where he supported the wars in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. He voted to block UN food aid to Gaza. He voted to create ICE. Why is this man still in office? While over half a million people in Gaza are estimated to have been killed, Smith has received nearly half a million dollars from the Zionist lobby to date. Smith voted for the first major attacks on Medicare and Medicaid, over $150 billion under Bill Clinton. Notorious health insurance corporations like Humana and Sigma, who ferociously opposed Medicare for All, have donated to Smith's campaigns time after time. We are here to build an organized, unified movement of working people to systematically take on the ultra-rich who run our society and back Adam Smith to the hilt. Our goal must be to fight both for radical change in the present and to bring down the billionaires and their system. And I'm excited to bring a whole suite of fighters today to speak to you about just that fight.

Our first speaker today is Logan Swan. He's a union iron worker, member of Local 86, and a union longshoreman, member of ILWU Local 19. He was elected on the coordinating committee of the Tax Amazon campaign and faced incredible pressure from his union leadership to stop standing up alongside council member Sawant and fighting to tax big business. And he's here today because he didn't back down.

Yeah, like Emily said, uh, my name is Logan Swan. I'm a rank-and-file iron worker at Local 86 and a member of Worker Strike Back in Portland, Oregon. I'm a casual represented by ILWU Local 19. I was inspired to get involved politically through Chama's first campaign for city council in 2013. Like millions of people, I was sick and tired of seeing Democratic and Republican politicians selling out the working class. Chama was the only political leader fighting for clear, concrete demands uh for working people like a $15 an hour minimum wage. At the time, the city council Democrats not only didn't support $15, but they were actively hostile to it. None of them thought that Chama would win, but she did because thousands of people in Seattle decided that we wanted someone who was going to fight. Shama used the momentum of electoral victory to launch the $15 Now campaign. Within six months, we won the first $15 minimum wage in the country. And in January, that minimum wage is going up to $21.30, which is the highest in the country.

Like our successful Tax Amazon campaign, $15 Now was organized and led by workers and union members like myself through community action conferences where we elected our own leadership. It was through this fighting approach of uncompromising working-class and socialist leadership using clear demands with broad support that challenged the Democratic Party and big business rather than compromise and negotiate with them. And that's the way that we won these groundbreaking victories. We won a $21 minimum wage, hundreds of millions of dollars taxed from big business for affordable housing to create union jobs, historic renters rights, and a lot more. But we're not finished. Conditions for working-class life are taking a beating. Rents continue to rise. Inflation has pushed the cost of fuel, food, necessities to the point that families cannot make ends meet. Healthcare is unaffordable even for many of the insured. Even union contracts, which are supposed to set uh the bar higher, have not kept up. And now the government is shut down after already massive cuts to services and a tearing up of union contracts by the Trump uh administration. And we haven't just seen that federally. We've seen that here in in Democrat-run states like Washington and Oregon. And all of this misery has been brought by both the Democratic and Republican parties, including warmongering Democratic politicians like Chama's opponent, Adam Smith. We've seen Trump's horrific attacks on workers. But who made it possible? Who paved the way for these attacks? Adam Smith voted to create ICE. Adam Smith voted for the Iraq War. Adam Smith voted for tens of billions of dollars to fund the genocide. Adam Smith voted for $150 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Adam Smith called anti-war protesters, basically all of us in this room, quote, "left-wing fascists." Yeah, [expletive] that guy. And he made the same attacks that Trump used to justify sending the National Guard into our cities. Like I said, I'm from, you know, Portland, Oregon. Apparently, it's a total hellhole and it's on fire. That's [expletive] ridiculous. I wish that there were more people up in arms against what we were we've been seeing. Working people aren't stupid. We know we're getting [expletive] by both these parties. There is widespread simmering anger among workers and youth. So, how do we organize that anger? How do we pose a real threat to the political establishment and the capitalist class like we did 10 uh for 10 years here in Seattle? We need leadership and we need an organized fight and we need Chamasant in Congress to do that.

The Democrats would rather have Trump in power than risk an organized movement for political and economic change. And they'll do everything they can to stop us. Tragically, and in my view, criminally, Bernie Sanders and the Squad, you know, AOC and them have only moved closer to the Democratic establishment, operating as their left flank by running cover for the Democratic Party establishment. They've refused to fight against a genocide, for Medicare for All, or for a Green New Deal. Chama won $15 an hour in in Seattle 10 years ago. Where are Sanders and AOC? And it's not just them. The leaders of our unions by and large have sold us out. When Biden broke the rail strike, AOC voted for it and union leadership gushed about what a great deal it was. So why do we have union leaders giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democratic Party and yet they stop their own members from going out on strike? Why are they not calling for strike action right now against these attacks on working people? And why do we have union leaders who will endorse a genocidal politician like Adam Smith over a proven fighter for working people like Shamasan? Unfortunately, the only moves by union leaders away from the Democrats have been to cozy up to Trump. Like when Teamsters' Shawn O'Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention, complimenting Trump's backbone uh and his speaking of Trump being, you know, a tough sob. It could not be more clear the desperate need for an organized rank-and-file movement in organized labor to take back our unions from the cowardly, servile, morally and politically destitute leadership that have [expletive] them. These are our organizations.

A prime example is like the Seattle Carpenters strike where a militant rank-and-file membership challenged their their cash-embezzling, voter-rigging leadership. And Chama sided with working people, with the dissident rank-and-file against the careerists and charlatans, even when when it meant dividing our movement. Our movement cannot afford misleaders and fakers. And it is not enough to quietly stay the course by yourself. Scam artists and frauds need to be exposed. And the test is pass or fail. Do you side with workers or are you a lackey for the bosses? With a decade in office, it's clear whose side Chama is on. It's clear that this is a serious campaign that will use the momentum of a victory to build a fighting movement to end the genocide and end all US military aid to Israel, to stop the deportations and shut down ICE, to win free healthcare for all by taxing the rich, and to win rent control.

More and more people understand that we're all a part of something called the working class and that we're all getting [expletive]. What's missing is confidence that workers have the power and that we can win. We need leaders who are willing to fight and who have a strategy to win, who see that power that the working class holds as a fundamental weapon in our hands to change things rather than a liability, something that needs to be contained and controlled to to hold off till the midterms. We don't have [expletive] time for that. And what Chama and our movement accomplished in Seattle stands in stark contrast to the betrayals of the Democratic Party and the missed opportunities of so many of our movements. We won because our movements were led by Chama and by revolutionary socialists who understood that working people are under attack, that we are in a class war, and that we have to fight for every single victory. Nobody is coming to save us. And we have an opportunity to elect Shyama as the first ever revolutionary socialist to Congress and to bring that fighting leadership to millions of working people nationally. That we have a historic opportunity. And not just that, but a responsibility to show workers and youth who are despairing as they watch our immigrant brothers and sisters being snatched from their homes and their workplaces and thrown into vans, troops deployed to the streets of our cities, women's and workers' rights being rolled back, a genocide live-streamed for years, and climate change spiraling unaddressed, that we can get organized, we can fight back, and we can win. Because when we fight, we win. When we fight, we win. When we fight, we win. Solidarity.

Thank you very much, Logan. I know that I needed to hear that. Um, and yeah, that's just the opening uh salvo for today. My next speaker that I'm proud to introduce today is Tequille Gobana. He's also a working-class fighter. He's an organizer with Teamsters 117 and he worked closely with council member Shama Tawant to win the right for app-based drivers to unionize, including winning reinstatement for workers that Uber had laid off in their union-busting offensive, and winning—I know there are so many "ands" in this sentence because our movement is incredible—and winning the first in the nation minimum wage for app-based drivers. And while that would be enough, Tele also has spoken up against the genocide. He is a resident of Washington's 9th Congressional District and a former SeaTac city council member and a current candidate for the SeaTac City Council. Please give him a warm welcome.

How y'all doing? Oh my gosh. It'll be really hard to speak after Logan, but I'm very excited, guys. Uh, my name is Tel Go, but I'm not a good speaker, but I'm good. Um, I will share with you a little bit how I get to know uh Shamasant from um about 12 years back. Um, first time, first time I saw her. Um, I work at Seatac Airport. Uh, minimum wage $7.25 and I wasn't that much actually, get involved in at the time. I was just watching from the side and uh I saw her she was not elected at the time. I saw her fighting for us uh in Seatac and I saw her getting arrested by saying workers deserve a wage and I look up said, "I want to be like that."

And she led that fight. Um, Seatac was not part of her district at the time because Shamath knows that the fight for workers is not limited by district. It's not limited by cities. She shows up for workers when workers need her. She doesn't show up just by herself. She shows up with a movement with the power to make a change. I'll tell you this. I was also a former Uber/Lyft driver and we were organizing. We're pushing city Seattle council members to pass a law that gave drivers to organize back in 2014. And we had to go talk to Democratic council members to convince them. Can you believe that? When Shamasawan gave us her office and helped us organize, formulate the policy and come to City Hall and fight. That's the leader we need in Congress at this time right now. And she helped us. She helped us Uber/Lyft drivers to lay the fight against corporate, and now in 10 years' fight that she helped that propel, now drivers statewide drivers have a good right, a good benefit. That was a result of Shamasan's fight. And as someone who lived in the 9th Congressional District for 15 years, this moment I've been waiting, we we've been we've been waiting for this moment. I'm really excited, guys. I'm really excited. And I'll add one more thing. Uh, when I was at UDUB, um, I'm trying to get my hands on policies and all of that. And I end up volunteering at uh Congressman Adam Smith's office. And I stayed there for about six months, two quarters. And I will look back right now, that office smells like a like a corporate office. It's a corporate office. You walk in, you see, what you see on the wall doesn't look like any support for workers. It doesn't look like a leader who represents people of District 9. And one thing I still don't forget, six months I worked there, he never said hi to me in that office. It's the real, but I'm not here because he didn't say hi to me. But I need, I'm here now. We, the people of District 9, we need a real leader, a fighter like Shamasant. And with this energy, are you all ready to send Shamasawan to Congress? Are you all ready to send Shamasawan to Congress? Let's do it. Let's do it.

Thank you so much. Well, I'm all the more happy that we were able to give a very warm welcome to Tequle because apparently Palunteer's puppet didn't bother to do so. So yes, thank you so much for coming to speak to us of those important struggles to Cal. Our next uh speaker is another fighter uh who faced enormous slander. I know because I stood next to him when we were in uh Dearborn in Michigan uh this past election cycle. Jason Call was the campaign manager for Jill Stein's anti-genocide independent presidential campaign in 2024. He was, you know, uh, the campaign manager for the only anti-genocide campaign. Let's be clear. Uh, he's an elected political leader in the Green Party, a socialist, and a working-class fighter against the genocide in Gaza and for universal healthcare in the state of Washington and nationwide. Please give him a warm welcome.

Free Palestine.

Packed house. Friends, comrades, uh, I'm honored and humbled to be speaking at this rally today uh for many reasons. As someone who has lived in and around Seattle for almost 45 years, as someone who has run for Congress in a western Washington district, as someone who has managed a left-wing anti-genocide presidential campaign and now manages a left-wing gubernatorial campaign in California, but most importantly, as someone who has had a lifelong commitment to collective liberation and justice for all. Before I get into the why of Shamba's congressional run, let me first dish on the why not of incumbent Adam Smith. And I'll start with the pettiness because does anyone in Congress look more like they have had the soul sucked right out of them than Adam Smith? I can't think of one and he's a mere six years older than me. Quite frankly, he looks like he has one foot in the grave. But to be fair, this is what—say again? Skeletor. Skeletor. I like Skeletor. Hold on. Um, but to be fair, this is what one might expect from 30 years' servitude to the purveyors of mayhem and genocide. It is not hyperbole to say that from the perspective of an anti-war activist or anyone who considers themselves progressive, Adam Smith is the worst Democrat in the Washington state delegation to Congress. When I was a candidate myself researching the second district incumbent Rick Larson, I came across a ranking system from none other than the American Conservative Union, the host of the annual CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee uh conference. They actually had a ranking system for all sitting Congresspersons and I was able to determine that Rick Larson was in the top 15% of sitting Democrats aligning with the ACU conservative positions. There was only one congressperson from Washington state who was worse by that standard and of course that was Adam Smith. And if you know Washington state congressional Democrats, you know how low the bar is. So this is what we're here to fight to replace a congressman who doesn't represent the people, only the elites, those who exploit, those who oppress, those who will murder for a dollar. I don't remember when I first met Shama face to face. It was probably sometime during Bernie Sanders' first run. But I do remember when she first started making waves on the Seattle City Council and when she was a leading voice in organizing for $15 minimum wage in Seattle way back in 2013. And I remember thinking to myself, "This is someone to watch." And my instincts were correct. Imagine someone who represented my values, who organized to get elected to a position of not insubstantial power and consistently and unabashedly used that power to challenge the existing power structure with a unique clarity that always explained the depth of purpose. I live I live almost 40 miles north of Seattle and traffic in Seattle is oh so much worse than it was when I was first a UDub student in 1989. But I was compelled to journey to Seattle many times to join Shama in actions and at rallies during her early tenure on the council because I drew such inspiration from the absolutely unfettered approach to using her office to empower the public. But no memories of being on the periphery of Shamba's influence stay with me more than the protests in the wake of the George Floyd murder. And this is particularly important because, as you probably know, in 2012, the Seattle Police Department was put on probation by the Justice Department for a pattern and history of human rights violations. If you remember when the Seattle Police abandoned the Capitol Hill East precinct in early June 2020, and I'm going to preface this with the word courage. Remember back in the olden days, however far back you want to go, and believe me, this is no glorification of war or conquest. Generals were the ones to lead their troops into battle. My point is that Shamba as a leader and organizer has never directed people to undertake an action that she hasn't been willing to undertake herself. So on June 8th, 2020, Shama and I were gathered at the barricades with hundreds, perhaps thousands of others outside the East Precinct in Capitol Hill. Almost everyone with umbrellas in case we needed to deflect tear gas canisters. And there were so many police, so many police in riot gear, but the crowd was massive. And I don't want to say necessarily that Shama was the first, first, but I can definitely say she was among the first because I literally followed her over the barricade. And when we sat down on the concrete in front of the East Precinct, there were maybe only 20 of us, but the rest were coming in throngs. And you know what happened that day? And that's really my point here is that courage is infectious. Shamba and I made eye contact at that George Floyd protest on June 8th and I saw a fire in her eyes like, "This is a moment we must capture." And I hope my return look was, "If you make the call, I'm with you." And she did, and I went. And the next day, I went back to Seattle to join Shama in a takeover of Seattle City Hall to demand, to demand disgraced corporate-owned police apologist Mayor Jenny Durkin's resignation. We need leaders who act with the courage of their convictions. What we have is two ivory tower parties beholden to the exact same corporate interests, grooming amoral political operatives from the ground up to fall in line with the priorities of the ruling capitalists, up to and including arming, funding, and giving political cover to genocide. And as an aside, you see the paid social media cadre in lockstep with the narrative. Why aren't the left celebrating ceasefire? Well, this morning we got the news that Palestinian journalist Salai Aljafari was killed. There is no ceasefire and seemingly no way to hold Israel accountable. Now, Adam Smith has supported this carnage from day one. And I don't mean just from October 7th. I mean, he has always been in the back pocket of the war machine, having sat on the House Armed Services Committee since his first election to Congress in 1997. From supporting the invasion of Iraq to expanding the surveillance state to supporting the proxy war in Ukraine to disgracefully calling peaceful supporters of a free Palestine, his own constituents, mind you, terrorists. So the choice is clear in this moment. There's no "she's an unqualified political neophyte" charge that can be made here. To the contrary, her experience has shown us time and time again that she is the voice and the action that we need in Congress. On the Butch Ware campaign, and Butch is the candidate who I am uh managing in California for governor, we reference—Thank you. We reference frequently a synthesis of Kwame Ture's words: Revolutionaries don't just mobilize against issues, although they do that. Revolutionaries organize against systems. Let's ensure Shamas Swan's campaign is a focal point of organizing against this irredeemably corrupt political system.

Again, my name is Jason Call. I've been honored to be invited to speak here today. Please volunteer. Please donate. Let's make this happen.

Adam Smith, you can't hide. You are [expletive].

Adam Smith, you can't hide. You are [expletive] genocide.

Thank you so much, Jason. Uh, and I'm glad that you spoke especially, I think, to the importance and the necessity uh of independent uh media on the ground. I think that sets the ground well also for our next speaker uh because I know you know throughout Shama's time in office uh many many conversations I would have to have with ordinary working people would be slanderous, vicious lies that they had picked up just reading the news, trying to stay informed, you know, from KO news, from the Seattle Times, um, you know, that she's a malicious lawbreaker and that when we were occupying City Hall for the righteous cause of getting uh Mayor Jenny Durkin to resign and also to tax Amazon to fund affordable housing for um, you know, uh, Black communities primarily, um, you know, that that was some kind of villainous scheme, as though we weren't picking up trash on our way out, right? It was the most um, you know, calm and well-organized occupation I've ever been part of. But our next speaker, uh, Nick Cruz, is an organizer with the Revolutionary Blackout Network, which is a Black working-class network of activists and citizen journalists focusing on empowering communities through education, organizing, and direct action. And he's here all the way from Kansas City. So give him a warm welcome.

What's popping? What's popping my friends, my family? It's great to be here. First, show me, raise of hands, how many people protested on the streets for a free Palestine and against the genocide that Israel was carrying out against the Palestinian people? Well, I have bad news for you guys. According to Adam Smith, all you guys are fascists. My name is Nick Cruz. I'm the founder of Revolutionary Blackout and I strongly endorse Shamas Aant for Congress because I strongly believe that we need to form an anti-Zionist, pro-working-class movement to challenge the genocidal Democratic Party.

You will never root out Zionism from the Democratic Party. And I will be spending the rest of my life holding these people accountable. I will be spending the rest of my life holding Adam Smith accountable. I will be holding Genocide Joe Biden accountable. I will be holding Kamala Harris accountable. And I will be holding our current president, Donald Trump, accountable because I don't know about you guys, but I'm way beyond just free Palestine. I am for justice for Palestine.

You guys realize law and order relies on resolution and justice. You can't commit a genocide, killing nearly a million Palestinians, call for a ceasefire, wipe your hands, and say you're done here. No, sir. We are not done here. Just a reminder, there's no statute of limitations for genocide. Ladies and gentlemen, I am not a liberal Zionist. The difference between me and a liberal Zionist, you can get a liberal Zionist to agree with you on some things. They can say that Israel is is carrying out war crimes. The Netanyahu government is responsible for war crimes. But ask them what the consequence of that should be and you will watch them turn to Ben-Gvir in real time. I believe we should have a global intifada against our Zionist criminal ruling class.

You guys realize that our ruling class is so gangster that the International Court of Justice found their boy Benjamin Netanyahu guilty of committing genocide and their response was to sanction the International Court? That's some gangster [expletive]. Now it's upon us to be the enemies from within to engage in global intifada against our genocidal ruling class because I believe the Palestinian resistance deserves a break. They've done their part. I think they deserve a nice rest. I think it's our turn to fight against our Zionist-controlled ruling class. We need a global intifada because we are all victims of zofascism.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pretty much unhirable. If RBN doesn't work, man, I'm going to be selling. I'm going be twerking on the on the streets. I don't be screwed. I'm not the only one. I'm not the victim here. I know countless friends and family who've been fired from their jobs. Why? Because they didn't want their taxpayer money going towards a genocide. Ladies and gentlemen, we are all victims of uh zofascism. That's why we need a global intifada against our ruling class and unite right now to form an anti-Zionist working-class movement outside of the two-party system. And don't listen to the naysayers. Don't listen to the Bernie Sanders style, the DSA style, the the old gray-haired leftists who spent their entire life trying to shift the Democratic Party to the left. And after spending decades, a lot of these people trying to run and organize within the Democratic Party, what did they get? Did they get Medicare for All? No. Did we get an increased minimum wage? Did we get paid maternity leave? No. You know what we got? We got a genocide. It's unscientific. We got them exactly where we want them, my friends. Because when you look at the voters who didn't support Kamala Harris, who voted for Joe Biden, you know, a large amount of them refused to vote for Kamala Harris because she was supportive of a genocide. When have we ever seen the American people making voting decisions based on foreign policy? That is how much the American people are done with this Zionist presence in our country. It's it's wild to see because if you look at even the evangelical community, when you look at MAGA, when you look at many of them, even they are growing fatigued with the Zionist regime and they're occupying our politics. Many of them realize they voted for a man who is not putting America first. They are realizing they're voting for a man who made his number one priority protecting pedophiles. They realize that they are supporting a man who is doing nothing to actually help the working class in this country. What has Donald Trump built? What have Donald Trump done for the working class? You want to know what Donald Trump is currently doing? He is giving a billion dollar, $20 billion bailout to Javier Mele, the libertarian tech bro. Isn't it interesting the libertarian capitalist, they always give a bailout, but they don't give a bailout for the American working class. So, we have members of MAGA who are starting to realize this. They're realizing that the [expletive] fouls are not coming. They're realizing their boy is putting America last. And we have this unique opportunity ahead of us as liberals were freaking out after Donald Trump won, "Oh my god, the end of our democracy." We said, "Let's get to work." Because we understand that this pendulum will always swing between the left and the right, Democrat and Republican. They exist to disappoint the American people. So as the pendulum swings to the left, to the right, we don't engage in nihilism like you see from many Democrats and many liberals who believe that the sky was falling and our democracy was ending. What we was doing, what our plan is, as Donald Trump inevitably disappoints the American people, we will be there to grab them and lead them towards revolution.

So, so we're not going to engage in nihilism. It's time for us to get to work. And we got one hell of a fighter to get to work for. We have Shama Swan, who has delivered victories for the working class. This is this is what she's born to do. She's here to challenge genocidal Adam Smith. And not all of us can be in a position where we can run and challenge for office. We all need to find the role that we have that we can put forth for this movement. I'm a Kansas City [expletive] talker and somehow I've been put in this position where I can educate people. That's the role I have. If you are good at making and baking pies, if you're good at sewing shirts, that's exactly what we need you to do in the movement. We need everyone to get activated. We need a a third-party movement that is built on mutual aid, organizing, and community. We must reject liberal cancel culture and talk to our neighbors and ask them what we can do for them. Do you guys know the billionaire class? They increased their wealth to $52 trillion this year. I think we should do more than that. You guys know that the billionaire class, they gained $2 trillion just last year alone. The reason why they make these gains is that they're not distracted by irrelevant culture wars or other party distractions. They're engaged in non-stop class war and it's time for the working class to get their head in the game and do the same. And that's why we should support Shamba San. Thank you guys.

Thank you very much to Nick and I think really underscoring how national and frankly international this fight is. Um, and I think that lays uh the basis for our next speaker. Uh, many of you may have heard of him. Uh, Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Uh, a former war reporter who has taken a clear position against the two parties of big business and for a new party for working people, which I think has been a key tenant of our conversation here today. He was one of the rare national voices to lend his support to Shama when she ran for city council in 2013 as an independent socialist. He's a socialist and an unflinching voice against the genocide in Gaza and brutal occupation of Palestinian lands. He could not be here in person today unfortunately, but he sent us a pre-recorded speech.

Hi, I'm Chris Hedges. I would love to join you under normal circumstances, I would uh at this campaign event. I'm a huge supporter and have been for a long time, an admirer of Shama Sawat. Uh, I unfortunately have been in the Middle East this last spring uh interviewing Palestinians who are in Egypt uh who have uh left Gaza uh to write a book with a cartoonist Joako about the genocide. It will be called Requiem for Gaza and the manuscript's due in December, which is a very tight time frame for a book. Um, so I've become very reclusive. However, I wanted to uh at least through a video uh tell you how important this campaign is and uh why confronting figures like Adam Smith, who like most of the Democratic Party is a tool of the Israel lobby and the defense industry uh is important. It chips away at the power uh and the credibility uh of the Democratic Party. Uh, it's helpful for me to think about the uh two ruling parties uh not as separate parties but as two different aspects of the capitalist system, neither of which is good for us. The Democratic Party primarily represents corporatists, while the Republican Party primarily represents oligarchs. And corporatists want different things out of capitalism as opposed to oligarchs. Corporatists want stability. They want trade deals. They make investments, usually building sweatshops overseas in Monterey, Mexico, or China, or Vietnam, or Bangladesh, a huge textile industry in Bangladesh. Um, and wait for a return on investment. They uh of course were the driving force behind uh the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. Um, oligarchs, uh, they it's a pure form of rentier capitalism where they set up in essence toll booths between you and between them and and you, between and they and they target services that they know you need. That's the privatization of the healthcare. I mean, one of the reasons the Democrats have so little traction in defending Obamacare is that it's just a for-profit bonanza for the pharmaceutical and insurance uh companies, which we have been forced in essence to buy their defective product. Um, so that oligarchs, private equity firms, what they do is they go into cities, they buy up the sewer system, the electrical system, uh, the parking authority, uh, and then jack up the prices. They're of course trying to privatize the post office, and you can look at the UK to see what a disaster that is because it's not about providing service. It's about uh extracting as much as they can from us. Um, and of course the oligarchs won. Um, but neither of these systems uh will do the kinds of things that will ameliorate the suffering of the working class and the working poor in this country. Uh, of course, you're seeing the oligarchs strip uh what few social uh programs there are. Head Start, you know, slashing uh Medicaid. Um, uh, but the Democrats uh and and the cap the corporate capitalists are no better. They uh despite when Biden ran initially his promise to raise the minimum wage, he never did. Um, they are no friend of unions. You saw it with the railroad freight workers' attempt to, and these people are working under horrible conditions, skeletal crews, very dangerous. And then of course, Biden blocked their ability to strike. Most of the successful strikes in recent years have been wildcat strikes like the uh the uh teachers' strike in uh I think it was West Virginia, which defied the union leadership. And Shama, as of course, has dealt with this extensively on the West Coast. Um, so, uh, we have to begin in every way possible to strike back against this system, which uh has essentially been captive by corporate and oligarchic power. We've kind of undergone a corporate coup d'état in slow motion. It's over. Um, we have to rebuild the only mechanism that we have uh to fight back, to protect ourselves. That's militant labor unions and militant political parties, which of course Shamba uh stands for. Of course, she understands organizing. Um, she she was one person on the city council, but uh because she had an organized base, she was able to drive through all sorts of incredible, important reforms. And of course, Amazon spent millions of dollars trying to destroy her. Um, so, uh, this race, I think, is a kind of template, uh, for taking down the mandarins in the Democratic Party, these repugnant figures like Smith, and elevating people who speak our language like Shyama and fight for the causes we care about. Of course, if Shama, and I hope she does, gets to Congress, um, uh, it's going to be a very lonely and difficult position. She's not going to have many friends, uh, including the quote-unquote progressive Democrats who've sold us all out. Um, uh, so I think that any political revolution is achieved slowly. But I think this is what's happening in this campaign. It it's why uh electing Shama to Congress is so vitally important. And uh and then once we have that position, using an organized base uh to begin to put pressure on those forces that are destroying our liberty, uh, our economic security, and rapidly installing a fascistic state, uh, uh, with ICE goons. I mean, these are just the the Trump administration's version of the brown shirts, uh, the building of huge concentration camps, let's not call them detention centers, uh, the shutting down of any kind of uh free speech uh on the media. We just had Barry Weiss, this arch-Zionist, appointed to head the news division of CBS. The complete evisceration of civil liberties. Don't be fooled by Trump going after the Democrats. He's not going after the Democrats because they represent our interests. He's going after the Democrats uh because they are his rivals for power. But the Democrats are as culpable in the creation of this oligarchic system where a tiny percentage of billionaires control uh massive sums of wealth and the rest of us don't have uh enough money, you know, to cover a $600 emergency. Um, so this campaign is vitally, vitally important. Um, I've known Shama for many years. Uh, I have unbounded, uh, respect for her and the work that she's done. Uh, I know how committed she is. I know her integrity, uh, and her brilliance. And, uh, she's kind of the spearhead for, uh, what we have to do, which is overthrow the system. Thank you.

When immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do?

Stand up.

Hell yeah, we do. So, I'm really starting to feel the breadth and the width of this coalition that we're building, this organized movement that is so urgently needed in this country. Uh, and I think, yeah, just each each speaker is sort of highlighting just the multi-dynamism of this movement for me today. Uh, how about you guys?

So our next speakers, uh, Katon Weiss and Russell Dilar, are co-hosts of the Dissident Podcast, um, an outright anti-genocide news broadcast. They too, Yeah, thank you. have been consistent critics of the two parties and of the billionaire class and advocates for independent fighting movements for working people like Worker Strike Back. Katon and Russell live clear across the country in New York and they sent us a video as well to really shore up the national support that this campaign has.

Hi everybody, Katon here from Dissident and this is Russell Dolular from Due Dissident. We decided to record this joint endorsement video rather than each try our best uh imitation Chris Hedges speech because we know he's going to outshine us there if we try to write anything too good anyway.

Yeah, I decided not to do the timu Chris Hedges thing this time. Well, I actually prepared a Tim Chris Hedges speech if you want to hear it. It's very short. Very short. It's It goes like this. It goes, "We're all going to die, but in case we don't, vote for Shamas Sawan." That's my That's my imitation Chris Hedges speech. That's my inferior version of a Chris Hedges speech. What do you think, everybody?

Uh, that that was pretty good. I I went easier. I quoted a passage from Hannah Arendt. That was as far as I got.

Oh, there you go. I couldn't think of couldn't think of the original material, right? I just went as far as that.

All right. Well, hey, uh, we're doing I was just starting to crack Tacitus. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Well, we're doing the best we can. It's a great honor to be included in this event. You know, Barack Obama put out this video yesterday uh talking about how the Obama Foundation is going to start combating authoritarianism around the world because it's this—Oh, wow. Growing problem. And uh, you know, the first thing I thought of, as we've mentioned a lot on the show, is that had Barack Obama uh directed his Justice Department to go after the bankers who caused the Great Recession instead of going after uh homeowners who lied on their mortgages, uh, that would have gone a long way to staving off this moment. Um, and so it's kind of rich that he is now making it his cause to combat authoritarianism uh around the world because what we're seeing in this moment is that authoritarianism, and I'm using authoritarianism and not fascism because they don't like being called fascists and you know, I'm trying to be nice. I'm trying to be nice. Yeah. You know, we're trying to persuade the fascists. Exactly. We're trying to we're we're practicing uh good politics, right? This is a campaign event after all. What it's called loving kindness. Yeah. It's all about reaching across the aisle here. That's what that's what we're all about here at the Dissident Podcast. Um, but uh, it really shows that this kind of moment results from a failure of liberalism, uh, from a failure of business as usual. Um, and that's one of the reasons I think that Shama's campaign is so important because she's running against uh not an incumbent Republican but an incumbent Democrat. And it is the repeated failure of the Democratic Party that has landed us in this moment. And this is true all around the world, um, all around the world where you're seeing the rise of these sort of right-wing nationalist governments. This is a result uh of people coming to an understanding that the promise that uh market capitalism plus liberal democracy equals, you know, uh broad-based prosperity is a lie. Is a lie. And when the left is not organized to intercept people at that moment of realization, what happens? You get right-wing populist movements. Don't you think it's funny that Joe Biden couldn't figure out how to relieve student debt for four years? Just couldn't figure out how to do it. Kept getting stymied in the courts. Trump comes in. He says, "Here, you want student debt relief? Join ICE." Boom. $10,000 a year up to six years. He relieves student debt. That's a perfect example of how when liberalism fails, the authoritarians come in and they co-opt uh any kind of working-class energy. And so that's why was one of many reasons obviously I've been a huge fan of Shamas for a long time, uh, why I think this campaign is so important and why we're proud to lend what support we can uh to this event and the campaign moving forward.

Across the world, there's been an epidemic of people noticing. Yeah. Right.

We're going to fund institutions that are going to stop them from noticing. Uh, yeah, call it the great unawwakening. We don't need you awake. We need you sleeping, watching TV, drinking corn syrup. Don't listen to that RFK guy. Subscribe to Netflix. Got some great programming coming up this year. Great program. Me and Michelle are working on some stuff. We're calling the unnoticing.

[Laughter]

Uh, yeah, we have been supporters of Shamas for a long time. Uh, because to build on what Katon was saying, people turn to authoritarianism because democracy is not working for them. And democracy is not working because it's been completely subverted by anti-democratic forces, which in our society means the forces of capital. And it is very much playing out the way that Marx predicted it would play out in late-stage capitalism, where at the end, the capitalists, with nothing left to loot, would loot the treasury, would take over completely the institutions of the society. When you see someone like Larry Ellison taking over half the media and his cohorts dividing up the rest between them. How do you make the case for democracy to people? Is that really what democracy looks like? What is their vote getting them? That makes them very susceptible to any, uh, anything they hear that offers them the prospect of a better life, because democracy is not doing it for them.

Now, of course, these oligarchs can't indict capitalism. So they use their enormous influence over media, uh, over politicians to brainwash working people, who really need the kinds of programs that socialists offer, that Shyama offers, that Worker Strike Back offers, and convince them that capitalism works fine, but it's been subverted by leftist Marxist forces. Is and if we get rid of them, it's going to be 1955 in the suburbs for you and yours. And you have to offer them an alternative vision to that. We, we saw when Bernie Sanders, uh, went up in front of a Fox News audience, they're all cheering for Medicare for all. Like, it's not hard to break through that propaganda, but you have to be in the game. You have to be out there. You have to be putting out that message. If you sit down and you talk these things through with working people in a way that's open and not just contemptuous, not just writing them off the way the Democratic Party does, uh, the way we saw recently with, uh, what's her name running for governor of California? Katie Porter. Porter. Uh, no. Well, I don't, I don't need those people. That, that, that's really the most interesting part of that interview because they feel like they don't need to talk to these people. You do need to talk to these people, but you need to have something more to offer them than, uh, screaming about culture war issues. Once you do that, you're playing to the other side's strengths. You're, you're playing right. They love if you just go back and forth about culture wars. Economics, economics, economics. That's one of the great things about Shamba. That's one of the great things about workers strike back. Right there in the name, workers. Workers strike back. That's where the focus has to be. And that's why, uh, we support Shamba and we've always been proud to support Shamba. Thanks everybody. Have a great event and a great campaign. We'll be with you every step of the way.

I want to do with you all is: What do we want? Free healthcare. How do we get it? Tax the rich. So, what do we want? How do we get it? Tax. What do we want? How do we get it? What do we want? How do we get it? Thank you.

So, our next speaker, she stands in an important tradition of, uh, radical people in the faith. Um, you know, many years, uh, in Shamba's office, we worked with Baptist church, with, uh, you know, Jewish congregations, with mosques. Uh, and today, I'm very proud to welcome, uh, Reverend Adena Meyer. She's a pastor at Seattle's Keystone Congregational United Church of Christ, an open and affirming justice-centered community dedicated to collective liberation. She taught humanities at the Northwest School for almost three decades before going back to seminary. Reverend Meyer has been one of Seattle's most prominent faith leaders, speaking out clearly against the genocide. Please give her a warm welcome.

[Applause]

Let me just lower this because I'm short. Good afternoon, everybody. Free, free Palestine. Free, free Palestine. Free, free Palestine. Free, free Palestine.

[Applause]

I first heard the name Shamas Swant in 2012 when I was working as a humanities teacher at the Northwest School in Seattle. I was teaching 12th grade civics and government. And one of the assignments for students was that they had to work for at least 40 hours on a political campaign. Several of my students ended up joining Shamas's campaign for Seattle City Council in 2013 and helping her to her historic victory as a socialist alternative candidate at that time for Seattle City Council. I look back fondly on my own time as a high school senior back in 1980 when I chose to volunteer for Gus Hall and Angela Davis. Woohoo. Those were the days.

Shamas's victory was incredibly inspiring to the young people that I was teaching because they were learning from me and my team of humanities teachers the history, the real history of the United States government, a history of genocide, slavery, and white supremacy. Shamba's principles heralded something new and different. An inclusivity that spanned not just the United States but the world. A struggle for truly collective liberation.

Over the years, I followed the work that Shama has done as an advocate for all people. Her work to raise the minimum wage to a historic high. Her courageous work during the 2020 summer protests, in which she invited the people into City Hall in a symbolic gesture of solidarity and empowerment. It's an honor for me to have been asked to say a few words here as a teacher and a Christian pastor. And yet, some people in my life have questioned my support for Shama and called her controversial. So, for these few minutes, I want to tell you why I believe Shama's values are not and should not be called controversial. I would call them basic humanitarian values: truth, integrity, inclusivity, and courage. A passionate spirit that cares for the people, my spiritual tradition and many spiritual traditions call the least of these.

One of the things that impresses me most about Shamba's work is that she tells it like it is, truth. She calls politicians out for their hypocritical actions when they claim to be the party of the people. They claim to support democratic ideals but spend their time working with corporate lobbyists, organizations like Apac, taking corporate donations which compromise their ability to truly work for the interest of the vast majority of people in this country who do not have that kind of economic power.

I find it particularly distasteful when my friends have told me that I can't possibly vote for a third-party candidate because it will give power to the evil Republicans. I heard this throughout the presidential campaign and I hear it now. Does that really matter to our siblings in Gaza? The Christofascist authoritarian party that's in power now, or the capitalist complacent complicit group that supported the apartheid state when they were in power. I've seen most of our Democratic members of Congress unwilling to block the sale of weapons to Israel, a proxy state of the United States that is committing a genocide, ceasefire or no ceasefire, against the Palestinian people. No matter what happens, Senator Maria Canwell continues to vote to supply weapons to Israel. And Patty Murray. Patty Murray only recently added her support to the Block the Bombs bill. Too little, too late.

Whenever the focus turns to personal attacks on President Trump, I think to myself, he's not the cause of the current state of affairs in the United States. He's a result. He's a result of hundreds of years of racism, of patriarchy, white supremacy, militarism, and capitalism. A system that puts, simply put, economic growth as the highest value. Economic growth as the highest value above the safety of our immigrant, our trans and queer siblings. God bless you.

[Applause]

Above economic justice for all, above the health of the planet. Systems of oppression that rely on fear and division to maintain power and privilege for a tiny minority and want us to forget that the only true liberation is liberation for all.

[Laughter]

[Applause]

We need to be clear about our priorities in the struggle. End the genocide and the apartheid state in Palestine. The ceasefire deal does not promise to end the criminal apartheid state of Israel. Put an end to ICE. Stop the deportations. The criminal abuse of anyone who speaks out against this regime. Put an end to the vast economic inequality in this country. It's not a radical, controversial demand to ask for healthcare for all. It's a basic human right. It's not a radical demand to ask for affordable housing. It's shameful to have even one human being living outside when there's an abundance of housing available. It shouldn't be controversial. It shouldn't be controversial to ask for people to be treated with basic decency and kindness. To ask for people to be able to live in peace and safety. To imagine a government that is truly the work of the people, connected to each other in compassionate, loving community beyond fear and division. A community that spans the entire world.

[Applause]

The founder of Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, said that authoritarian governments are the only government that can exist in late-stage capitalism. And so, it's natural that we're seeing that now. Of course, we are. There's nothing surprising about what's happening right now. So, I ask you to stand with me as people of faith, as people of little faith, as people of no faith, have faith in each other and in the people. Thank you.

When immigrant rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up. When trans rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up. When union rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up.

Thank you so much, uh, Pastor Andina Meyer. Um, so, you know, I think one of the things that I hear the most about how Sham is controversial is that she's not afraid to name the enemy. And in every fight, there's someone on the other side, right? Logan pointed to this in his earlier speech, that, um, you know, it's pass/fail. You're either on the side of workers or you're on the side of the bosses. Um, and, you know, that was true when she ran in 2013 against Richard Conlin, uh, who she named and she spoke to his record, right? She said he voted to deny paid sick leave, uh, to workers. And everyone who we spoke to in this district knew his record, right? We don't just let people hide behind closed doors or behind a fancy title or their $120,000 salary. We name and we shame them. Um, and, you know, we've, we've mentioned, uh, Adam Smith a couple times today. Uh, we thought that before we hear from Shaman today, that it would be nice if we let Adam speak just briefly about himself. Um, so welcome Adam Smith, uh, in a short video.

Look, it says something about politics in general. Um, we can't just have civil conversations anymore. Have civil conversations anymore. Civil conversations have civil conversations anymore. As over half a million Palestinians get slaughtered in the genocide in Gaza, a genocide bankrolled by both Democratic and Republican party politicians. Here you see Democratic Party politicians like my opponent, Adam Smith, lamenting the lack of quote unquote civil discourse. Can't just have civil conversations anymore. Adam Smith has been an arch warmonger for the Democratic Party, and he has voted for tens of billions of dollars for the genocide in Gaza. Last year, as tens of thousands of working and young people protested the genocide in Gaza, Adam Smith called them left-wing fascists and demanded that they be arrested. To answer your question, no. Protesters should not be allowed to occupy a public space and then block other people who come in. And when Worker Strike Back activists peacefully protested outside Adam Smith's town hall, the police arrested them on charges of trespassing. And where did these arrests occur? At a public town hall on a public college campus. They were on property without permission. Across the nation, tens of thousands of anti-war protesters have disrupted Democratic and Republican party congressional town halls. I mean, public servants shouldn't have to put up with that. Is completely anti-democracy. Uh, and it's a real threat to our country. Many of these protesters have been thrown out or even arrested. This is alongside all the many students and faculty at multiple university campuses like Columbia and CUNY who have been arrested or fired or face suspensions and expulsions, like the fired four faculty at CUNY. Adam Smith feels free to slander Worker Strike Back activists, falsely claiming that they shout aided staff members and physically push them. I mean, like I said, I wasn't there. I don't know exactly what, what was exchanged. The crackdown on the protest movement last year under Democratic President Biden was the worst such crackdown since the 1960s. Working people in the anti-war movement need to completely reject this civility politics, respectability politics. We need nonviolent civil disobedience to be ramped up. We need mass strike action across the nation. That is why I am running as an independent anti-war pro-worker socialist against Democrat Adam Smith. I am calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, an end to all US military funding to the Israeli state, an end to the brutal occupation of Palestinian land. I am calling for free healthcare for all funded by taxing the rich and for national rent control. Reject civility politics, embrace militant movement building.

[Applause]

So now that we have a clear sense of who the enemy is, our next speaker spent 10 years as the lone socialist on the Seattle City Council, fighting tooth and nail for working people. Instead of getting elected, selling out working people, and building a nice career for herself, like many we've already seen, like AOC and those other progressive Democrats did, she went to war against the political establishment and built movements to win unparalleled working-class victories. And we did that by bringing working-class people into City Hall time and time again, making hearings in the evenings so working-class people could come because we believe working people should be occupying public spaces. She is the only elected representative I know or have heard of in the history of this country who only took an average worker's wage and donated the rest of her salary to social and labor movements.

[Applause]

And she's challenging Adam Smith, Apac's go-to bagman and one of the key architects of ICE. Please give a warm welcome to Shamama Saw, the working-class fighter we need in Congress.

[Applause]

In the two years since the genocide began, over half a million Palestinian people have lost their lives. Lives in Gaza. According to scientific estimates from the British medical journal, The Lancet, the ceasefire announcement and any pause in the killing, although we know it's not a real pause, uh, or at least a full pause, but any pause in the killing is a desperately needed relief for the Palestinian people. Every life that can be saved must be saved. And every injury or loss of limb that can be prevented must be prevented.

[Applause]

Credit goes to the Palestinian people themselves, not to Donald Trump or the Democrats and Republicans. It goes to the Palestinian people themselves and the international anti-war movement, including the Italian working class who carried out a general strike.

[Applause]

But every time there was a ceasefire deal in the past years, Israel took Gaza back to what writer Muhammad Shahada has described as the slow, latent, invisible violence of starvation and engaging people in a permanent state of non-life. We demand a permanent ceasefire and end to the genocide. We demand a permanent end to all US military funding to the Israeli state.

[Applause]

We demand a permanent end to the apartheid and the occupation of Palestinian lands.

[Applause]

Despite the ceasefire, the flow of US-sponsored weapons to Israel is continuing uninterrupted. Now is not the time to slow down or pause the anti-war movement. Now is the time to escalate.

[Applause]

We need a global, an mass uprising against this genocide and the violent capitalist system on a working-class basis.

[Applause]

We have to ask some sobering questions. 60% of Americans oppose Israel's genocide in Gaza. Yet, why has the supply of arms to Israel continued? A second sobering question. Nearly 60% of Americans support universal healthcare. The vast majority of Americans want rent control. Poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans support taxing the rich. 67% support a billionaire tax. Yet, why do America's working people have none of those things? A third sobering question. Trump is less popular than ever, yet the Democratic Party has the lowest approval ratings in 35 years. The Republican Party has only 38% approval, but the Democratic Party manages to have an even lower approval rating of 30%. Chuck Schumer, the most powerful Democratic politician in the nation, has an approval rating almost 20 points below Trump's. Why? The full. Yes. That's the short answer. He sucks. The full story here is that most Americans are angry at both the Democratic and Republican parties. Which brings me to my fourth sobering question. Over 60% of Americans want want a new party and they reject another billionaire-backed party, which in other words, Americans are saying, we want a new working-class party. Then why don't we have one? Despite both Democratic and Republican parties being deeply hated, over 90% of the politicians sit in Congress for decades. How do these politicians keep getting elected over and over, even though most people really just hate them? The answer to all of these questions lies. I didn't, I didn't intend to be comedic, but the, it, there is, you know, it is, it's so the situation is so ludicrous. The answer to all these questions lies in the fact that for decades there has been no working-class left alternative to the two parties of the billionaires.

[Applause]

And in the absence of any independent working-class party or even independent working-class candidates who use their election campaigns and their elected offices to fight these two parties, keep carrying out their genocidal anti-worker bipartisan agenda. Democratic and Republican politicians in the US Congress have continuously bankrolled Israel to carry out the genocide. First under President Biden, who presided over the genocide for 15 months, and then under President Trump. My opponent, Adam Smith, is one of the Democrats who has voted to send tens of billions of dollars to Israel for the genocide. Smith also repeatedly voted to block United Nations food aid to Gaza, despite reports of catastrophic mass starvation. And as you've heard, he called anti-war protesters left-wing fascists and demanded their arrest. Adam Smith has the blood of half a million Palestinians on his hands. He needs to be on trial for war crimes.

[Applause]

The bare minimum price Adam Smith needs to pay is to be thrown out of office.

[Applause]

Adam Smith has been in office for 28 years. Throughout that time, he has consistently voted for billions of dollars for Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign. No wonder that Smith is a darling of Apac and the Zionist lobby. No wonder that Apac was his biggest fund last year. Smith has voted for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. He supported the wars in Kosovo, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and the current bloody interimperialist proxy war in Ukraine. He has the blood of literally millions of people on his hands. So no wonder that for nearly three decades, Smith has been bankrolled by weapons industry profiteers such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Rathon, or RTX, Northre Drummond, Palunteer, General Atomics, and Kimed. Smith helped create the deportation machine that Trump is now using. Smith voted to create ICE and then he voted again and again to fund ICE. Smith has already received the maximum donation for his campaign, you know, for the election next year, from Alexander Karp. Do you know this guy who is? He's the CEO of Palunteer. The Asian Times described Alexander Karp as the guy who is building the operating system for perpetual war. In 2008, Smith voted in favor of Bush's shameful bailout of big banks while tens of millions of ordinary people were left to rot in the wake of the Great Recession. In 1997, Smith voted for a savage $150 billion slashing of Medicare and Medicaid funding. Adam Smith claims that he is fighting against Donald Trump. But as you can clearly see, that is exactly what he has not done. Adam Smith has been among those most responsible for the rightward lurch by the Democratic Party, paving the way for Trump to come to power. Putting our faith in the Democratic Party is exactly the wrong strategy if we want to defeat the right-wing and the billionaire class.

[Applause]

Yet progressive Democrats like AOC and Bernie Sanders and now Zoran Mandani are doing their best to keep the Democratic Party on life support. Both AOC and Sanders have been using their fight oligarchy tour to cynically tap into the frustrations of millions and channel them back to the Democratic Party for the 2026 midterm elections. Mamani has said he is fighting for the soul of the Democratic Party. Are you [ __ ] serious? This is an anti-worker party of the billionaires that has now also become a party of genocide. This party has no soul.

[Applause]

Giving cover to this party is a betrayal of working people. And why has AOC abandoned working people and refused to fight for any of the demands she first campaigned on? Because doing so would put her in direct conflict with the Democratic Party leadership and the billionaire class, and it would cause, in her own words, relational harm with powerful Democrats and the billionaire class. In other words, it would be bad for her career. You can see that instinct with Mandani also. He has not even been elected yet, but he's already bending to the pressures. I strongly support the working-class demands he is running on. But New York City's working people will not be able to win those demands on the basis of Mamani trying to woo the billionaire class and their political servants.

[Applause]

All, all these elected officials from the Democratic Socialists of America, they want us to believe that bending to the pressure from and making peace with the Democratic Party and Wall Street is some sort of clever game of 4D chess. It is only clever from the point of view of putting your own career ahead of the interests of working people while, uh, selling them out. One of the, one of the crucial lessons from the 10 years of my socialist city council office is that working people's representatives must go on the offensive and use our office to build movements of working people around concrete demands.

[Applause]

That is why I am using my election campaign, our election campaign, to build a militant movement for free healthcare for all, funded by taxing the rich.

[Applause]

For national rent control and a massive expansion of publicly owned affordable housing.

[Music]

And for a $25 an hour federal minimum wage, which should at least be $30 an hour in major cities.

[Applause]

It was through a militant fighting strategy that we won the nation's highest minimum wage in Seattle, which is going up to $21.30 an hour in January of next year.

[Music]

It was the first big city minimum wage victory and it spread across the nation. From here, literally tens of millions of workers nationally have got a historic wage increase because of the movement we led here.

[Applause]

Compare that to how AOC and Bernie Sanders abandoned the fight for 15 for fear of embarrassing Biden. The federal minimum wage is still a disgraceful $7.25 an hour. We won unprecedented renters' rights laws here, like the $10 cap on late rent fees, a ban on eviction during winter months, a six-month notice for all rent increases, and a law that requires your landlord to give you three months' worth of rent money if they force you to have to move because of a rent increase of 10% or more.

[Applause]

And we won the Amazon tax, which raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year for affordable housing by taxing Amazon and other wealthy businesses in Seattle.

[Applause]

When we fight, we can win. But what is a fighting strategy? A fighting strategy means you as a leader need to become a threat to the political establishment if you want to win anything for working people. And you can only be a threat if you use your elected office to mobilize hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of working people.

[Applause]

Most importantly of all, a fighting strategy means understanding who is on the side of the working class and who is not. A fighting strategy means understanding that the Democratic Party is not a friend of the working class, but actually our class enemy. If you try to get cozy with the Democrats, you will end up selling out working people. A fighting strategy also means understanding that the gatekeepers are not on the side of the working class. What do I mean by that? Who are these gatekeepers and what is their role? During the Amazon tax fight in 2020, it wasn't just Amazon's billionaires or the Democratic Party who opposed us. Do you know who else opposed us? Most of the labor leaders in the big unions opposed us. They tried to undermine the tax Amazon movement with behind-the-scenes maneuvers. Most of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement also opposed us. These BLM leaders, really misleaders, relentlessly attacked my office, claiming that the Amazon tax wasn't a quote unquote black issue. And they went further, smearing me and other leaders in the tax Amazon movement as anti-black. These BLM misleaders made a deal with the Democratic Party that in exchange for money for their pet little NGOs, they would cut off any relations with our movement. In other words, these labor and NGO misleaders sold out the working class, including the black working class. There is nothing unique about this. It's what gatekeepers do. You will find them in every movement, in every community, in every state, in every country. Why do we call them gatekeepers? Because on the surface, they appear like they should be on our side. I mean, they're labor leaders. They're progressive NGO leaders. They say they support progressive things, but in reality, their role is to put the brakes on any fight back by working people. Their peaceful careers, their six-figure salaries, all of that depends on keeping good relations with the establishment, and they are part of that establishment. Being clear about the role of gatekeepers is a make or break for movements. Winning anything for the working class requires defeating the gatekeepers. And when movement leaders are not clear about this, movements reach a dead end. That is why the Black Lives Matter movement ended up winning so little despite being the largest street protest movement in American history. Not understanding the role of gatekeepers is the single most important obstacle for movements today. You see, it's not usually the case that the billionaires come out and oppose you directly. It's not like Jeff Bezos met me directly and said, I oppose the Amazon tax. Obviously, he opposed it. Uh, and he is one of the most powerful people. And often it's not even the Democratic Party leadership either that comes out in the open. It is the labor and NGO gatekeepers who are the most visible and yet the most invisible enemies of the working class. We won our victories because we refused to back down to gatekeepers. We built an overwhelming mobilization of our movement that threatened them, their political careers, and the political careers of the Democratic Party politicians if they voted against us. Some people will say, well, all these problems, doesn't it mean that working people shouldn't support any election campaign? We should just engage in protest movements instead. No. Drawing a dichotomy between building movements on the one hand and winning independent socialist elected office on the other is the wrong conclusion. Because you see, every single one of these pressures, every single one of these gatekeepers, they exist in every arena, whether it is elected office or labor movement office or leadership of movements like Black Lives Matter, everywhere you go. It is because of their role as gatekeepers that most labor leaders have refused to call for strikes against the genocide and to end US military funding for Israel. It is because of their role as gatekeepers that most labor leaders keep supporting the Democratic Party even though they have thoroughly sold us out. In any arena, movements are crucial. In any arena, the correct kind of leadership is crucial. Some people ask, "But what can you do with one congressional office? There are 100 senators and 435 representatives in the US Congress. One elected office cannot achieve anything." Well, here's the thing. What we were able to achieve in Seattle is not simply a game of numbers. If it was, then we would not have won a single victory with just one elected position surrounded by enemies as we were. It was our ability to use our office to build powerful movements that won the unprecedented victories.

[Applause]

As the pro-corporate Seattle Times was forced to acknowledge, with just one elected position, we commandeered the entire city's political agenda. And as Mother Jones, and as Mother Jones magazine said, we dragged the Democratic Party politicians by their noses.

[Applause]

Or as Jamie Durkin, the brother of the famous mayor, infamous mayor Jenny Durkin, who was also the top corporate landlord lobbyist for the Seattle City Council for the time that I was on the body, as he, as Jamie Durkin said openly, that when, when I was in office, when we were in office, corporate landlords could not win. They could not win a single victory. Why? Because of what Jamie Durkin called Sawan's army. That is the power of movements with the correct kind of leadership. You can defeat billions of dollars. I have pledged that if I am elected, I will turn my congressional inauguration into a mass rally of 10,000 people in Washington D.C. and immediately launch a nationwide fighting campaign to end all military aid to Israel and to win free healthcare for all, funded by taxing the rich.

[Applause]

These methods are not new. I didn't invent them. They are the methods of revolutionary socialism. They are the methods of the Teamsters led by Marxists like ourselves, who led general strikes in three cities, including Minneapolis, that forced Democratic President FDR to pass the New Deal. Why? Because FDR and the capitalists he represented were afraid of an actual socialist revolution. These are the methods that won through the threat of revolution and new parties of working people, the public healthcare and social safety nets won by working people in Canada and Western Europe. And these are the methods that won the Russian Revolution in 1917. The most progressive event in modern US history. The crisis of the working class and of the planet will not be ended without ending capitalism. Palestinian oppression will not be ended without ending capitalism. We need to get rid of the system once and for all if there is going to be any future for humanity, or for that matter, the thousands of other species who are actively being extinguished by this system.

[Applause]

That is why I'm a revolutionary socialist, and that is why this campaign for Congress is so crucial. There has never been a revolutionary socialist elected to the US Congress. I think it's time we turn politics completely upside down in Washington D.C. What do you think?

[Applause]

I think it's time we show the ruling class in Washington D.C. what they've been missing, to make the capitalists fear for the stability of their rotten system, and to win historic victories for the working class. Solidarity.

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

When we fight. When we fight. When we fight. Hell yeah, we do. Please conserve some of that energy and welcome to the stage Patrick Gibson, who is also one of the protesters who is being criminally pursued by our opponent, Adam Smith. Give him a warm welcome. With Adam Smith, you can't hide that one. Adam Smith, you can't hide. You are funding genocide. Adam Smith, you can't hide.

Oh, sorry. Um, howdy folks. My name is Patrick Gibson. I'm a tech worker here in Seattle. I'm a member of Worker Strike Back and a member of Revolutionary Workers. And I'm a volunteer on this congressional campaign. It's clear from the speech that Shyama just gave why we need her in Congress. No other politician in the United States is telling the truth and identifying the enemy in the way that Shama does. No other politician fights the way that she does or has led movements to win victories the way that she has. If we win this election, those ideas and that class struggle strategy that our movements need in order to advance would have a much larger national platform. With Shama in Congress, we'll lay the groundwork to organize millions of working people behind these ideas to go to war against the billionaires, against their two political parties, and their army of gatekeepers. We will have the potential to win breakthrough victories.

[Applause]

But as Kama said, she's a revolutionary socialist, and a revolutionary socialist has never been elected to US Congress before. Electing Shamasawan to Congress would be an unprecedented achievement, and it would be a huge uphill battle. But many of Shama's victories were also unprecedented. They were unprecedented until hundreds or sometimes thousands of people joined our movements. And just like in all those fights before this, we need thousands of people to get active in this campaign and thousands of people to donate to this campaign. Trump's approval, as Shama said, is way down since his inauguration, but the popularity of the Democratic Party is even lower. We have a real shot to win this independent campaign against Democrat Adam Smith.

[Applause]

But that will require a real sacrifice from all of us. A sacrifice of time and a sacrifice of money. So, in a minute, I am going to call out some potential amounts that you can donate. And as I'm talking, I want you to think about what it would mean to win this historic election, but I also want you to think about what it would take to win it. And if you have a number in mind that you're already planning on donating, ask yourself if you can dig a little deeper to support this historic campaign. So, logistically, when you hear an amount that you can give, raise your hand. Keep it raised until a volunteer comes over to process your donation. To make this easy, we're going to turn up the house lights in the auditorium so everybody can see. And we're also, I'm gonna ask for our volunteers for this portion to come forward to the stage and get all the materials that we need. And, um, while that's happening, can we get a round of applause for all of the staff and volunteers that have made this event happen? Um, dozens of people. So, since we're packed pretty tight, if you're in the middle of a row, if you're able, it would be super useful if you can get to the end and go to the aisle to talk to the volunteer for a bit. In general, everyone, I would please ask, let's make it all, let's all make it as easy as possible for volunteers to help people with their donations, given the space constraints we have right here. So, to donate successfully, you have to fill out every part of the finance envelope that you're getting and return it to a volunteer. Please write very clearly in all caps. We're legally required to collect this information. That requires that includes the small checkbox on the form that says you meet the legal requirements to be able to donate. If you miss that, if you miss anything else, we have to go through a process to refund the donation, and that's extra time and lost money for this grassroots campaign.

So, as we've discussed this afternoon, Shama's approach in elected office is different from other politicians. During her time on the Seattle City Council, Shama used her public platform to build movements that put massive pressure on the Democrats on the City Council and forced them to cave to working people's demands. That's how Seattle became the first major city to win a $15 per hour minimum wage, Um, which because of our victory on inflation adjustment will increase to $21.30 minimum wage next year.

[Applause]

And that fighting approach is how we successfully beat back tax on the minimum wage a decade later. Just last year, Democratic City Council member Joy Hollingsworth wanted to make permanent a lower tier of minimum wage for tens of thousands of workers across Seattle. That lower tier was an existing loophole that city council Democrats added to the original $15 minimum wage victory in order to protect the profits of the rich. And it had a sunset clause that was set to expire this year. So when council member Hollingsworth made it known she wanted to make that second tier permanent, Shama and Worker Strikeback called the movement into action, built public pressure, and created an unrelenting presence at City Council meetings.

[Music]

So Shama talked about a fighting strategy. That fighting strategy meant that working people and Shama went to City Hall and exposed the Democrats like Hollingsworth. We said publicly, you claim to be progressive, but you're carrying water for the billionaires and you need to be thrown out of office. A fighting strategy means mobilizing workers, and it also means naming and shaming our enemies. And it was that fighting strategy that forced Joy Hollingsworth to abandon this attack on workers, which led to a more than $3 per hour raise for Seattle's lowest paid workers in January this year.

[Applause]

This is the same movement-based approach that Shama took to win the Amazon tax. Shama used her public position to organize mass action conferences with hundreds of attendees who elected leadership for the campaign, discussed and voted on the campaign's demands and strategy. In summer 2020, during the George Floyd uprising, the Tax Amazon campaign collected 30,000 signatures for a ballot measure which forced reluctant Democrats on the Seattle City Council to pass our historic tax on big business.

[Applause]

And that is an approach that the capitalist class will fight tooth and nail to keep out of Congress. This is the most important campaign in the country for us, and they're going to treat it like a very high priority, too. There will be billionaire donors across the country pouring money into Adam Smith's campaign. So, I'm going to start high. The maximum amount of money you can give during this primary election is $3,500. Can people raise their hands actually if they've already donated the maximum amount to the campaign or if they're already signed up for a monthly donation that reaches that?

[Applause]

All right, you can put your hands down. Who here can match that by giving the maximum donation of $3,500 today or signing up for a $583 per month donation over the next six months?

[Applause]

Please keep your hand raised until a volunteer makes it round to you. Shyama's track record is completely unique in global politics today. And it's not only her 10-year long record of historic victories. Shamba also stands alone in the political approach that won those victories. It's not the job of a working-class representative in elected office to make friends with politicians that represent the ruling class. As a socialist, Shamba understands that the Republicans and Democrats are both parties of big business, and working-class people have nothing in common with them. She always understood that her allies were working-class people, not the Democrats on the City Council. Those Democrats fought relentlessly against her and against everything our movements were fighting for. And that's why you won't see Shama invited to speak at one of Bernie and AOCC's rallies on their Stop the Oligarchy tour. Because even though the two of them inspired working people years ago with bold working-class demands, Bernie and AOC have shown over time that they're not willing to break with the Democratic Party, even as that party sells out working people again and again. Both of them, Bernie and AOC, have in fact abandoned the fight for the demands that they raised in the name of keeping peace with the establishment. They're now part of that sellout themselves. Point blank, we need a working-class fighter in Congress who does not care if Nancy Pelosi likes her. We need to elect somebody who understands that if she's making enemies in the halls of Congress, she's doing something right.

So, who here can give $1,000 today or $166 over the next six months to fund this campaign to get Sham out of Congress?

[Applause]

So, let's talk about Shama's opponent, Adam Smith. Can you believe I have been speaking for 10 minutes and I have only mentioned Adam Smith one time so far. You've heard a lot about Adam Smith already this afternoon. Last election cycle, he got $300,000 from Apac alone. Donors from the war industries gave a combined quarter of a million dollars to support his campaign. This election cycle, Alexander Karp, the billionaire CEO of the dystopian surveillance company Palunteer, has already maxed out his contribution to Adam Smith's campaign. And there will be hundreds of other wealthy donors like him from the corporate boards of the military-industrial complex. So, we need to do everything we can to cancel out every single one of those donations with our working-class dollars. Who here can give $500 today or $83 per month over the next six months to support this campaign?

[Applause]

Shamba doesn't operate like other politicians. And I want to share just one last example of what that looks like. Members of the Seattle City Council make over $130,000 per year, which is far out of reach for most working-class Seattleites. During her time in office, Shama only took home the average worker's wage. She paid her taxes. She took home between 40 and $50,000 and donated the rest of her City Council salary to movements of working people and oppressed communities.

[Applause]

And that's what it looks like for a politician to be accountable to the working class. Every politician who claims to represent working people should be doing this, but they're not. Every union leader across the country should also be be doing this, but they're not. Instead, it's not uncommon, for example, for union presidents to make a shocking annual salary like 200 or $300,000, while many of the union rank and file are barely able to pay their rent. These are leaders who've demonstrated that they're not accountable to the working class. Taking home the average worker's wage is part of how you show to people that you're in this fight to win results for workers, not build a cushy career for yourself. Everybody tonight, this afternoon, who donates $100 or more will get a ticket for a free campaign t-shirt on their way out the door. You can wear that shirt to the Shama for Congress contingent at the No Kings protests on Saturday. So, who here can donate $100 to elect the socialist money can't buy to US Congress?

[Applause]

And please, uh, keep your hand raised until a volunteer gets to you. And I'll wrap things up. I'll wrap things up with one final ask. I've named some pretty big amounts today, but the vast majority of our campaign donations are smaller. The median donation to this campaign is $25. All of Chama's cap when given the amount we need to defeat Adam Smith is by stringing together thousands of smaller donations from working-class people who are giving whatever they can to support this campaign. And they donate even when it can be a real sacrifice because they understand that it would be a political earthquake for us to defeat one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress and replace him with a revolutionary socialist, Shama Sawan.

[Applause]

Many of us who've been out on this campaign so far volunteering have taken donations of less than a dollar, literally change in somebody's pocket from people who have very little but want this campaign to win. So, I have one final ask for people who haven't donated yet. Who here can donate $50, $25, $15, one single dollar, or any other amount of money to help fund this campaign?

[Applause]

You know, these are real sacrifices people are making today. And this is what it's going to take. With the working-class dollars we're raising this afternoon, with the tens of thousands of working-class volunteer hours we need to rack up over the coming months, we're going to go face to face with the billionaires and their two parties, and we are going to give them hell. Solidarity.

[Music]

[Applause]

Necessary but difficult. Please give Patrick a warm round of applause.

So, as has been mentioned a few times today, there's a government shutdown happening that is brutally impacting not only, you know, millions of working-class people, but also thousands of public sector workers across the country. And this is, you know, insult to injury on top of, uh, you know, the vicious cuts that the richest man in the world, Elon Musk and, uh, Donald Trump have been carrying out in breaking union contracts and just mass firings of public sector workers. And in that context, we thought it was extremely important for us to invite our next two speakers, uh, up to speak today. Their names are Josie Eelhair and David Montquin. Um, they're both members of Worker Strike Back and also members of AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, a large public employee union in the United States. Josie is a social worker in Washington state who stood together with her co-workers to stop the state Democrats from slashing $7 billion from the state budget this past year, which would have been an attack on 50,000 public sector workers. David is joining us here today all the way from Rochester, Minnesota, showing the breadth of this campaign. Uh, like Josie, David has also been fighting against budget cuts in his state. Please welcome them.

Thank you all. Um, like Emily said, my name is Josie Eelhair. I'm a social worker and I'm a member of AFSCME Council 28, speaking in personal capacity today, and I'm a member of Worker Strike Back. Um, like they also said, I'm David Montquin. Um, I'm a librarian out in Rochester, Minnesota. Um, a member of AFSCME Council 65. Um, I am extremely excited to be here today to build Shamasawan's independent campaign for Congress. Her record.

As a working-class fighter, from the countless wins for working people she has won with her socialist city council seat are unprecedented. From renters's rights to the $15 minimum wage, which will I know we've heard this like a hundred times today, but will now be over $21 starting next year to the tax on Amazon bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for affordable housing, the strongest ceasefire resolution in a major city in the US and countless more. She has vastly improved the lives of working people here in Seattle over the past decade.

[Applause]

In contrast, last spring, the Democratic Party majority in the Washington state legislature and Democratic governor drastically cut the state budget and cut funding for essential services. They threatened to furlow state workers like myself and my fellow union members one day a month for two years, which would be an entire month of our pay. They tried to cut $7 billion dollar for funding for public services overall.

With the support of Shyama, myself and other worker strike back members brought forward resolutions in our locals calling for a rally in Olympia to fight back against these cuts. The resolutions that I brought forward in my local for a rally and strike action to stop these cuts were called out of order by the union leadership. But the rank and file took up the fight and we pressured the union leadership to hold a mass rally in the state capital. Hundreds of state workers and supporters marched in the capital chanting no cuts, no furlows. Strike, strike, strike. Rank and file union members, worker strike back members and community supporters occupied the capital and brought the House and Senate chambers to a halt.

This was the exactly the kind of fight back that we needed to protect public sector workers and our communities in Washington. And from this rally, we were able to stop attacks on our health care benefits, stop the furlows and the cuts to public services, public services were substantially reduced. We reduced the cuts from 7 billion to $3 billion. And if our union leadership had called for strike action like the rank and file was demanding, we could have defeated all of these cuts.

We don't need more empty promises from self-proclaimed pro uh self-proclaimed progressives who beg for our votes and our money, but whose hands are somehow tied every time they need to put up a fight for working people. We need a workingclass fighter who has a track record of taking on the billionaires and the bosses and the Democratic party and winning. This is why I fully support this campaign and I'm supporting Shama for Congress.

As a union member, I am tired of my union leadership seeming to just blindly support the Democrats each year. But the truth is that it's not blind. They know exactly what they are doing. Democratic Party politicians sell out working people and labor left and right. And Adam Smith is no exception. Smith voted to break the railroad strike in 2022. He voted to privatize Medicaid. And one of his most shameful votes, he voted to create ICE, playing into the direct a direct hand in the separation of families and the inhumane detention of immigrants. He is no friend to working people. And yet he has received over $1 million from US labor since he first went into Congress, including my own union, asks me. Smith is an enforcer of big business interests. Labor leaders have laundered Smith's reputation while he sells out workers wholesale. It is shameful that the leadership of my own union, ASME, has already donated to Adam Smith's 2026 congressional campaign without bringing a vote to the entire membership.

[Music]

This is despite the fact that our union, like virtually every other union, has passed a ceasefire resolution. And even though, and this is has been pointed out numerous times today, Smith is one of the politicians most responsible for the slaughter in Gaza. Ask me leadership has already maxed out the union's donation to Adam Smith and did this well over a year before the election. This would be this would be shameful no matter what, but it is particularly shameful that they did this when an actual working-class fighter Shamas Aant is running against Adam Smith.

The union leadership nationally, whether in the public or private sector, has failed to put up any real fight back to stop the genocide and continued US funding for Israel. Workers in Italy Italy led a general strike of workers and dock workers shut down the ports after the activists were arrested on the flotillaa. That's right. And Chris Smalls um involved in the Amazon labor union was arrested on the same flotilla. We need union leaders like that who will take a fighting approach and we need this kind of action on a much bigger scale. This is what the union leadership in the US should have called for months ago. The least that the Lun leadership can do is not give union members money to a genocidal Democratic congressman and instead support Shama's independent anti-war uh proworker campaign.

This is why myself and uh David as my union sibling are launching a petition uh with the support of SHA for the support of Sham's campaign calling for ASME and the AFL CIO leadership to rescend their support of Adam Smith and for every Democrat and Republican politician nationally who has backed the genocide in Gaza. I urge every union member, especially if you are an ASME member and every working person to s go to the website and sign this petition. We desperately need independent working-class politics to fight for all workers regardless of whether we are fighting for workplace rights, immigrant rights, against the genocide in Gaza, or against budget cuts. We need a reckoning in the labor movement. We need rank and file union members to get organized and break our unions away from the disastrous strategy of tying ourselves to the Democrat or the Republican party. We need to put demands on our union leadership. And if they refuse to represent the interests of the rank and file, then we need to elect a leadership who will.

Adam Smith has sat in his seat in Congress since the year that I was born. And in that time, he has played a hand in wars and genocide and the slaughter of thousands of people. He has been an architect in the cost of living crisis, climate disasters that have destroyed communities, and countless attacks on working people over the last nearly 30 years. Working people deserve someone who won't just stand on the sidelines, but who will stand face to face against the billionaires and their two parties with a real fighting strategy to end the genocide, win free healthcare for all, affordable housing, and what working people really need, solidarity.

[Applause]

Uh so once again, I'm David. Um myself and other Worker Strike Back members in Minnesota have supported this campaign from the very beginning. I've been out tableabling in Rochester to build Shamba's campaign and people in Minnesota are excited when they hear about Shamba's demands and her track record. Working people nationally want an independent workingclass fighter in Congress. and working people nationally are sick of pro- genocide anti-worker Democrats like Adam Smith. So I am also signing on to this petition to the ASME and AFL CIO leadership because it is shameful that ABSME's leadership has maxed out our union's contributions to a pro- genocide Democrat Adam Smith without even a vote of the membership. And Adam Smith is not the only pro- genocide politician getting support from union leadership. One year ago in my home state, ASME formally endorsed another general among the Warhawks, Amy Clolobachar, for her reelection to the US Senate. Despite Clolobachar being a dogged supporter of US military aid to Israel that has funded the horrors in Gaza, we need to demand that the union leaders resend support for Adam Smith and we need to oppose any support for any politician who has supported the genocide. This has to be a red line for the labor movement. It is crucial that ASME members, whether you are in Washington, Minnesota, New York, or anywhere across the country, sign on to this petition and demand that ASME's leadership and the leadership of the AFL CIO stop supporting genocidal candidates. Shamba is the only anti-war proworker campaign with a concrete strategy to end US military aid to Israel. She's the only political leader putting forward the strategy needed to stop the deportations, win free health care for all by taxing the rich, and win national rent control. The labor movement should be throwing its support behind Shama Sawant, not Adam Smith.

[Applause]

The Labor leadership will not rescend these endorsements willingly. They are tied at the hip to the Democratic Party and to the failed strategy of business unionism. They will need to be forced by the union rank and file. If you are an AS member or if you can join us in making this demand to our union leadership, I urge you to sign this petition on Shamba's website and reach out to workers strike back so that we can get organized as ASME members across the country. And that goes for all union members too. As Shamba said, we need a reckoning in the labor movement and it has to come from us. Solidarity.

[Applause]

We're going to do our best to have that petition pulled up downstairs on your way out. So, if you are a union member, please sign. Uh, but just so we know that the website is shamasawant.org afsme. So, ame-resend-adam-smith. Um, so please sign that if you can. Um, and so yeah, we've got a series of rapid fire asks, right? Because we built up the energy so we all understand what the stakes are and then we kind of all have to pitch in to make it happen. So we've asked you to help fund this campaign and now we're going to help you ask we're going to ask you for your time. Please welcome campaign manager M. Smith. She's one of the most excellent canvasers I've ever seen. I've seen people cry as they give her donations. Um, so yeah, please give her a warm welcome.

[Applause]

Hi everyone. My name is M. Smith. I'm a member of Revolutionary Workers, a member of Workers Strike Back, and I'm the campaign manager for Shamasawan's independent campaign for Congress. We have a chance to do something historic to elect Shamas Sawant as the first ever revolutionary socialist to US Congress. Uh I think a lot of people have already gotten volunteer sheets. These were down at the tables downstairs. Those who are watching on the live stream, you can go to shamasawan.org/events. Look at those volunteer uh events coming up. Um, if anyone's here still who helped uh collect donations, if we have volunteer sheets, if we can pass those around, uh, if not, you can get those down at the tables uh, downstairs. Um, uh, but in 2013, uh, just to put this in perspective, in 2013, we elected Shyama as an independent socialist to the Seattle City Council. She was the first socialist to be elected in Seattle for almost a hundred years. For 10 years, Shamba led our movement to victory after victory. A lot of those have been talked about today. She built movements of tens of thousands of working people. She went up against big business, the corporate landlords, and the Democratic Party, and she won. Workers need a leader who knows how to win.

This Saturday at 12:00 p.m. is the No Kings protest in Seattle and around the country. The last No Kings protest brought out five million people. That makes it the largest single day of protest in US history. But those protests were also from the front stage managed by the Democratic Party. Congresswoman Primila Gyipol spoke for 20 minutes without mentioning the genocide once. The organizers refused to let Shamba speak because they knew that Shama would talk about the genocide and about the complicity of both billionaire backed parties. If we're going to win this election, we have to break through the gatekeepers and talk directly to working people.

So, we are building an independent anti-genocide contingent to the No Kings protest this Saturday in Seattle. We'll be there wearing our Shama for Congress campaign shirts and with signs calling for an end to all US military aid to Israel and an end to the occupation along with our demand for free healthcare for all by taxing the rich. We'll be bringing a workingclass strategy to fight Trump and win our demands. We'll be talking about the things that Permila Jipal doesn't want us to talk about, including the need to send Shamasawan to US Congress. Uh, by a raise of hands, who can join us Saturday to build that independent anti-genocide contingent to the No Kings protest? That's great. So, everyone raising your hands, we need you to sign on to one of those volunteer sheets. That contingent is on there. Sign up for that. Put your info so that we can send you a reminder. Uh, and for everyone watching online, organize your own contingents. Talk to people about this campaign. If you're a Worker Strike Back member, uh, reach out. Connect up with other Worker Strike Back members. If you're not a Worker Strike Back member, also reach out so that we can connect you up with people in your area. Uh, just finally, I want everyone to take a minute to think about what we're up against. Apac, the health insurance industry, the weapons manufacturers, the Democratic and Republican parties, the gatekeepers and the NOS's, the union leadership, and the media. Think about what it'll take to break past them. We need thousands of working people in the 9th district and all around the country, talking to neighbors, putting up posters, setting up tables on street corners. We need thousands of people spreading the word about this campaign. It's not going to be an easy fight, but none of our fights have been easy, and we have a real chance to win.

In 2021, Shama faced a right-wing billionaire backed recall campaign that used voter suppression to try to remove her from office. We had a December 7th special election, the first December election in US in in Seattle history because they wanted to suppress the vote. They raised a million dollars from billionaires, real estate developers, and Trump donors to wage a smear campaign against Shyama. We beat that recall. Not only that, but during the recall election, we mobilized to win historic renters rights victories like the $10 a month cap on late rent fees and six months notice of rent increases. And we won because we built a movement of working people that included 1,500 people volunteering for that campaign. So, we need everybody in this room to sign up to volunteer for this campaign. We also need to build this into a nationwide campaign. Shamba's campaign has working-class donors already from all 50 states and Washington DC and Puerto Rico. We also need volunteers from all 50 states and Washington DC and Puerto Rico and beyond that. And so if you're watching this over the live stream, please sign up to volunteer. And who here in addition uh to coming out to that condition uh that contingent on Saturday, who here can sign up for at least one volunteer shift? Great. Again, fill out those sheets. If you're watching online, go to shamasawant.org/events. Sign up for those sheets. Uh uh we have phone banks every Saturday at 3 p.m. Pacific, 600 p.m. Eastern. Uh if that doesn't work for you, reach out. We can find a way to plug you into this campaign to help us build. We are going to need everyone to build this fight. Uh so get those sheets back to a volunteer. Let's build a movement. Let's build a political earthquake and elect Shamasawa to US Congress. Thank you. Solidarity.

[Applause]

Thank you so much. M and our final speakers for this evening uh are actually actively on strike right now. So, please give a warm welcome uh to Joan and Katya. They're members of Kickstarter United, which blazed onto the scene as the first successful tech workers union in America. They're in their midst of the uh they're in the midst of their fight for a second contract which includes the essential fight for a 32-hour work week with no loss in pay. And as we have discussed, a strike is powerful because it hits the bosses where it hurts their bottom line. So it's no small sacrifice for them to be here today standing with our fight. So please welcome them.

[Applause]

Hi everyone, my name is Katya and I'm a rank and file member of Kickstarter United, part of OPEIU Local 153. And on October 2nd, after six months of negotiating with management for our second contract, our union went out on strike because we deserve a fair contract. That's right. We have two core demands which are very reasonable. We want to keep the benefits we already have, including a 4-day, 32-hour work week, and we want the lowest paid workers at our company to make more money. I'm talking about my colleagues who work in customer support and trust and safety. They are supporting our users on a case-byase basis on the front lines, keeping the platform safe from scammers and bad actors. These co-workers spend their days being verbally harassed and looking at content that ranges from abusive to pornographic and they are underpaid while they do this job. That's right. Specifically, we are demanding an $85,000 minimum salary for every single member of Kickstarter United. A livable wage in high cost of living cities like New York City, where our company is headquartered, and Seattle, where a large contingent of the company lives and works. With our current staffing level, it would cost the company less than $100,000 to meet this demand. And yet, after six months of back and forth, they won't do it. I want to put that $100,000 number into perspective. This is a $40 million company with a 100 employees. The company spends more than $100,000 every year on completely discretionary things like corporate off sites and executive retreats. Management has told us at the bargaining table that they think it's fair to underpay these workers, but I don't. And I know that no one here does either. Thanks so much to Shama for the opportunity to speak today. We need her and people like her in Congress to speak up for workers like us. Solidarity.

[Applause]

Sorry, I'm a little tall. So, uh, my name is Joan Wright. Uh, I'm a rank and file member of Kickstarter United along with Katya, again, part of OPIU 153. I'm also a socialist and a member of Workers Strike Back. Um, and we know that working people right now need to go on the offensive and fight for our interests. And that's why we are building this strike to fight for a 32-hour work week and a livable minimum wage for all of our workers. Because we know that our most powerful tool is our ability to unite and strike and shut down the boss's profits until they meet our demands.

[Applause]

And we must say it loud and clear that every worker deserves a 32-hour work week. That's why we're proud to stand with Shama who's fighting for on the campaign for a 30-hour work week. And we have to know that it is winnable if we get organized and if we fight for it.

[Applause]

But we also must know and be crystal clear that the bosses are going to fight us tooth and nail to prevent workers anywhere from winning anything like 32-hour work week in a contract. And that's why we have to have an offensive fighting strategy. We must reject business unionism, the failed idea that workers and bosses have common interests, that they're profits, and that we have to understand that their profits come from the wealth that we produce. That's right. And it's at our expense. We need instead we need class struggle unionism, which recognizes that workers needs and bosses greed is diametrically opposed. and that our power does not come from the so-called bargaining room. It comes from our ability to unite as workers and strike at Kickstarter. Our CEO flat out told us like as Katia said that our demands uh were not acceptable. One of the reasons he said straight to our faces was that it wasn't acceptable because of a fiduciary duty to shareholders. These shareholders are in tech. We're a tech, it's a tech business. These shareholders are wealthy venture capitalists and tech billionaires. Most recently, Andre and Horowitz invested $und00 million in Kickstarter, and both the founders of that venture capital fund donated millions to Trump's MAGA pack in 2024.

[Music]

And this goes beyond our strike. This includes every worker in the tech industry. I mean, even goes beyond that, includes every single worker. But just focusing on the tech industry right now, tech profits themselves, you know, we're in Seattle where a lot of tech workers are based and the tech industry um and the profits from the tech industry absolutely go to corporate politicians pockets like Adam Smith who has been bankrolled by companies profiting from the genocide like Gaza and Trump's deport uh genocide in Gaza and Trump's deportations like Microsoft and Palunteer. here. Should those people get to keep the profits of our labor? Who should get to keep the profits that we produce? That's right. And that is why I support Shamasawan's independent anti-genocide proworker campaign for Congress.

[Applause]

I've seen it firsthand. Shamba is a ruthless fighter for working people, the one that we need. She has been also right now strongly supporting our union and our strike. She's going to be speaking at our virtual picket line tomorrow at 12:00 p.m. Pacific and 3 p.m. Eastern. Anyone here can join it and I encourage I actively encourage you to join us and support our strike and see Shama speak there. And we know that having Shyama in Congress would embolden working people everywhere and rank and file union members to overcome the conservative business unionism and instead carry out militant strike action on a strategy of class struggle. That's why we're on strike and that's why we need a fighter like Shama Sawant in Congress.

[Applause]

As I also said, I'm a member of Workers Strike Back, which is the organization that Shamas Sawant founded um for workers to fight on that basis, on that strategy. Worker Strike Back has absolutely been a critical place for myself and my union members to um learn about the strategies that are effective and useful. And also concretely, Worker Strike Back has made a tangible difference in our strike. Worker Strike Back donated $1,000 to our solidarity to our strike fund. That's right. uh worker strikeback also helped us organize and run a a rally here in Seattle on the first day of our strike and we could not have done without the or without worker strike back. So if you want to be part of an organization that fights for these strategies, a place to get organized, that supports politicians, um uh not politicians like corporate democrats, but instead the de the politicians that we need like Shama, you should join Worker Strike Back also. Um we have a table downstairs also at the front or feel free to come ask me. Um it's absolutely important that we have organizations like Worker Strike Back um to rebuild the fighting strategy of class struggle unionism. When we fight, we win. When we fight, we win. When we fight, we win. Solidarity.

Thank you so much to everyone who's able to stay. Uh just a couple quick housekeeping things. Please make sure to turn in your donation envelopes. If you donated $100 and you got a t-shirt token, you can grab those downstairs as well as yard signs. Make sure you sign up for volunteer shifts and check out the worker strike back tables on the foyer. I hope to see all of you at the no kings contingent on Saturday uh at our or our next mega canvas on October 26. Solidarity

[Applause]

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Workers Strike Back Conference (w/ Chris Hedges, Dr. Jill Stein, and Kshama Sawant)

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