July 18, 2025
It broadcasts on a populist economic message that puts the accessibility of care at the heart and has mobilized young basic organizers.
Zohran Mamdani’s victory was not a stroke of luck. Currently, it is built in Seattle, three time zones of the Big Apple. The mayor of Seattle, Bruce Harrell, slipped along a path to re -election. He collected the support of technological developers and oligarchs. All opinion leaders are for the turn with the mayor. Of course, he will win.
But strangely, a vote of people challenged this wisdom. Last year, Seattle housing activists had gathered signatures so that the municipal council adopted a tax on surplus remuneration to finance social housing. The tax, to be paid by employers, takes a 5% tax on individual remuneration greater than $ 1 million. Picking up $ 60 million and with guarantees, this will allow the production of thousands of economically integrated housing units in which no tenant will pay more than 30% of their rent income.
The municipal council gave a vote on this measure for February 11, expecting a weak and conservative participation. The Council also put a competing measure on the ballot, which took $ 10 million from an existing fund for low -income housing in order to build some social housing units.
The business community, led by Amazon and Microsoft, has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into an opposition campaign. Mayor Harrell entered the act, with his face on all the literature of the opposition. The DE seemed to be thrown for a victory for the status quo over real social progress. Only this was not the case. The election led to a 26 -point victory for social housing on the mayor’s proposal.
This made Katie Wilson, the founder and secretary general of Transit Riders Union de Seattle, to rethink the 2025 elections. Katie had already launched the Transit Riders Union, free public transport for schoolchildren and low -income schoolchildren. She organized successful minimum wage campaigns in the suburbs of Seattle. It developed the jump starter tax, a tax on employers when individual remuneration exceeds $ 189,371. Without this tax, Seattle would have been saved with cuts in public services.
Katie therefore decided that it was the right time to become mayor, to win the power of progressives to transform our city. She embodies the policies, hopes and dreams of most of us in Seattle who cannot understand how to pay for childcare services and rental increases and health care, or those who recognize and wish to provide the solutions of these problems.
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Katie is a leader and a member of the in charge. She rents an apartment in a room with her 2 year old husband and daughter. She does not have a car. It bikes and takes public transport throughout the city. She has lived on a puff budget for years. It includes child care – She pays $ 2,000 a month for three days a week. Its campaign focuses on expanding workers’ rights, financing family housing, protection of childcare services and childcare services a scale, step down, and the opening of our parks and streets to walk, recreate, cycle and simply be.
Does she have a chance? The Democratic Establishment of Seattle and the main unions have shown their willingness to complain, but not to challenge, the status quo which leaves millions of residents of Washington with health costs, childcare costs, care costs for the elderly, a constant increase in tuition fees and under-funding of public education from kindergarten to 12th year. But wait, the rank of each organization of the Democratic district approved Katie Wilson. Could their lived experiences be closer to the reality of residents of Seattle?
New York has classified the vote of choice, which allows the little -known candidates to become legitimate suitors, not destroyed by the voting and dismissal plurality by the elite of power. Although the Seattle version of the classified choice vote does not start before 2027, we have a unique democracy system. Each resident can use four $ 25 vouchers for city candidates. Six hundred residents must support these candidates. Then, each resident of Seattle can bring vouchers to their favorite candidate. Thanks to these vouchers, Katie Wilson mobilized enormous base support.
This financing stasis could be upset if the corporate community builds an “independent” CAP to stimulate Harrell. They have already questioned for the “good” message. When this opposition campaign begins, Katie will be authorized to collect even more funds for democracy. Her thousands of volunteers will be encouraged to get all the possible votes out for her.
Has Seattle had enough business as usual? We will have an idea of this in less than a month, in the primary of August 5. Perhaps, while Tracy Chapman sings, “finally the tables are starting to turn / talk about a revolution …”
