 I want to take some time to talk about city councilwoman Shama Sawant of Seattle's third district because this is an individual who is so crucial to the labor movement and she is one of, if not the most effective local politicians in America because she has managed to accomplish what Bernie Sanders says he wants to do, albeit at a local level. So Bernie Sanders talks about wanting to be the organizer in chief while she's replicated that strategy at the local level. She has rallied the grassroots in Seattle to take on big business and guess what she's really effective. She led the charge for a $15 an hour minimum wage and now cities across the country are following her lead because she pushed Seattle to do that. She's also fighting for a local Green New Deal. On top of that she's fighting for public municipal broadband. This is someone who is incredibly effective. And since she's so effective she has become a target of big business like Amazon. Now I want to share a now this video with you because she explains the situation and this video is more concise and kind of gives you a really big breakdown than what I can give you. So watch this and then we will explain the results of her election that took place on November 5th. This is part of gentrification central. We're standing in the middle of Amazon campus right in front of the Amazon spheres otherwise colloquially known in our in my city as Jeff Bezos's balls. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires have gone to war in the city and in this year's city council elections they are attempting to straight up buy their candidates and do a hostile corporate takeover city hall. Seattle is a test lab if they do this in Seattle they're going to come after other cities. Seattle is many ways a microcosm of what's happening in metropolitan areas throughout the nation and the national political situation in general. It is an extremely wealthy city one of the wealthiest cities in the history of humanity and yet we have the nation's most regressive tax system and in the same period that construction has boomed and has made untold millions for property management corporations the venture capitalists the big banks more billionaires and billionaires have been created in that same period we are seeing devastating inequality and explosion in the homelessness crisis and affordable housing that is at such severe shortage that even the middle class is experiencing an epidemic of economic evictions and that is why you know what happens in Seattle matters to working people and those of us who want social justice in every city throughout the nation movements led by working people ordinary people who are struggling to survive in our cities where inequality is growing rapidly. The Wall Street Journal the Financial Times all the political pundits that represent the interests of the billionaire class they say oh well aren't you against jobs aren't socialists against jobs and I think it's important for us to point out that we refuse to accept a system where the only terms on which some of us get decent jobs is on terms of allowing every city in every world to be raised to the bottom for most of us refusing to accept this race to the bottom is critical the lessons of the $15 minimum wage show that actually it's the opposite of what the Wall Street Journal will tell you it's when working people get organized collectively develop a political analysis and start writing back build movements to win victories that are rested from the hands of the billionaires not out of their kind hearts not given to us out of their kind hearts that's when we are able to win progressive victories like wage increases like rent control not just in one city but in city after city it's because the confidence that we gain from winning in one city it goes into other cities and other cities and yet other cities now it's not just amazon i need you to understand what's been happening in seattle whenever she proposes a policy and starts pushing for something that's when big business starts spending big money and they are pretty brazen about that so of course we saw what amazon did once the seattle city council passed a head tax in order to stop homelessness they got the city council to backtrack and on top of that she proposes public municipal broadband comcast and sentry links start pouring money in she proposes rent control then realtors pour thousands of dollars into the city to stop that she proposes a local green new deal Puget sound energy spends thousands to defeat it the reason why they're spending so much time energy and money trying to stop her agenda is because they know that she poses a real threat because when you have the people behind you you can actually accomplish really amazing things and she's evidence that that is in fact the case so she's someone who's incredibly important right she may be in seattle but she is proving that bernie's organizer and chief strategy is absolutely viable so if we want things like medicare for all even if we don't get money out of politics even if we don't defeat capitalism we can still do that so long as we have individuals on the ground fighting for it because like any good politician like any organizer you know that a real change comes from the bottom up not the top down so she is using the grassroots to push through an agenda that the people of seattle desperately want and need so companies like amazon they're not just spending a lot of money to defeat any initiative she's fighting for they spent a lot of money trying to defeat her as the now this video explain and unfortunately for them it seems like they might actually get what they want because as owen higgins of common dreams reports socialist counselor shama sawan one of the company's top targets told the guardian that her race had been uphill and that the power of a massive corporation like amazon stacked against her campaign had been difficult to overcome we have run a historic grassroots campaign with working people community members rejecting amazon and billionaires attempts to buy this election and that doesn't mean we're going to win every battle against the billionaires said so want what matters is the political clarity that the billionaires are not on our side and that this is going to be a struggle seattle is still waiting for the final results in the race washington has a mail-in voting system that makes final counts unavailable for days after voting but as of wednesday it looked likely that sawan and fellow socialist sean scott were headed for defeat against amazon-backed candidates like egan orion and alex peterson respectively neither scott nor sawan had conceded at press time now at the time i'm recording this video it still doesn't look good but it's not over yet and as sarah jaffe a journalist points out let's remember that mail-in voting in washington state means shama sawan's race is not over yes she's trailing yes it's because of amazon money and frankly because some comfortable liberals find her too radical but let's not write her off yet so it's not over until it's over but the reason why i'm talking about this is because this is an incredibly important race if she's able to defeat amazon in spite of all of the money that they're spending to defeat her and her agenda that really demonstrates how powerful labor and organized grassroots movements are and it will reflect what we're able to accomplish at the national level so we all have a vested interest in making sure that she is successful let me just say something in the event she loses we don't know that that's going to be the case but if she actually does lose to the corporate shill that was running against her then this is not the end of shama sawan by no means um this is a defeat in one battle but rather than trying to defeat councilwoman sawan amazon's going to have to defeat representative sawan or senator sawan because she's not going anywhere so this is an incredibly important race that i want you to pay close attention to and i tried to bring shama on my show last week unfortunately um she had a budget meeting that ran over so that didn't pan out well but i do want to bring her on in the future because i think she is such a fantastic resource for just telling us what we need to do to affect change but i will encourage you to watch an interview that she did with michael brooks because she breaks it down you know what's at stake and how you can win against large multinational corporations that are trying to defeat you and shout out to michael brooks by the way who actually put me in contact with her team um because i followed shama's career now for quite some time and she really is the real deal so if you haven't heard about her then um change that and understand that real change is possible because this individual in one city has proven that that's the case it's certainly not easy to affect change but she demonstrated that it's possible and she basically showed us what you need to do to make that change happen you rally the people and she understands that and anyone who's a true leader who understands what we need to do to accomplish change in this country understands that as well