Yeah, so I think that was a really big moment as many of us in the room fought really hard for this.
But together we defeated the richest man in the world.
And together we reelected a socialist fighter for a third term in office.
So yeah, we're all out here tonight to launch the tax Amazon 2020 campaign.
But I think it's important to also be aware that council members to want her office is about also using the seat to build solidarity with workers across the world in struggles against the far right against the billionaires.
So tomorrow, her council office will be introducing resolutions and solidarity with the working people of Iran and with India and also in solidarity with the communities here in Seattle as well.
So I think some people are going to be coming around with flyers and encouraging as many people as possible to come out tomorrow to support those resolutions.
And next up, we're going to introduce another really exciting speaker.
Paula Lukosik.
So Paula is a plumber by trade.
She's the elected rank and file president of Wolf C1488, which represents 3,000 workers at the UW campuses.
So let's welcome Paula.
Yeehaw!
Hey, what just happened?
We won an election.
My name is Paula Okazak.
I'm the, actually I'm a plumber at the University of Washington and I'm also the president of Local 1488. We represent workers at U of Dub and U of Dub MC.
Majority of our low-wage workers are like custodians, food service workers, and hospital workers.
The last city council election proved once again you can't buy people's votes.
You know?
Amazon tried, but people stuck with Shama.
Shama!
Shama!
Shama!
Shama!
Shama!
Oh!
Because she's been working on people's issues for years, like 15 Now, housing affordability, and taxing the wealthy to pay for better city services and publicly owned housing.
Most of my members used to live in Seattle, but were pushed out by the high cost of housing and constant increase in rent.
Along with building more affordable housing, we need rent control.
You know?
Yeah.
A recent poll in Washington showed that 47% of Washingtonians are in favor of rent control, 40% are opposed, and let's see, that's 87%.
I think the other 13% were too busy watching bowl games and playoffs to be able to respond.
Housing affordability and the need for rent control is happening all over the state, not just in Seattle.
SHAMA is playing a leading role in getting it going in Seattle, but we need to expand it to all of Washington.
My local just voted to start working with other groups to look at getting rent control initiative on the ballot.
Because big businesses like Amazon and big developers are opposed to housing affordability and rent control.
No meaningful change will happen in the legislature.
The change will have to come from us, the people.
Just like we pushed back on big business trying to buy this last election, we the people have to get behind Shama's proposal to tax Amazon and other wealthy corporations to pay for affordable housing and rent control.
Power to the people!
Tax the wealthy!
What are we going to tax the wealthy for?
Housing!
Housing!
Housing!
Housing!
Housing!
Thank you, Paula.
I want to introduce our next speaker, who I'm sure many of you know.
She's a community leader, a core member of the Seattle's People Party, who ran an inspiring independent run for mayor in 2017. Let's welcome Nikita Oliver.
Peace and good evening, community.
Thank you so much for turning out to this historic moment to build community and to continue to build our people power.
I really want to center us on what we're here to do, that the work we do through our electeds and that we do through our movements is about safeguarding, protecting, healing, caring for people and planet over profit.
This is about responding to the housing and affordability crisis.
It is about acknowledging that housing is a human right and our government has the role of ensuring that everyone in our community has the right and ability to be inside if they so choose.
This is about social housing.
It is about a Green New Deal.
It is about intersectionality.
It is about caring for people and planet and stopping the exploitation of workers and natural resources.
It is about healing ourselves.
In the state of Washington, the most economically disenfranchised in our communities pay the most in taxes, while the wealthiest, who have the most to give, pay the least.
But corporate loopholes allow corporations to duck out on their social responsibility of contributing to the greater good of people and planet, while also committing some of the most egregious acts of harm against both people and planet.
This election, Amazon as a corporation attempted to undermine our democracy by pouring obscene amounts of money into corporate PACs in an effort to avoid taxation and any accountability for their corporate irresponsibilities.
And while this is about taxation of the largest corporations in our city, like Amazon, this is really about setting a new standard of expectation for the social responsibility of corporations.
This is really about making bold strides and bold policy commitments that say we will ensure that those who live here have the right to be here and stay here, have the right to put in place policies that will prevent our displacement, and have the right to be cared for and not exploited.
To be in our city, it means to be accountable for one's impact.
It means that philanthropy is not enough.
We expect We expect that just as every resident contributes to the health and well-being of our city through taxation, so must wealthy corporations which have far more to give.
We won this last election through people power, through truth-telling, through commitment to the health of people and planet.
We must stay the course and win this fight to see the largest and wealthiest corporations in our city pay their fair and equitable amount.
We all We all must contribute to the health and well-being of our city.
And by the power of the people, this is a fight we will win.
And I encourage you, do everything you can to bring out your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends, your family, to be shouting, tax Amazon, tax corporations.
There are going to be people who tell us that we're shouting too loud about something that's in the past, or we're shouting too loud about something that's not going to happen, or we're shouting too loud about something we've already tried.
If there's anything we know, it is persistence, community, and people power that will help us win this fight.
Let's keep shouting.
Thank you so much to Nikita for those really, really powerful words.
And I'm really excited to introduce our next speaker, who will be Maurice Mitchell.
Maurice is the National Executive Director of the Working Families Party, and I think it's really exciting to see the national solidarity and how much working people across the country are looking to this fight.
Good evening, Seattle!
Good evening, Seattle!
My name is Maurice Mitchell, and I'm the National Director of the Working Families Party.
I want to start by thanking comrades Sharma Sawat and Sarah Nelson for welcoming me onto the stage tonight, as well as all the organizers from the multitude of progressive groups that brought us all here together.
So give it up for all the organizers who brought us here.
Now, I'd like to pause for a moment to recognize just how powerful this space is.
We have members from so many political homes represented here to be in solidarity, in strategy, and in struggle with one another as we move on to the next chapter in the fight against Amazon.
This is a nationwide struggle that has brought us together across lines of difference.
As we enter 2020, it's imperative that we continue to hold spaces like these.
not only to celebrate our hard-fought victories, but to galvanize ourselves for the many fights ahead.
And with that, I'm going to spend the next few minutes framing my own experience of how we got here and where I believe our movement can go from here.
As we are all too well aware, the roots of this struggle go deep.
For decades, we have been carrying the weight of an economic and political system that was never meant for us.
These systems were by no means organic.
They were intentionally engineered by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the big banks and corporations that sought even more power.
In this neoliberal economic worldview, the government exists only to assist corporations and their leaders, with the empty assurance that some benefits will eventually trickle down to the rest of us.
Yeah, I'm still waiting too.
Far too long, working people have paid the price of unchecked corporate power.
Corporations and their high-powered lobbyists gobble up billions in tax breaks each year.
Meanwhile, wealth inequality has been rising for more than 40 years.
displacing working families nationwide, and driving the affordable housing crisis to unprecedented levels.
Trump's tax cuts have only worsened decades of an increasingly unequal and regressive tax system, alongside the deep underfunding of public services.
Of course, no one should be confused about the dominance of the neoliberal framework over economic policymaking here in America.
And as we enter the most critical election year in our lifetimes, it is even more terrifying to confront the reality that corporations are buying their way into government.
But right here, right now, we are poised on the precipice of transformational change.
Right?
Now, here are three things that bring me immense hope in these dark times.
First, We have seen a massive shift in public consciousness around the idea that corporations and the rest of the 1% should be paying their fair share in their taxes.
In fact, polling shows that the majority of voters and workers support increasing taxes on millionaires, billionaires, and big businesses, a sentiment that's growing across both party lines.
So this is cutting across all lines of division.
This shift in public consciousness didn't just happen, it's bloomed from the backs of social movements and local organizing that has forced this issue to the forefront.
There's a hunger of change.
And if we can scale up our collective organizing to meet this new national demand, I believe we can achieve something transformational.
Now secondly, Groups like Working Families Party, Socialist Alternative, DSA, and others are institutionalizing that shift by recruiting and running a multiracial, cross-class coalition of leaders up and down the ballot.
We just inaugurated one tonight.
Now more than ever, we have elected leaders, many of them young, many of them black and brown, many of them immigrants, that are committed to holding corporations accountable to paying what they owe.
While many Republicans and sadly many Democrats continue to cozy up to corporate executives and high-powered lobbyists, these leaders are fearlessly calling out the corruption that has devastated the political landscape.
And last but certainly not least, our people have shown it's possible to take on these corporate giants and win.
In New York City, community organizers in Queens came together with immigrants, workers, local small businesses, and beat the back of the richest person in the world.
In addition to the $3 billion giveaway of public money, HQ2 likely would have ramped up already high local housing prices and strained the crowded transit system.
Community organizations and unions channeled the justified anger and concern of local residents, taking to the streets and the halls of power.
I count their victory over Amazon as one big ideological step in the right direction.
And just months ago, right here in Seattle, Amazon spent nearly $1.5 million and triggered a multi-million dollar drive for big business interests to try and buy control of the Seattle City Council and oust Sister Sawat.
Working people came together.
to take on the poster child for unchecked corporate power, and you won.
Now, it's astounding victories like these that prove that working people can accomplish when we come together and reject the idea that economic and political power belongs solely to the wealthy and well-connected, we could accomplish the impossible.
Beating back the world's richest man isn't a genuine shot for activists, lawmakers, and ordinary people across the country who are sick of a status quo in which politicians grovel before the corporate masters of the universe.
Competing to see who could come up with the most expensive package of goodies for them.
That's not democracy, that's corruption.
It's an adrenaline shot for all those tired of watching the corporate Democrats attempt to appease big business, only to make working people vulnerable to the corporations driving down living standards for ordinary people in a one-sided class war.
This is the momentum we must carry with us as we turn to what's next.
We will only stop Amazon and companies like it from extorting and exploiting our communities by going big, bold, and nationalizing our fight against corporate power.
In fact, internationalizing that fight.
Now, in order to do that, we must work together to elect leaders who are like Sister Sawat in Seattle, who are like State Senator Jessica Ramos in New York, one of the leaders that are on the front line of that fight in Queens.
Or like Kendra Brooks, our independent working families candidate in Philly, who last November was elected as the first third party council member in Philly history.
who ran against tax abatements and for investing in our communities.
That's the mission of so many of us today, that's the mission of so many of our organizations, and that's the mission of the Working Families Party.
To bring together the vibrancy and people power of social movements with electoral might.
We're building a multiracial populist movement to elect progressive champions from city halls and state legislatures to the halls of Congress.
To elect a new generation of activists, organizers, public school teachers, nurses, iron workers, to office.
Because when we build electoral power alongside movement power, we win.
The Working Families Party is committed to this fight, to make sure the CEOs and the corporate giants chip in their fair share, to make sure people get the services and support that they need, to make our government at every level, local, state, and federal, accountable to us instead of the corporate titans.
Together, we're going to take on the richest man and arguably the richest and the most powerful company in the world.
And we are going to win.
Thank you.
Goodnight, Seattle.
Thank you, Maurice.
When we fight, we win.
When we fight, we win.
All right, thank you.
We truly have the solidarity of people across the country.
And next I want to bring to the stage, that includes many, many union members across the country, and I want to bring to the stage David Parsons, who is the president of UAW 4121 and the many, many rank and file members of that union who came here today to support the Amazon tax.
So David and the members of UAW 4121.
Hi.
Yeah, yeah.
Come on up, guys.
These are members of UAW 4-1-2-1 coming here.
So my name is David Parsons.
I'm the president of our local union.
And while people are coming up, I first just want to say thank you to Shama, to her team, Thank you to all of you for the tremendous victory this year, because it has created this critical space for us to build a grassroots movement to take on the next fight against Amazon.
So thank you, and give yourselves a hand.
So I used to be very proud to say that I was part of a union that represented 4,500 academic workers at the University of Washington.
Still very proud of that.
Now I'm even more proud to say that our union represents 6,500 workers that are represented behind me. who are student employees and who are postdocs and who are ready to bring a fighting spirit to this campaign.
The person who's gonna speak for us tonight is Anzela Nirala, who is a postdoc and organizer.
She's a member of our executive board and part of the group who successfully organized a union to join our local just in this last year, won their first contract in the summer.
So please give her a hand and give her some support.
Hello.
I'm very happy to be here to be representing the academic student employees and postdocs of the University of Washington.
UW takes huge pride in being a leader in scientific research, and it's the work of many past and present graduate students and postdocs that has made it possible.
However, our salaries have not kept pace with the cost of living in Seattle, and oftentimes we have to go to work every single day of the week to take care of our experiments and work after hours, which forces us to live close to our workplaces where the rent is exorbitantly high.
So, for example, one of the postdocs who works on the South Lake Union campus and lives close, she spends over 70% of her income on rent.
She can't even afford to go home to visit her family during the holidays.
And after 22 years of going to school, she's still relying on her family for financial help.
And this is the thing, she's not an anomaly.
There are many postdocs in the same boat as her.
Spending over 30% of our income on rent is considered being rent burdened, but 30% of the income is what's left after we're done paying our rent.
So we formed a union to be able to directly address these issues affecting us.
And after over a year of negotiations, sit-ins at the president's office, and airing our grievances at the city council, we finally ratified our first contract last June.
And this This wouldn't have been possible without the support of our elected officials and council members, Shoma Sawant and Teresa Mosqueda, and so on.
However, outside of UW, still, giant employers like Amazon are amassing obscene amounts of money and driving up rent costs for workers like us.
And we workers, we may wear a different hat.
Some might be construction workers, some are researchers, some are custodians, some are landscapers, but we're all here fighting the same fight for power, the fight to tax Amazon.
So thank you for being here today.
So thank you so much to David and to Ensla, and I think it's really incredible to see this show of solidarity from all the members of UAW 4121. Our next speaker is going to be Tsering Bartso, who is another really inspiring worker, leader, and activist.
Saring is a leader in Unite Here Local 8, who is fighting alongside her union brothers and sisters for a good contract at the Edgewater Hotel.
Let's welcome Saring.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Tsering Parso.
I have worked in housekeeping department at the Edgewater Hotel for almost eight years.
I'm a proud leader of Unite Here Local 8. We were proud to support Sharma Sawant in her re-election to city council because she supports working class families like mine and is demanding that the rich pay their fair share.
Yes.
I live in Seattle with my husband and my 15-year-old son.
My husband and I were born and raised in India, and I came to this country in 1997. Like me, many of my co-workers are women and immigrants.
Since last summer, we have been fighting for new contract that will provide us job security, year-round healthcare coverage and raise that reflect increased cost in our city.
Edgewater revenues have grown by 70% since 2010, but workers like me are failing behind, and we struggle every single day to make our ends meet.
Between 2010 and 2018, our average rent in Seattle area rose 69%.
It's hard to pay the rent or the mortgage.
Some of us have to work two jobs just to get by, and many of us live outside of Seattle.
In September, we voted 93% to strike because the hotel refuses to provide us with a fair contract.
They have lashed out at us as we exercise our union rights and hired private security guards who have followed me in the hotel as I work.
They even tried to suspend me from my job, but we fought my suspension and we won.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I invite everyone to support us by signing our online pledge and walking the picket line with me this Saturday afternoon at 1.30.
Who's with us?
And lastly, my coworker Jeremiah will lead us in a chant.
All right.
Like it says.
One job should be enough.
One job should be enough.
One job should be enough.
One job should be enough.
One job should be enough.
One job should be enough.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much to Tsering and to, again, an amazing show of support from all these workers in Unite Here Local 8, and we support their struggle as well.
I'm really excited to introduce the next speaker, Shirley Henderson.
Shirley is a member of Socialist Alternative.
She's a leader in the LGBTQ community, and she's also a small business owner.
And she's, yeah, the owner of my favorite joint coffee shop and hair salon, Squirrel Chops in the Central District.
Let's welcome Shirley.
Brothers and sisters and fellow activists, I'm just taking in this crowd.
It's such a beautiful sight in this beautiful moment.
And it's a moment that I think is causing Jeff Bezos a lot of fear and trembling.
Among all the things that Eva mentioned, I'm also a renter with many of you in this room.
And I'm here tonight to say the rent in Seattle is too damn high.
Who's with me?
Right?
I've lived in this city for many years, and in the last period, I've watched friends and community members economically evicted, my wife and I included.
The population of those who have been forced onto the streets has mushroomed under the onslaught of the affordability crisis.
While the rich get richer, my friends, small businesses and working people get squeezed out.
and we bear the brunt of the corporate greed.
Are we going to let that continue?
Now, many of us in this room know that Amazon and the corporate media will try to whip up fears and hide behind small businesses.
But as a small business owner, I'm here tonight to stand boldly with this movement, and I encourage other small businesses to join in.
Because this is not about taxing small businesses and working people, it's about taxing big businesses.
Because guess what?
The rest of us already pay more than our fair share.
As so many of the speakers before me have already articulated really eloquently, the tide is turning.
Working people are learning to get organized and fight back.
So let's learn from the lessons and successes that we've experienced.
From Shama's office who has taught us to mobilize and build mass movements and win fights like $15 an hour.
From the teachers in 2018 who boldly took strike action against attacks on union and public education and won some of the biggest gains we've seen in decades.
from the grassroots campaign that we just waged in this city to get the voice for working people back in City Hall to re-elect Shama Sawant.
I'm looking at all of you tonight and saying, let's boldly stand together.
We will no longer be bullied by corporations and wealthy in this city who have not only moved into our house, but have refused to pay rent and left the house in shambles.
Let's tax Amazon to build public social housing.
Thank you, Shirley.
We know that Amazon and big business is going to try to pit us against each other.
And we know that the city is unaffordable, not just for renters, but for small businesses and homeowners, like Shirley said.
So it's so important to know that we have small businesses like Squirrel Chops on our side.
It's really an honor now.
I want to welcome our next speaker, an incredible leader in the community.
Let's welcome Linda Soriano of the Lummi Nation.
Thank you.
My name is Linda Soriano.
I'm enrolled with the great Lummi Nation here in Washington State.
I am First Nations, the First Peoples of the land.
We are on Duwamish territory.
Seattle is named after the chief of the Duwamish, Chief Seattle.
Welcome to the land, everyone.
Thank you for making the time to be here.
I have been involved with homeless outreach, homeless advocacy, and homeless activism since 1999. Our military veterans make up 8% of the homeless population.
Native Americans and the Alaskan Natives in Seattle are seven times more likely to be homeless than any other race.
The First Nations people were never homeless prior to 1492. The most critically vulnerable who must be prioritized for housing is the homeless, especially our Native Americans, our Alaskan Natives, and our military veterans.
Solutions for homelessness and the need for affordable housing is at a crisis level.
Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and our homeless veterans, they not only need social housing, they need permanent supportive housing, which includes on-site services.
Supportive housing does work.
Briefly, I want to share with you three individuals that I have had direct success with in helping them out of their homelessness.
Mike, he was a homeless military veteran who had a VA housing case manager for more than eight years.
He now has permanent housing thanks to my networking, which took under two months.
Teddy, Teddy is a Native American and a homeless military veteran.
I advocated for Teddy with the Chief Seattle Club and the REACH program.
He is now also in permanent housing.
Elmer, he was homeless for more than 30 years.
He asked me one day to help him find his family in Ohio, which I was successful at.
He has been reunited with his family in Ohio since 2015. We know that housing works, especially where there are support programs in place.
Housing is a human right.
We all know that.
Housing is a human right.
Housing is a human right.
Housing is a human right.
Housing is a human right.
Remember, as Shama always says, when we fight, we can win.
When we fight, we can win.
I personally would love to thank Shama Sawant for proposing legislation to prevent winter evictions that will help stop the homeless deaths.
And I would also like to thank her for leading the fight to tax Amazon to build social housing with services.
When we fight, we can win.
When we fight, we can win.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you so much to Linda.
I think it's been really exciting to see so many amazing leaders from so many communities out here tonight.
But our next speaker actually wins the award for the longest commute to tonight's rally.
It's a big honor to welcome Susan Fitzgerald, who is a leader in Ireland's Socialist Party, which is the sister organization of Socialist Alternative.
Susan is a leading official in Unite the Union, the largest union in Britain and Ireland.
She was just involved in the successful occupation to save the Harland and Wolfe shipyard in Belfast.
So let's give a big welcome to Susan.
Thanks very much.
I want to salute everyone here tonight.
I want to salute you for the third time re-electing a phenomenal fighter for working class people, a phenomenal fighter for people in this city, and a peerless councilwoman, Seán Missowand.
It's an honour to be here.
And I can just understand the one round of rapturous applause after another, because I can understand the sweetness of the victory that you've just won.
Coming as it did, after such a bitter and brutal battle, all other speakers have eloquently outlined the nature of that battle and the nature of the adversary that you stood against and won.
And he's only reflective of the boss class as a whole, because the bosses think they can't lose.
But we know different.
We know they're wrong, because we know that when we fight, we can win.
And the reality, the flip side of that, is if we don't fight, we've already lost.
So tonight is a very sweet night for everyone here and for people in much further afield.
Back home, we recently organized a strike.
Not against the richest man in the world, but one of the richest men in Ireland.
It was a big deal to us.
This guy...
This individual is a much lauded industrialist.
He's loved in the media.
He's seen as, you know, someone who's done good for the country.
He's a self-described beef baron.
The battle that we fought was at a meat plant where grown adults had on occasions soiled themselves at work because they weren't able to leave the production line and go to the bathroom.
Number one, the idea of a grown adult asking to go to the bathroom was beneath our dignity as human beings.
But number two, the rest, it just should be unthinkable.
Now previously this guy, had beaten my trade union, this time we were better organised, we mobilised six nationalities on the picket line, we won on pay and we're winning on conditions in that workplace.
And in the process we're building a stronger unified trade union.
Now just before we faced that workplace, that battle, we faced a religious captain of industry an individual, a multimillionaire, who claimed to be taking instruction directly from the Lord.
He actually stated that God was a 25% shareholder in his business.
And this justified the 15 million pounds that he funneled into his own private church at a time when the business that employed 1,200 bus builders Very important workers with very useful and necessary skills in a town that badly needed those jobs was gone into administration, was gone out of business.
The fortunes of a whole town, all those workers and their families stood in the balance.
We mobilised and made it clear that if he didn't meet our demands, he would have no peace in this life and no peace in the next life that he put so much stock in.
And it just goes to show, again, that when we fight, we can win.
Now, friends, comrades, I've been a socialist since I've been 16 years of age, like many people here.
For the last 10 years, I've been an official for the largest trade union in Britain and Ireland.
And I'm extremely proud to say that I've been involved in some incredible victories.
From the little known fight of Bombardier aircraft workers who faced down Trump in 2017 and won, we wiped his eye on that occasion.
To last year and the incredible Belfast shipyard workers who like yourself defied all the odds saving not just their jobs and contracts but their industry for future generations.
I'm privileged, I'm very lucky to be in a position to draw huge inspiration and confidence from what I'm involved in.
part of my job or our job in reality is to make sure we share the lessons so that any win we register are wins for us all.
And that brings me neatly back to Seattle, happily enough, because the reverberations of your win will travel far beyond this city, not least Not least, like the young Amazon comrade who spoke earlier, not least to the 650,000 Amazon workers right around the world.
Amazon workers in Germany, at multiple sites, are organizing to have union representation, just like in this country, in Minnesota, they're organizing under incredibly difficult conditions to have union representation.
And in Britain, where attempts are afoot, by the 27,000 Amazon workers in the UK to organise there to fight on the same issues for safe conditions at work and against harassment at your place of work.
In Essex, near London in England, workers there on long shifts report falling asleep in the bathroom stalls when they actually manage to take a bathroom break.
If a worker is hurt, doesn't matter how bad it would seem, when they're hurt at work, instead of calling an ambulance, a taxi is called to quickly take them away to hospital and not have an ambulance arrive at the site.
Pregnant workers.
Heavily pregnant workers, some in the sixth month of pregnancy, are given no quarter, no consideration, and have to perform as any other worker do.
It's unconscionable what Amazon do, not just in this city, but around the world to workers and the environment, by the way.
So your victory is a necessary and powerful shot in the arm for all those workers and powerful confirmation that they too can win against Bezos and against Amazon.
want to, if I can, if I can I just want to spend a minute and I want to make some observations from the distance that I had because millions of other workers have been looking on at what you've done and I want to make some points about your battle.
And one of the most impressive things, and the necessary thing, and I believe with your own will and determination, one of the reasons you won, is that you fought a no-holds-barred battle.
You fought in a confined space, at a confined time, and the challenge was for the working class and the forces of socialism in this city to not just expose Amazon, but in doing so to lay bare the worst excesses of this rotten, wasteful system.
You had to expose, and you did it so well, how this giant multinational corporate and capitalist behemoth encapsulates the epitome of what global capitalism has done in the last 30 years worldwide.
Worldwide, we've seen the transfer of the most breathtaking concentration and amounts of wealth in the whole history of humanity into the hands of a tiny elite, while at the same time, billions of humans struggle to survive.
And hundreds of millions live in outright squalor, including in this city.
We have everything to gain, but there's a lot at stake for Amazon.
We have the world to win, but they have it to lose.
They fought back in Seattle.
It wasn't a pushover, I don't have to tell you that.
You're all bearing the bruises and the exhaustion.
But they fought back and they were dirty when they fought back in this city, as they are everywhere.
They played.
On people's worst fears, they threatened and blackmailed what this city would lose.
And they're not finished with the blackmail and the threats yet.
That will continue.
And we need to inoculate ourselves that that will continue.
I'm sure during this battle, not everyone was convinced that you should have taken them on in the way that you did.
But in the battle for hearts and minds, you won.
But that battle continues.
And I want to make a quote from a hero of mine, Malcolm X. And it's about winning hearts and minds.
It's about standing up to the mantra of those that oppose you.
Don't condemn if you see a person has a dirty glass of water.
Just show them the clean glass of water that you have.
When they inspect it, you won't have to say that yours is better.
And that shows the reality of how you can win in the most difficult circumstances with the right ideas, with a battle that's fought fully, to the absolute extent of our abilities, where we strain every sinew, every nerve, and that's what you've done in this city.
But obviously this battle wasn't won just in the last couple of weeks or months.
It wasn't won overnight.
It's clear that Seama's election in 2012 was a precursor for a shift to the left.
The victory in terms it was won upon puts down a marker for Bernie Sanders and his supporters.
And that marker is to put forward the fullest oppositions.
We don't pull our punches when we're fighting against capitalism.
What's happened in Seattle would strengthen the desire for a real left and socialist alternative to be built.
Now, I'm going to have to skip all my points because I'm running out of time.
Apologies for that.
I think the new reality is that the criminal pursuit of profit has caused catastrophic climate change that is literally burning the planet from the Amazon, the real Amazon, to Australia.
Things are happening faster than we all expected.
It's inevitable that there will be a response.
Last week, we've seen 100,000 people take to the streets in Australia.
We've seen the incredible phenomena that is Greta Thunberg.
What an inspirational young activist.
Greta Thunberg, like Seattle, shows that the world is actually quite small.
It's relatively small.
And she shows, like Seattle does, how small forces can reach around the world and have a profound effect.
I need to finish on these two points, hopefully.
What we see re-emerging internationally is the concept of striking.
The traditional methods The traditional methods and the powerful weaponry of the working class is being taken up by school students, by those fighting for bodily autonomy, by those fighting against oppression.
And let's just be clear what that represents.
The essence of strike, of striking and strike action in the real sense is proof of the power that the working class have to grind this entire system to a halt.
Whatever we do to our labour, Whatever we switch on through our labour, we can also switch off.
And at this stage, that shows the power of the working class who, alongside young people, represent the beginnings of the outlines of a real alternative.
That alternative needs to be built on solidarity and on internationalism.
I'm going to move on now and finish on the recent struggle that I've been involved in because it would be a shame not to.
Harlan and Wolff, is an iconic workplace, it's known throughout Ireland, on Forder of Field.
It's the shipyard that built the Titanic.
So, people in Belfast are still quite defensive, every one of them will tell you it was fine when I left the city of Belfast.
The shipyard faced total closure in August of last year.
We argued at that stage that the best outcome was for the yard to be taken into public ownership and on that basis the incredible skills of this workforce should be employed in the development of green energy infrastructure.
That was a no-brainer to the workers because it's what they've been doing for the last 10 years.
I need to move on.
So we occupied the yard for nine weeks, arguably breaking every law in the book for every day that we stood there.
The yard was saved.
It wasn't nationalized, but it was won.
Every job was won.
The contracts were preserved, saving it for future generations.
When the first ships rolled into the yard at Christmas for repair, the workers could have stopped.
They had to work over Christmas after nine weeks of occupying.
They could have stopped and clapped themselves on the back and say, look what we did.
The first thing they said was, the work is coming in, where's our apprentices?
Where's the young people walking back through the gates of this great industry that we fought to save?
The last point here is, in that battle, it's a testament to the power of ideas.
There was an article written at that stage in the main newspaper in Ireland, and it said, I'll quote from it, The most visible icon of Protestant identity in Belfast is the loom and gantry cranes that stand over the vast dry dock of the Haarlemhove shipyard.
But who is leading them?
It was a reference to the workers.
Who is speaking for them?
You don't have to listen to Susan Fitzgerald for more than a few seconds.
to realise she's a working class Dubliner.
He makes some nice points about being articulate and passionate.
But what he says then is that the background of myself in this case shouldn't be of any interest but it is because not long ago someone with her accent even a man, would have been run out of the shipyard.
The author is making a point about the situation in Northern Ireland and he concludes that this battle shows that we're trying to move on from sectarian conflict while this is precarious etc.
It's working.
The reality of the situation is that capitalism creates a situation where sectarian conflict can come back on the agenda, as it has over the last while.
So it's still quite a dangerous situation for sectarianism between Catholics and Protestants to develop.
The reason I, from a Catholic background originally, was accepted by mainly Protestant workers I was advocating struggle and solidarity, and a plan to win, rooted in a revolutionary and socialist outlook.
That's the language of our movement, and it's stronger than anything that might divide us.
I have to say this because Seama would go mad if I don't, because it's a lovely compliment.
The shipyard at Harlan-on-the-Moor, the shop steward at Harlan-on-the-Moor said to me coming over, he said, make sure you don't just thank Seama for you, make sure you thank her for me, and from the entire workforce.
Because when we seen a councilwoman, in Seattle taking an interest and supporting us, we knew we were doing the right thing.
That's international solidarity.
Thank you, comrades.
Thank you, Susan.
Our fight is international, and I just want to reiterate what Eva said about next Tuesday, that Council Member Sawant's office is introducing two resolutions, one in solidarity with the working people of Iran and against Trump's aggression against Iran and against the war in Iran.
And second, a resolution in solidarity with the people of India who are facing vicious new laws threatening the citizenship of millions of Muslims in India.
And I want to recognize some Indian activists who are here tonight.
They've already spread some flyers around the room, but if you have any questions, if you can please raise your hand.
If you have questions or if you want to show solidarity to them later in the night, please talk to them.
And that's next Tuesday at 1.30.
at City Hall.
Next, I'd like to welcome Chris Natale.
He's one of the co-chairs of the Tax Amazon Working Group of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Chris.
Councilmember Sawant, thank you for leading the fight on taxing Amazon and congratulations on your victory.
So, I grew up in the Rust Belt.
I experienced what it was like for government to give up its role on fighting for the working people and instead acquiesce to the interests of whatever large employers were left after the collapse of the steel industries and manufacturing.
Transportation, public housing, funding, and environmental protections against things like fracking were all weakened because the rich and powerful said, trust us, we know best.
When things didn't get better, the blame was directed at those who were failed most by the powerful.
You didn't get the right degree.
You didn't work hard enough.
You're not enough.
I work as a programmer here in Seattle.
In the 10 years I've lived here, I see the very people who make a city worth living in push to the margins.
Rents, transit costs, sea levels, and healthcare costs keep going up.
The billionaires who supposedly bring prosperity to the city say the same thing I heard growing up.
Trust us, we know best.
The only thing they know best is how to take power and wealth for themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Councilmember Sawant knows that it's the people who know best.
Your comrades in the Democratic Socialist of America stand united with you in the fight to take back power from the billionaires.
To that end, Seattle DSA's Bernie Committee is hard at work making sure that around this time next year, we have a socialist president in the White House.
Join us in canvassing for Bernie this Saturday, 10.30 a.m.
at Maplewood Playfield in Beacon Hill.
It's on the Seattle DSA calendar, and we're also hosting a debate watch party at Clock Out Lounge tomorrow that you all should come to.
We have a world to win together.
When we fight, we win.
When we fight, we win.
When we fight, we win.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Chris.
And I think that flows really well into the next speaker, Ludella Bowen, who is a leader of the Brighton Apartment Tenants, who just won a one-year rent freeze.
Yeah, when we fight, we win.
This was won through solid organizing and working with our council office.
And Ludella will be joined on stage by the Brighton Tenants.
So let's give a big round of applause.
It's good to be here.
It's good to see so many of my sisters and brothers out tonight.
And first of all, I want to thank my sister Kshama.
And we want you to know we only started a few months ago organizing for rent control at the Brighton.
It's a portion of us from the Brighton, and we want to thank her and all of her workers that stuck by us and worked with us, and Jonathan, and all of her employees that came out to our job, to our meetings to help us.
And we want you to know that we won.
We have...
We were able to get them to give us a freeze on our rent, where it's not going to go up, at least for a year now.
We know the fight is not over.
But we are thankful that somebody inspired us to fight on.
And also, Another thing, as I was thinking, I speak to a lot of widowers who are still in their own houses.
And their taxes are so expensive, it's almost like they're worried about losing their homes.
And we think about us as seniors, we paid our dues.
We worked hard to live in those houses and make a home, and now we're going to be forced out.
They are.
And we feel like we are, too.
But as I was sitting there, I was thinking about, for far too long, we've went along to get along.
We listened to their ideas.
And we said, OK, trying to keep the peace.
But we're saying now, no more.
No more.
And looking at this.
And looking at this crowd out here tonight, I'm even more encouraged to fight on a little bit more.
How about you?
Yeah.
And since we're not going to go along and we send them a message to Amazon and all of these people, you know, I thought about it.
They have the money, but we're the majority.
And if we all stick together, we win.
Is that right?
Are you with me?
Yes!
Are you with me?
Yes!
Are you with me?
Yes!
We win!
Love you all!
Love you all!
I'm done!
All right, next let's welcome Anali Day.
Anali is a health care worker and a member of the largest private sector union in our state, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 21.
My name's Analee Day.
I'm a medical assistant and a proud member of UFCW Local 21, which represents medical assistants and healthcare workers like me and my union sisters and brothers who work in grocery and retail.
We are all getting priced out of Seattle.
We are tired of being told that the housing market will correct itself and that building more luxury developments that workers like me will never be able to afford is the way to solve this housing crisis.
that the skyrocketing rents will somehow magically come down if we just let the corporate developers and big business make more and more profit.
We know better.
We know that we need affordable housing built and owned publicly.
And we know who should pay to fund it.
The biggest corporations.
We have a tool at our disposal, and that is the office of Shama Sawant.
But Shama cannot stand up to big business alone.
Workers need to get organized to win this.
That's how we won 15. That's how we won the Amazon tax in 2018, which was shamefully repealed behind closed-door deals.
We won those things with a movement of workers who stood together to say loud and clear, enough is enough.
To win a fair tax on the wealthiest in our city, we are going to need the strongest possible campaign led by workers, by the rank and file of unions like my own, UFCW.
Will you join me in demanding that Amazon and Jeff Bezos pay their fair share?
Thank you so much to Anali.
And as she said, it's going to take a movement to win.
And just want to make sure everybody knows, in case you have to leave early or anything, that we have a next big event, the Tax Amazon Action Conference, coming up on the 25th of January.
So make sure to get one of those flyers.
And next up, I'm really excited to introduce our next speaker, John Burbank.
John Burbank is the Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Institute, which is a public policy center that has worked really closely with our tax Amazon movement and other leading justice movements in the community to achieve breakthrough wins like the $15 minimum wage, childcare, and taxing the rich to fund basic human needs.
So let's give a big round of applause for John.
Well, thank you, friends.
I want to say, first of all, I'm humbled to be up here and to have been able to share this stage with the folks, like, who are fighting for affordable rents.
Thank you very much.
And for the union members from UFCW and UAW 4121 and the Washington Federation of State Employees and Unite Here.
And really, for all of you, we are all brothers and sisters in this struggle.
And I also want to recognize the folks from Nicholsville who have been fighting a valiant fight for protecting the homelessness.
I want us to take a step back to 2012. So if you remember, 2012 was before 2013. And that was before the Seattle City Council passed paid sick days.
That was before a fellow named Richard Conlon, the city council person who voted against paid sick days, was taken on by Shama Sawant.
That was before Shama Sawant won, thanks to the help of all the people, the citizens of the city of Seattle.
And that was before the beginning of this social revolution, which we shall continue tonight and into the next year.
So what happened in 2012?
Well, that was when the Republican candidate for president, Mitt Romney, anybody remember him?
He denounced 47% of Americans as takers from the government.
So Romney's words were the language of class warfare, of the elite corporate sector denouncing the American working class.
So, you know, I do a lot of policy at the Economic Opportunity Institute, so we decided we should actually dig up some numbers and consider who are the real takers in our society.
So, let's consider the corporate BMOs who reside in our state, and particularly, let's just consider Amazon.
I mean, we could talk about Boeing or Microsoft, but let's just talk about Amazon for now.
So, last year, Amazon was praised by the mainstream as a really good corporation.
because it supported legislation which would make it contribute to a program for free tuition for low-income students in Washington.
Sounds good, right?
Amazon even agreed to increase its effective business and occupation tax by two-thirds to fund this program.
Huh.
That didn't happen.
Somehow, as the legislation made its way towards passage, a ceiling was stuck into the bill so that Amazon pays no more than $7 million a year for this program.
That is three one thousandths of a percent of Amazon's revenue of $233 billion in 2018. That's the sort of corporate trickery we're designed.
But actually, it's not just corporate trickery.
It's purposeful.
It's aided and abetted by politicians and the lack of political will.
Let's consider how much Amazon has received from the state of Washington in excused taxes.
In 2013, Amazon got $35 million in excused taxes.
In 2014, Amazon got $31 million.
In 2015, Amazon got $44 million.
In 2016, Amazon got $54 million.
In 2017, Amazon got $56 million.
That adds up to $220 million and doesn't even include 2018 and 2019 gifts from the state to Amazon.
It doesn't even look at what Amazon has done at the federal level.
So in 2018, Amazon doubled its profits, doubled its profits to $11 billion and received a federal tax rebate.
Who here got a tax rebate of $129 million?
So it's not just at the state and the federal level, it's at the city level.
The city of Seattle just built a new electrical substation for Amazon at the cost of 220 million dollars.
Now, you think who pays for this?
Actually, all of us, all of us, Seattle City Light ratepayers pay for that.
That's right.
We are subsidizing Amazon out of our own bills for electricity.
So let's consider who is the taker in our town.
So who is the taker in our town?
That taker has enabled its CEO, Jeff Bezos, to be the wealthiest person in the world while pushing housing costs beyond the reach of Seattle's working class.
That taker spends billions on space travel design.
Apparently he thinks that space travel is a human right.
making transit and transportation go slower and slower in Seattle.
That taker undermines small businesses while making its own warehouse workers act as robots, not as human beings.
You know, we've had enough of Amazon taking from us and pulling apart our people.
It is time the city made Amazon contribute now to build a commonwealth for all of us.
We need bread.
and we need roses, and let's continue the revolution.
Thank you.
Ho, ho.
Hey, hey.
Amazon has got to pay.
Ho, ho.
Hey, hey.
Amazon has got to pay.
Ho, ho.
Hey, hey.
Amazon has got to pay.
Ho, ho.
Hey, hey.
Amazon has got to pay.
All right.
Our next speaker is Amanda Sorrell, a volunteer with 350 Seattle, a grassroots movement for climate justice that organizes people to make system change by resisting fossil fuels and supporting a just transition to renewables, welcome Amanda.
Hello, my name is Amanda and I am an organizer with 350 Seattle.
We are so honored to be in this room and in this movement with all of you and we are so excited to tax Amazon.
For the past eight months, 350 Seattle, in partnership with Got Green, has been working toward a Green New Deal for Seattle to eliminate climate pollution by 2030, address current and historical injustices, and create thousands of well-paid, unionized jobs in the process.
We know a just transition away from fossil fuels will cost billions of dollars or more.
But we also know the cost of not reducing our climate pollution would be so much higher.
We can afford a Green New Deal, but we cannot afford the climate catastrophe that is already impacting communities around the world.
So we must demand the funds for our revolution.
One way we can do that is by taxing the largest corporations in our city.
And when we succeed in taxing Amazon, we can build affordable social housing and fund other Green New Deal priorities.
We must ensure the people building the housing are well-paid, that they are unionized, and that they are provided with a safe, healthy work environment.
We must use low-carbon, sustainable building materials and methods, and make sure that the housing doesn't displace existing communities.
And most importantly, throughout this process, we must center the ideas and voices of people who are systemically oppressed and disproportionately affected by climate change already.
Thank you.
These are all touchstones of the Green New Deal that we've been fighting for, and we are so stoked to be building this movement with you.
To win, we are going to need a massive amount of people power, and tonight I can see that our broader community is ready to fight together and win.
Let's tax Amazon to fund a Green New Deal and make Seattle affordable for all.
Thank you so much to Amanda.
The fight for social housing is part of a fight for a Green New Deal.
And as we said earlier tonight, Sarah Nelson has asked her union sister Kayla to deliver her speech to us tonight on her behalf.
So we're really excited to welcome Kayla Williams, who is a flight attendant and a leader in the Association of Flight Attendants.
Thank you, Kayla.
Hey.
Hello.
My name is Kayla Williams.
I'm not Sarah Nelson again, so sorry.
I'm going to try my best.
Try my best.
But as I said, my name is Kayla Williams.
I'm a United flight attendant and a proud AFA member.
I am working alongside some amazing flight attendants for the Delta campaign, and I'm a campaign lead.
And I'm speaking on behalf of Sarah Nelson today.
Sarah Nelson is my international president of the Association of Flight Attendants, representing 50,000 flight attendants at over 20 different airlines and currently organizing alongside the 25,000 Delta flight attendants who are fighting to join our flight attendant union to win respect and a voice on the job.
Right?
I've got to say, I've had enough.
I have had enough.
Enough of a system that labels people as employees and others as contractors, just that massive corporations can control your work without offering fair wages or benefits.
Enough of a system where corporations hold cities hostage for multi-billion dollar giveaways while everyday people watch their services get cut and our neighbors get pushed out of their homes into tents.
And then to have their tents bulldozed by politicians who give away the store to the billionaires.
Enough of billionaires actually fighting, fighting over to see who gets to be the plutocrat in chief, while telling the rest of us that our dreams of a better future are just unrealistic.
Enough of a system that tells us that trillion-dollar, trillion-dollar tax breaks for the wealthiest are just going to, you know, pay for themselves.
While when we, the working people, demand for healthcare for all and a clean future for this planet, we're told, oh no, that costs too much.
I've had enough of a system where one man's wealth grows by $87,500 per minute, that's 30 seconds, while most of the people who work in the company that has made him succeed, they don't earn that much in a year, one whole year.
I've had enough of an owner class dividing us into imaginary working class and middle class just so that we can compete against each other while the tiny few make away with the top of the spoils.
I have had enough.
Have you?
And I've got to say, right now, we are against the greatest odds that we have seen in over 100 years.
Last year, America's billionaires saw their wealth grow by over $500 billion.
Worldwide, billionaires saw their wealth grow by 25%.
And here in Seattle, we all know all too well how they use that money.
Jeff Bezos alone poured a record $1.45 million into city council races to try to elect candidates who wouldn't challenge Amazon's power, who wouldn't demand that massive corporations chip in to make Seattle home for everyone.
Oh no, they don't want that, no.
But I gotta say, Seattle doesn't go down that easy.
This is not the first time Seattle has been on the tip of the spear when the owner class tries to crush the working people.
In 1919, workers in Seattle staged a general strike that set off a wave of solidarity, uniting workers across industries to fight the Gilded Age.
The courage and solidarity in Seattle, that courage and solidarity in Seattle set the stage for non-violent strikes and protests to improve workers across the city, across the country, sorry, yes.
And 20 years ago, working people stood on these very streets in a fog of tear gas.
Labor, community, and environmental activists all linked arm in arm to say, hell no, WTO.
Yes, and those protests, they sparked a generation of activism, built a connection between movements that were once pit against each other and laid the groundwork to fight the multinational corporations and hold them accountable and stop the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
The WTO protests are a keystone and the foundation that gives us hope for a Green New Deal that saves our planet and creates good union jobs so that no one is left behind in the 21st century.
When I flew into SeaTac this morning, I celebrated landing in the epicenter of AFA's successful chaos strikes that changed our jobs into a career overnight.
I celebrated the fact that I was landing in the first city to pass a $15 minimum wage.
And as I drove into Seattle, I fist pumped to be in the first major city to prove that raising wages lifts the whole economy.
We, the working people, are waking up.
We realize that no one's coming to save us, and we are going to do it ourselves.
OK?
Across this country, working people are standing together and demanding a fair shot.
I want everyone in this room to picture in your minds all of the people who have inspired us and galvanized us, all teachers and parents from West Virginia to Chicago to LA and right here in Seattle, standing to demand that our students deserve better.
thousands of hotel workers, grocery workers from Boston to San Diego demanding for fair pay and benefits and protection from sexual harassment.
And you know what?
They won those demands.
48,000 autoworkers demanding an end to outsourcing and a path to full-time status from part-time workers.
In the flight attendant world, flight attendants at Horizon Airlines, where flight attendants work as much as the other flight, they are paid as much as 45% less than their peers at Alaska Airlines, even though they do the exact same job, just because they're classified as regional.
Tech workers and rideshare workers and journalists and grad students who refuse to be treated as a disposable workforce and are standing together to demand better for themselves and for our world.
And as we're working together, building a working class solidarity movement and power, our opponents, let's call them out, the corporate elite, the tech giants, Wall Street, the real estate tycoons, They are all preparing to use their vast resources to stop our momentum.
Big businesses see working class movement, working class competence growing, and they're willing to spend big money to stop it.
But I have a secret for you, we can beat it.
And we've done it before, we're gonna do it again.
And the only way we're going to make that happen, the only way we can have that happen is if we remember that our real power is in the power of solidarity.
And solidarity is something just so beautiful.
Solidarity is a force that is stronger than gravity.
It lifts us up.
It binds us together.
It gives us strength and courage and power to accomplish things that no one person can do alone.
And we all have big fights ahead of us.
And we know billionaires aren't just gonna hand out what we're asking for.
But if we stand together, we build power with one another, we speak in one voice with clear demands, then they have no choice.
Change comes fast when people realize that the alternative is at high risk for them, right?
To build the solidarity that creates that change, we must build a movement of working people where everyone feels the power of solidarity.
Solidarity can only happen when the person next to you trusts that you have their back and where you can be trusted to have theirs, right?
I think back to November in 1999, not far from here, as tear gas and rubber bullets started raining down, Teamsters stood arm in arm with massive papier-mâché turtles, flight attendants linked to Rainbow Warriors.
And each and every person stood firm, even through the pain and the fear.
And they were able to do that because they trusted the person next to them would have their back.
If you have had enough, I'm going to ask everyone in the audience to please turn to the person next to you.
Turn to the person next to you.
I want you to look at them in the eye and I want you to repeat after me.
I want you to say, I've got your back.
Great.
Now, turn to the person on the other side of you.
And that means the person ahead of you, behind you.
Yes, all around you.
I want you to tell them, I've got your back.
Yes.
Now, can I get everyone, I just really want to feel the solidarity.
Can we all say it together?
Because I really want to feel solidarity in this room tonight.
Repeat after me.
I've got your back.
I've got your back.
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Everyone always introduces our next and final speaker of the night by saying that she needs no introduction.
And then they give her an introduction.
And so I'll do the same thing.
Our next speaker needs no introduction.
She was first elected as a socialist alternative candidate in 2013, campaigning on a $15 minimum wage.
Six months later, the movement that she helped launch delivered on that promise, making Seattle the first major city in the country to win a $15 minimum wage and inspiring a national movement.
Our movement re-elected her in 2015 and again in 2019, despite unprecedented opposition from big business, including Amazon, And she is now helping us launch this movement to make Jeff Bezos and his billionaire friends pay their fair share for a massive expansion of social housing.
And she'll be helping point the way forward to our next event, the Action Conference on January 25th.
Seattle City Council Member Shama Sawant.
A few days ago, somebody asked me, why are you combining your swearing in with the launch of the tax Amazon campaign?
My response to them was, my office is not mine.
It belongs to all the working people of Seattle.
And what better way to demonstrate that than linking the swearing in of our third term socialist city council office to what is going to be an incredible campaign to tax Amazon in 2020. Congratulations to all the workers who have won incredible victories recently.
Many of them were shared with us tonight.
And I wanted to mention two of them specifically, just as a reminder of what is possible, what Sarah Nelson was talking about.
One, you just heard, the working class members of the Brighton Tenants Union just won a major victory against their landlord, corporate landlord.
But did you hear what Ludella said?
She said they won a one-year rent freeze.
This is major.
This shows the potential we have to also win rent control in our city.
And I also wanted everybody to congratulate the amazing activists of Nicholsville Share and Weal, who were, in December, threatened by Jeff Bezos's mayor, Jenny Durkin, that they're not...
I mean, she actually is their mayor, she's not ours.
The North Lake Nicholsville tiny house village was threatened with a closure, but because of the organizing led by the Nicholsville share wheel activists and the solidarity of everybody here in this room and hundreds who are not here today, we were able to push that back.
A couple of days after Christmas last year, in response to the announcement of our tax Amazon campaign launch, the Wall Street Journal editorial board penned an op-ed accusing Seattle's working people and socialists of being out for, quote-unquote, political revenge against big business.
The editors also loudly complained about our $15 minimum wage and basically every other historic victory we have won in this city.
In a sense, the Wall Street Journal is right.
We have seen political revenge in Seattle, but it was quite the opposite.
Big business and the wealthy attempted to take revenge against working people in our city during last year's city council election.
It was the attempted revenge by Jeff Bezos and Amazon executives who are angry that our city's ordinary people have the temerity to demand a big business tax to fund housing and services.
It was the attempted revenge by corporate real estate who are angry that our movement has won landmark renters' rights victories and is building serious momentum for rent control.
For us, for the working people and the majority struggling in our city, it is not about revenge.
It is about our right to our city.
It is about our region facing the worst affordable housing and homelessness crisis in the country with an estimated 156,000 affordable homes needed just to address today's needs.
It is about a for-profit market that in spite of a massive construction boom and billions in profits has not only utterly failed to address the housing crisis but has exacerbated it.
It is about climate crisis and the complete failure of capitalism and its representatives in the political establishment to take any serious steps to avoid catastrophe.
We need to tax big business to fund a major expansion of social housing.
That is publicly owned, high quality, affordable, green and energy efficient homes for working people built by union labor.
And social housing is a linchpin of winning a Green New Deal for Seattle.
Like rent control, where it has been won, social housing has played a key role in providing a lifeline of housing stability and affordability.
And who's on our side?
Look at the incredible array of voices we have heard.
from working people throughout the city, but also working people throughout the nation.
We have international solidarity.
And someone who's not been mentioned yet, we have someone here today who said he is 100% behind Seattle's tax Amazon campaign.
And that is somebody who was a former airport worker who was part of the Fight for 15 in SeaTac, who is a Teamster organizer, an East African immigrant, and a newly elected CTAC City Council member, my brother Takele Gobena.
But it will take a real fight from all of us.
As others have said, big business and their representatives in the political establishment will fiercely oppose us.
Their spending, big business spending to try and defeat tax Amazon could even dwarf what they just spent in the last election.
There are lessons to be learned from the 2018 experience when the tax was repealed.
However, I feel many working people, activists, and I myself have drawn different conclusions than many politicians, especially some of the city council members who repealed the tax in 2018. For example, some politicians are saying we should not say tax Amazon, that maybe it's too provocative.
It is legitimate to raise these tactical questions because fighting the powerful big business elite is no small thing.
But the principal reason there was significant public opposition to the tax in the early summer of 2018 was not because our movement called it Tax Amazon, but because big business went to war against it and successfully branded it as a tax on jobs.
Unfortunately, most politicians and even many organizational leaders played right into that by calling it the employee hours tax or the head tax, which are both terrible messaging easily linked to jobs, instead of emphasizing that it was a tax on the wealthiest businesses.
We certainly don't want to repeat those mistakes.
At the end of the day, we're not going to fool Jeff Bezos or the Chamber of Commerce and somehow slip a tax under the radar by calling it something other than the Amazon tax.
We could call it the make Seattle better for everyone tax and they will still fight us tooth and nail.
Sisters and brothers, there is no magic solution to avoid a clash with big business for the simple reason that they will oppose us for their own interests, not because they did not like our slogan.
There is a lesson we can apply from our past victories, and that is that there are no shortcuts.
There are simply no shortcuts.
The way to win is by building a fighting movement to rely on our own power and to mobilize and organize working people to fight back.
And to do that, we need a clear and fearless message that will inspire working people and community members to come out and get involved.
We need a message that will serve as powerful inspiration for working people around the country, hence TaxAmazon.
Another question that's come up is that working people will feel conflicted or confused about saying tax Amazon because they shop at Amazon or they work at Amazon.
Of course, I agree there is confusion, especially fueled by the lies in the corporate media, including the idea that an ordinary person buying from Amazon is somehow complicit in the corporation's and the billionaire's actions.
We don't agree with that.
This confusion needs to be addressed through patient discussion over the course of this movement as we did during my re-election campaign last year.
And of course, buying from Amazon or working at Amazon does not make you somehow responsible for Jeff Bezos' bullying.
And we should recognize that there is huge anger against the tax dodging and bullying behavior by Jeff Bezos and his so-called S-team of billionaires, even more so now after their blatant attempt to buy City Hall.
And people want to fight back against the domination of big business here and nationally.
And we need to tap into that desire so that we have a powerful movement that stands up.
We reject, our movement rejects the divide and rule tactics of corporate media, falsely claiming that this tax is against consumers or tech workers.
In fact, in my and our reelection campaign, where we boldly campaigned to tax Amazon to build social housing, we weren't coy about it, tech workers, tech workers, including Amazon tech workers, were our number one donors.
alongside teachers, students, baristas, and other working people who make this city run.
Because they understand that this is about Jeff Bezos, the multimillionaires, and the billionaires not paying their fair share in taxes.
And Sister Susan talked about the international struggle of Amazon workers, including in Minneapolis.
Brother Matt talked about it, the Amazon workers who are organizing under extremely difficult conditions.
Seattle Stacks Amazon movement stands in solidarity with all Amazon workers fighting back in their own workplace.
In 2014, the corporate media tried to present the $15 minimum wage as a job killer.
Our 15Now movement systematically campaigned against those lies and distortions.
And as others have said, six months later, we had one historic victory that has since spread to many cities and states.
We did not win by making concessions to big business to bring them along, by lowering our demands, or using some kind of why can't everyone get along messaging.
We did not win by playing into their framing of disaster scenarios and job losses.
So what are the next steps for our movement?
My council office is preparing legislation for an Amazon tax in Seattle that the city council can either pass as an ordinance or it can put on the ballot for a vote in November.
But either way, our movement absolutely cannot simply just afford to put our faith in City Hall and wait for them to act.
Our movement needs to immediately prepare to file a grassroots ballot initiative.
And our goal should be to file that ballot initiative in February.
So our timeline is steep.
We need to urgently begin to collect signatures to get it on the November ballot where we can expect historically high voter turnout in a presidential election year.
That is why That is why we are organizing a Tax Amazon Action Conference for January 25th.
Please be there.
This will be the first of our grassroots democratic conferences, and I believe, as a socialist, as a rank-and-file member of the labor movement, that all major decisions in our Tax Amazon movement should be made at mass grassroots conferences.
We expect We expect that at that first conference there will be lots to discuss, including different proposals on how much the tax should raise annually, what it should fund, and what tax mechanism we should use.
In February, we need to organize our second grassroots tax Amazon conference, and I hope, and we hope, that at this conference we can take a vote on several of the different proposed options for the Amazon tax to agree on a broadly adopted proposal to file our ballot initiative.
In my view, The tax should fund a major expansion of social housing for all the reasons that we have already stated, including funding some other aspects of a Green New Deal, such as supporting weatherization for the existing homes of working class homeowners.
And you know, the problem we face is not a paucity of things that need to fund.
In a city that is deeply unequal, with historic and unprecedented degrees of inequality, we're spoiled for choices.
So much needs to be fully funded, from education to infrastructure.
But we should be aware that the more things the initiative seeks to fund, the more complicated it becomes, and the more it becomes, as a union leader just recently said, becomes like a Christmas tree.
And we give big business more avenues to try and defeat it.
Let's remember that the Amazon tax As hard fought as it will be is not the last step in our struggle.
We're going to go farther than that on the inspiration of having won something this year.
So we should aim to have a clear message of what the tax is funding.
I think we should consider a tax that would raise at least $200 to $500 million annually with no sunset clause.
You know, despite the setback of the repeal in 2018, our movement to tax Amazon in 2018 was so inspiring that there were movements in other cities to do the same, to tax big tech and other big corporations.
And that same year, despite the repeal, San Francisco won a ballot initiative that taxes big tech to the tune of $300 million.
If the working people of San Francisco can do it, so can we.
As for the mechanism of the big business tax, we have some options.
We have not too many options, but we have the employee hours tax, a payroll tax.
I've asked the city staff to do more research on this that will be shared with the movement.
But to be clear, no matter which mechanism we pick, it will be a tax only on big business.
We call it the Amazon tax because we want to be crystal clear.
This is not a tax on small businesses.
It is not a tax on workers.
It is not a tax on jobs.
It is not a tax on renters.
It is not a tax on homeowners.
It is only a tax on our city's wealthiest businesses.
Seattle's crisis of inequality is not ours alone.
There is a crisis, as we know, in every city in the United States and all around the world.
As a socialist, I believe that this dysfunction is built into the system of capitalism.
We are told, under capitalism, we are told it is impossible to have decent standards of living for most of us, that corporations' endless quest for profits have to be prioritized over housing, healthcare, education, and a livable planet for all.
That strong rent control, living wages, and Medicare for all are impossible.
It is a can't do message.
It says something about their system, the bosses and the billionaire system, the system of capitalism, that such basic things as housing and health care in the 21st century are being denied to working people and that instead we are being taken down the road to climate catastrophe.
The system was not built for us, it was not built for human needs, it was not built to be environmentally sustainable.
That's why I'm a socialist, because I believe we need a socialist world.
And when you understand that it's linked to the nature of capitalism, it suddenly makes sense.
Why is it that something so minimal, a tax that will be like pocket change for the billionaires to fund the most basic needs of our city, why is it that they so fiercely oppose it?
Because they know that every victory that we are able to win through building fighting movements only leads us to think that we can win something more and something more and change even further and maybe, maybe have the dreaded thought that the system itself could be changed.
I hope to see you all on January 25th at our first Tax Amazon conference, what we're calling an action conference.
Make sure you take stacks of leaflets.
Make sure that your involvement in this movement is not simply showing up tonight.
Your role, our collective role, is to actually build this movement.
We know that just tonight's rally will have struck a nerve in the bosses.
They know that we have momentum.
They know that we intend to strike while the iron is hot.
But we cannot just go back after a successful rally and say job's done.
We have to keep fighting and keep mounting an even bigger fight.
And our movement, and this is the most important reason everybody should show up on January 25th, because it is about democratic movements.
Our movements need to be firmly based on grassroots democracy.
It needs to be rooted in working people, not city hall politicians and not through backroom deal making.
I want to extend, once again, our best wishes to Sister Sarah Nelson for a speedy recovery, and especially to all the workers at Delta Airlines who are waging a valiant struggle against unknown, brutal, union-busting corporations.
And you know, throughout the rally, I tried to think of a better chant, but I can't think of a better chant.
So we're going to do the chant that really goes to the heart of our movement and heart of our understanding of how we are going to win tax Amazon.
When we fight, we win.
When we fight, we win.
When we fight, we win.
When we fight, we win.
Solidarity and see you on the 25th.