Indo-American Kshama Sawant Elected To Seattle City Council

SEATTLE – Pune-bornKshama Sawant, 40, wasdeclared elected after her nearestrival 16-year incumbentRichard Conlin conceded defeatas her lead grew to 1,640 votes— less than one percent of thetotal votes.Sawant has been elected to theprestigious Seattle City Council,making her the first socialist tobe voted to an elected office, 97years after the city sent theirfirst outspoken radical intooffice.Pune-born Sawant, 40, wasdeclared elected after her nearestrival 16-year incumbentRichard Conlin conceded defeatas her lead grew to 1,640 votes— less than one per cent of thetotal votes.The victory of the first socialistwas celebrated with an impressivegathering in Seattle.Her call to take Boeing -thebiggest private employer of theregion, which is threatening tomove jobs out of the state – intopublic ownership was welcomedwith a standing ovation.”The machines are here, theworkers are here. Let us takethis entire productive activityinto democratic public ownershipand retool the machines toproduce mass transit,” Sawantsaid.”Our campaign is not an isolatedevent, it’s a bellwether forwhat’s going to happen in thefuture,” she added.Sawant is an economics teacherat Seattle Central CommunityCollege and a member of theAmerican Federation ofTeachers Local 1789.She was an activist in theOccupy Wall Street movement.In 2012 Sawant won a 29 percent with over 20,000 votes as aSocialist Alternative candidateagainst Democratic WA StateHouse Speaker Frank Chopp –the strongest vote for an independentleft-wing candidate inthe U.S. in 2012, and the highestvote for a socialist in decades.Sawant said as a city councilor,she will use her position to helpbuild, unite, and give politicalvoice to the struggles of lowpaidworkers, youth, people ofcolour, and all those who areshut out by the politicalmachine that runs this city onbehalf of the wealthy elite.During the campaign she didnot accept any corporate funding.Born to Vasundhara and H TRamanujam in Pune in 1973,Sawant grew up in Mumbaiwhere she later studied computerscience and graduated with aBS from the University ofMumbai in 1994.Sawant married her husbandVivek, an engineer at Microsoft,and moved to the United States.After moving to the UnitedStates Sawant decided to abandonthe computer engineeringfield.She began to pursue study ineconomics due to what shedescribed as her own “questionsof economic inequality.” Sheentered the economics programmeat North Carolina StateUniversity where she earned aPhD. She became a UnitedStates citizen in 2010.