AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Tuesday, August 06, 2019

Emergency! Amazon is taking revenge Socialist Alternative

Socialist Alternative<newsletter@socialistalternative.org>

3:26 PM

To alfredjohnson34@comcast.net

Please see below for an urgent update from the campaign to re-elect Kshama Sawant, Seattle's Socialist Alternative City Councilmember. Today is the final day of the primary election.

Friends,

Did you see that the corporate cash flooding in against us from Amazon has made national news? Yesterday, The Guardian published an article titled “Is Amazon taking revenge on the Seattle socialist who took on the retail giant?”

It certainly seems so. Fifteen of Amazon’s top executives and closest advisors have donated directly to at least one of our opponents. The Amazon corporation itself put $250,000 for “anybody but Kshama Sawant” into the Chamber of Commerce's corporate PAC (CASE), which is spending more money against us than on any other race in the city.

Polls close tonight. We have an urgent message. In the final days of this election, CASE has dumped even more money against Councilmember Kshama Sawant, spending over $10,000 on a final round of attack mailers!

We need to raise $5,000 more to hit our target by midnight. We need your help. Donate $15, $50, $100, or more right now to show the corporate PACs that this election is not for sale.

CASE’s chosen candidate, Egan Orion, was quoted in The Guardian as saying: “Kshama Sawant is the worst partner for our large businesses. You know, a bologna sandwich would be a better partner.”

As Kshama has made clear time and again, she is running as an unambiguous representative of working people, not the corporate elite, because you can’t serve two bosses. We’ll leave it to the bologna sandwiches to serve big business.

Despite Orion’s campaign being propped up by nearly $200,000 in corporate PAC money, in a shocking display of hypocrisy and outright falsehood, Orion has been plastering District 3 with these posters:

This would be laughable if it weren’t so outrageous. When confronted about it on social media, Orion claimed that the corporate PACs just “happen to be supporting him.” This is a lie.

In reality, Orion had to directly apply to the Chamber of Commerce corporate PAC by submitting their questionnaire. Orion even stated that he was “honored” to have received their endorsement. And now this corporate PAC has spent more money on Orion than on any other candidate in the entire city.

We’re proud that we just hit our fundraising goal for the primary election of raising $280,000, which cancels out the big checks written earlier this summer by Amazon and luxury developer Vulcan! But this last minute CASE PAC money-dump is an emergency.

We’ve printed a final round of posters and leaflets so our volunteers can go all out on the doors these final hours to counter the corporate propaganda and get out the vote. We need to raise $5,000 more today to cover these additional expenses for this crucial election.

We need your help. Donate $15, $50, $100, or more right now to stand with Councilmember Kshama Sawant against this corporate propaganda.Today is the final day of this election — there is no time to waste.

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