Socialists Without Borders endorses Kshama Sawant for U.S. Congress in Washington’s 9th District. She is running as an independent revolutionary socialist against longtime Democrat Adam Smith, who has taken money from real estate billionaires and private equity firms while consistently voting to fund U.S. wars and the genocide in Gaza.
This endorsement is based on Sawant’s proven record of class struggle, her decisive break with the Democratic Party and DSA opportunism, and the urgent need for independent working-class politics.
A Record of Class Struggle
Elected in 2013 as the first socialist on the Seattle City Council in over a century, Sawant led the fight for the nation’s first $15 minimum wage (now $21.30 with inflation adjustments). She defeated Jeff Bezos and Amazon to win a tax on big corporations that raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year for publicly owned affordable housing — including dedicated funds for Black working-class families. She also secured landmark renters’ rights, including a $10 cap on late rent fees, eviction moratoriums in winter months and during the school year for public school children and their families, and relocation assistance when landlords hike rents by 10% or more.
These victories were won through mass mobilization and unrelenting pressure on the ruling class and their Democratic servants — a living example of sparking revolutionary leadership organically fused with the advanced layers of the working class, deepening and broadening the class struggle in practice.
“A class struggle-based strategy means creating a political price tag for all the Democratic Party politicians, including the progressive Democrats.”
A Complete Break with the Parties of Imperialism
Kshama Sawant has drawn a sharp, unambiguous line: the Democratic Party is one of the two main capitalist parties of U.S. imperialism and is not a vehicle for working-class politics. She explicitly rejects running on the Democratic ballot line. In 2024 she left both DSA and Socialist Alternative, founded Revolutionary Workers, and is now campaigning fully independently as a revolutionary socialist.
While millions of workers rightly rage against the “billionaire class,” revolutionaries understand that the fundamental enemy is the entire ruling capitalist class — the bourgeoisie that owns the means of production and controls the state. This includes the private equity vultures (Blackstone and others) driving the housing crisis through skyrocketing rents, mass evictions, and vacant luxury units.
The Campaign as a Revolutionary Tribune
Sawant’s campaign is not about winning a seat for its own sake. If elected, she has pledged to turn her inauguration into a mass rally of 10,000 people in Washington, D.C., and immediately launch national campaigns for:
• Free healthcare for all, funded by taxing the rich
• National rent control and massive publicly owned housing
• An end to all U.S. military aid to Israel and the genocide in Gaza
• No war on Iran
• Shutting down ICE and immigrant detention centers
She will use her congressional office as a weapon in the class struggle — replicating the method that delivered victories in Seattle.
Why This Matters Now
Support for independent politics is at its highest level in decades. Both major parties are deeply discredited as servants of the ruling class. Sawant’s campaign represents the sharpest break with the two-party system and the labor bureaucracy tied to it.
Our Call
We call on all workers, socialists, and anti-imperialists to support Kshama Sawant’s campaign with donations, volunteer work, endorsements, and mass mobilization.
The new workers’ party will not be built in Congress, but through rank-and-file struggle and independent organization.
Socialistas Sin Fronteras
May 25, 2026
Note on Critical Support
This is an endorsement of critical support. For a fuller Marxist accounting that addresses past political errors (including the 2018 Carmen Best vote) and theoretical limitations (including the limits of the “billionaire class” slogan), see our companion piece: