Join us in February for our Rent Control Town Hall!
Thank you to the working and young people who attended our Free Healthcare Town Hall on Saturday, hosted by my campaign for the U.S. Congress! Over a hundred attended in person at the Rainier Community Center in Seattle and thousands watched the livestream.
Join us at our Rent Control Town Hall on SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 1st at 2 pm PT / 5 pm ET, in person at the Kent Memorial Park Building, in Washington’s ninth Congressional district, or on LIVESTREAM! We will discuss the fighting strategy needed to defeat corporate landlords, real estate and private equity corporations, and the billionaire class and their two parties to win national rent control. When I say rent control, I mean rent increases of no more than the inflation rate. My campaign for the U.S. Congress is also fighting for a massive nationwide expansion of publicly-owned, high-quality affordable housing funded by taxing the rich
RSVP to the February town hall!
At the Saturday town hall, my campaign raised $12,000 for my independent socialist campaign to defeat pro-genocide Democratic Congressman Adam Smith, who has received tens of thousands of dollas in campaign contributions and PAC money from the elite who profit by denying healthcare to the rest of us. Smith has repeatedly sold out workers, including by slashing $150 billion from Medicare and Medicaid. Smith has also voted for tens of billions of dollars for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
If you want a fightback to win free healthcare, please donate to our campaign now!
Our town hall was a rallying cry to win free healthcare funded by taxing the rich. Free healthcare for everyone regardless of immigration or visa or citizenship status. Free healthcare meaning high-quality care of every kind, including dental, vision, abortion and reproductive, disability, mental health, and gender-affirming care. Free healthcare meaning free at the point of use, funded by taxing billionaires and multimillionaires.
This is the wealthiest country in human history and we have to completely reject the bullshit idea that good healthcare is something only the rich should have.
We demand a system that eliminates the concept of paying health insurance premiums, a system that does not allow the wealthy to decide what health coverage working people will get. My independent, revolutionary socialist campaign for Congress is building a movement to rip the profits out of the American healthcare system, take on both billionaire-backed parties, and win free healthcare for all by taxing the rich.
I have pledged that, if elected to the U.S. Congress, I will turn my inauguration into a mass rally of 10,000 people, and immediately launch national campaigns to end all U.S. military aid to Israel and to win free healthcare for all funded by taxing the rich.
I used a fighting and movement-building strategy throughout my decade on the Seattle City Council from 2014 through 2023. By using my office to organize working people, I won the nation’s highest minimum wage for Seattle’s workers. We raised the minimum wage in our city from $9.19/hour in January 2015 to $21.30/hour in January 2026, an increase of over 131 percent! We did not win by me trying to make backroom deals with the Democratic Party. We won by forcing the elite-serving Democratic Party politicians in City Hall to concede in the face of our powerful 15 NOW movement, which I launched from my City Council office. The victory we won here spurred movements nationally, and tens of millions of workers have won historic increases in wages since our Seattle victory. Through my City Council office, we also won the Amazon Tax, which raises hundreds of millions of dollars every year for affordable housing and Green New Deal programs. We also won unprecedented renters’ rights.
At our Saturday healthcare town hall, I was joined by Reverend Robert Jeffrey, who played a leading role in our Tax Amazon movement, Ubah Warsame, who helped lead our fights for renters’ rights, and Bett Capehart, a longtime activist for universal healthcare. We also heard from many working people who gave testimony about their experiences with the horrors of the for-profit healthcare system and what is needed to fight back.
“Progressive” Democrats like AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Pramila Jayapal have refused to put up any fight to win universal healthcare and have failed to stop the attacks by Republicans. This is because the real purpose these so-called progressives serve is to whitewash the pro-billionaire agenda of the Democratic Party and to bring working people back towards the same two-party system that has thoroughly betrayed working people. This is why politicians like Jayapal keep introducing Medicare for all bills with zero intention of doing anything to actually win it. Even worse, Jayapal shamefully allowed Adam Smith to co-sponsor her this year’s performative Medicare for All bill, as an attempt to allow Smith to cover up his 29-year record as an advocate for billionaire profits.
This is why, we absolutely cannot have any illusions in progressive Democrats, and need to build a militant mass movement for free healthcare for all. We need leaders like Reverend Jeffrey, who said: “I’m there with those children who sleep on the street, who want healthcare, those mothers who need prenatal care. I’m there. The fight has been joined.”
During my decade on the Seattle City Council, I built movements that won historic healthcare victories, such as free abortion care and increasing the Amazon Tax to fund $20 million/year in school mental health services. Through our annual People’s Budget campaign, my office won hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund an LGBTQ senior center in the heart of Capitol Hill, Seattle’s historically LGBTQ neighborhood, an LGBTQ wellness center at NOVA High School, a school that serves primarily LGBTQ youth, and trans community services.
Last year, I fought alongside Workers Strike Back and rank-and-file union members against brutal budget cuts announced by Washington State Democratic Governor Bob Ferguson and the Democratic-dominated State Legislature. Through our leadership, workers and union members brought the State House and Senate chambers to a halt as we marched inside the Capitol building in Olympia, chanting “No Cuts! No Furloughs! Strike! Strike! Strike!. We were able to scare the crap out of the Democrats and reduce the cuts in the budget from $7 billion to $2.7 billion. This shows what can be won through militant, fighting movements with leadership that understands that it is imperative to fight both the Democratic and Republican parties.
The Democratic Party and its gatekeepers have been the main obstacle to winning universal healthcare. Our campaign to elect an independent, revolutionary socialist to Congress is the breakthrough we urgently need in order to build an all-out fight against big business and both their parties to win free healthcare for all, to cancel medical and student debt, to win rent control, to stop the deportations and shut down ICE, and to end all U.S. military aid to Israel.
Join us.
And don’t forget to RSVP for our next Town Hall, where we will discuss the strategy to win national rent control. https://www.kshamasawant.org/events/177/
Solidarity!
Kshama Sawant