A socialist Seattle city councilwoman warned Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos “we’re coming for you” in a video message and said capitalism will be replaced with “a socialist world.”
Kshama Sawant, who is a member of the Socialist Alternative Party, addressed the billionaire tech giant following the passage of the city’s so-called “Amazon tax,” a payroll tax on large businesses.
City Journal contributing editor Christopher Rufo posted the video of Sawant to his Twitter account Tuesday.
“After passing the ‘Amazon Tax,’ Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant went on this unhinged rant,” Rufo said on Twitter. “She threatens to seize control of the Fortune 500 and overthrow the ‘racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism.’ If you oppose her? ‘We are coming for you.’”
After passing the “Amazon Tax,” Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant went on this unhinged rant.
She threatens to seize control of the Fortune 500 and overthrow the “racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism.”
If you oppose her? “We are coming for you.” pic.twitter.com/2L17D6wScp
— Christopher F. Rufo (@realchrisrufo) July 7, 2020
“I have a message for Jeff Bezos and his class,” Sawant said in the video. “If you attempt, again, to overturn the Amazon tax, working people will go all out in the thousands to defeat you. And we will not stop there. Because, you see, we are fighting for far more than this tax, we are preparing the ground for a different kind of society.”
“And if you, Jeff Bezos, want to drive that process forward by lashing out against us in our modest demands, then so be it,” Sawant continued. “Because we are coming for you and your rotten system.”
“We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism. This police state. We cannot and will not stop until we overthrow it, and replace it with a world based, instead, on solidarity, genuine democracy, and equality: a socialist world. Thank you,” she said.
Sawant has repeatedly vocalized her opposition to capitalism, recently blaming it for the death of a teenager within Seattle’s “autonomous zone,” which was dismantled last week.
“Deepest condolences from Socialist Alternative and my Council office to the family and friends and fellow activists of the community member who was tragically killed in the drive-by shooting at the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP),” she tweeted Monday.
“While we await details of this tragic killing, it highlights capitalism’s brutality & endemic violence. Our movement rejects insinuations & falsehoods perpetuated by corporate & conservative media that this violence is outcome of CHOP or of our movement,” Sawant said in another tweet, adding that “Capitalism *is* a police state. While we’ll have to fight to win reforms, we have to dismantle capitalism to win a violence-free society.”
The councilwoman also recently attracted the ire of Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for joining protesters who stood outside Durkan’s house demanding the city not to dismantle the autonomous zone.
“Mayor Durkan and her family are in the state program to keep their address confidential because of the death threats mostly related to her work as Seattle’s U.S. Attorney under President Obama,” a statement from the mayor’s office read following the protest. “Instead of working to make true change, Councilmember Sawant continues to choose political stunts. Tonight, she did so without regard for the safety of the mayor and her family. The mayor was not even home — she was working at City Hall. Seattle can and should peacefully demonstrate but should not put families and children at risk.”
