JR

The SeaTac Airport $15 ballot initiative win — a straight-up battle against big corporations and their political allies — and the subsequent $15 legislative victory in Seattle — the product of both street-heat and a negotiated deal — certainly shifted the balance of power in our city and region.

In the last three years, the movement has gone on to win a number of tenants’ rights laws, divested city funds from Wells Fargo Bank, passed a first-ever city income tax, won collective bargaining rights for Uber drivers, passed a secure scheduling law for Seattle workers, and won a statewide campaign for paid leave. And now a very broad coalition is gearing up for a 2018 statewide climate justice ballot initiative that will tax carbon to fund communities, pollution reduction, and renewable energy job development.

Those are signal achievements, but let’s look beyond the headlines to examine what’s going on in Seattle-area organizing, because it’s instructive for movements everywhere.

I see three main phenomena. First, the ruling class — big business and the area’s political establishment — made an assessment in 2013 that since they couldn’t crush workers, they instead would try to accommodate and co-opt. In other places the 1 percent might assess otherwise and try outright to destroy us — think what Scott Walker did to unions in Wisconsin, for example; or Missouri, where the politicians are slashing the minimum wage. But in Seattle the 1 percent assessed that frontal assault on the working class wasn’t feasible, so rather than take us on outright they’ve tried to hijack our issues and street energy, steering people toward “sensible” solutions and backroom deals, claiming to embrace our ideas but then try to water them down to the point of insignificance.

A classic example of this: holding real estate developers and speculators accountable for the affordable housing crisis in our region. Nearly half of all Seattle tenants are “rent-burdened,” paying more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Average one-bedroom apartments cost more than $2,000/month. Facing growing popular unrest, the mayor convened a “big table” of developers, community organizations, union leaders, and civic activists and hammered out a requirement that developers commit a certain amount of their projects to affordable housing. But the number developers must meet is pathetically low. It represents a small fraction of what’s needed in our city.

The second phenomenon is the growth and maturation of the movement. We’ve won tangible victories, and in doing so have shared methods and tactics of struggle among organizations that have very different cultures and approaches to the work: unions to Black Lives Matter to faith communities, immigrant-led organizations, worker centers, climate justice groups, LGBT advocates, and so on. That sharing brings more movement creativity and resilience over the long haul.

The third phenomenon is the tension around inside versus outside strategy. As we experience success, and as the establishment tries to co-opt the movement, there’s a powerful temptation to overvalue the access and relationships we’ve achieved within halls of political and economic power. People can easily forget how they got here in the first place, and they put too much trust in the inside game. This fall, for instance, a number of unions have endorsed establishment candidates for local office — including one notable incumbent who fought us on $15, for goodness sake! — because they unfortunately think that’s the way to advance our interests.

On the other side of this tension is the recognition that our power to win has been, and always will be, based upon our numbers and our ability to act collectively in the political and economic arenas; it flows from a clear class analysis. We don’t reject negotiating with the establishment, of course — but we recognize that organizing and movement-building is the source of all the power we have at the bargaining table.

As we get more successful, this tension shows up more frequently, and we have to wrestle with it.