Kshama Sawant joined the Socialist Alternative in 2006 and became a councilor in 2013
Washington:
A 46-year-old Indian-American software engineer turned socialist is at the forefront of “Black Lives Matter” protests in Seattle to permanently oust police officers from the city center that has now been designated ” Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone “(CHAZ), media reports said.
Kshama Sawant, Seattle city councilor, encourages CHAZ activists “to give up giving the compound to the cops or to allow officers inside the boarded-up area,” according to Fox News.
Widespread protests have been going on for weeks in the United States after the death of African-American George Floyd, 46, in Minneapolis while in police custody. The demonstrators fought with the police for weeks.
Sawant, born in Pune, urged protesters to stand firmly in the six-block area they have designated as a “no-cop” area, the report said.
Kshama Sawant said she would introduce legislation to convert the precinct to “a community center for restorative justice”.
“Our movement must urgently ensure that East Precinct is not returned to the police, but is permanently returned to community control. My office is introducing legislation to convert East Precinct into a community center for restorative justice,” said she tweeted on Friday.
On Tuesday, she also participated in demonstrations calling for funding for the police and allowed more than a thousand protesters to enter city hall during a late-night demonstration calling on mayor Jenny Durkan to resign.
She said she did it to show that city hall is owned by the people and that she wanted the diverse group of protesters to be heard in the corridors of power, Komonews.com reported.
Over 1,000 Protesters Spent An Hour Talking About Funding For The Seattle Police Service, Police Ban On Chemical Weapons And Reprimand Of Mayor Jenny Durkan, Demanding Immediate Resignation , according to the report.
Even if social distance was nonexistent, everyone wore masks and the evening remained peaceful. Deputy police chief Deanna Nollette also said that no laws had been broken, so the police did not respond, he added.
Born in Vasundhara and H T Ramanujam in 1973, Ms. Sawant grew up in Mumbai where she then studied computer science and obtained a BS at the University of Mumbai in 1994.
Ms. Sawant married and moved to the United States. After moving to the United States, Ms. Sawant decided to abandon the field of computer engineering.
She started studying economics because of what she described as her own “questions of economic inequality”. She entered the economics program at North Carolina State University where she obtained a doctorate. She became an American citizen in 2010.
Ms. Sawant joined the Socialist Alternative in 2006 and became a city councilor in 2013 after defeating a 16-year-old practicing democrat, Richard Conlin, to become the first socialist elected in a major American city in decades.
