Kshama Sawant Biography
Kshama Sawant is an American politician and economist who serves on the Seattle City Council. She is a member of the Socialist Alternative, a democratic socialist and Trotskyist party. A former software engineer, Sawant became an economics instructor in Seattle after immigrating to the United States.
She ran unsuccessfully for the Washington House of Representatives before winning her seat on the Seattle City Council. She was the first socialist to win a citywide election in Seattle since Anna Louise Strong was elected to the school board in 1916.
Sawant was born to Vasundhara and H. T. Ramanujam in Pune, in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra, in a Hindu middle-class family. Her mother is a retired principal and her father, who was a civil engineer, was killed by a drunk driver when Sawant was 13. Sawant’s observations of poverty in her native country and her unhappiness with the Indian caste system helped shape her political views before her adoption of socialism. Sawant grew up in Mumbai where she later studied computer science and graduated with a BS from the University of Mumbai in 1994. She married her husband Vivek, an engineer at Microsoft, and moved to the United States. Sawant’s husband filed for and obtained a legal divorce in 2014.She remarried in August 2016 to Calvin Priest, a fellow Seattle Socialist Alternative organizer.
Other Personalities: Emily Spain
Shocked by the level of poverty she saw, Sawant decided to abandon software engineering. She pursued studies in 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 earned a PhD. Her dissertation was titled Elderly Labor Supply in a Rural, Less Developed Economy. Sawant moved to Seattle in 2006 and became a Socialist Alternative party member. She became a United States citizen in 2010.
On November 19, 2014, Sawant was arrested on a charge of disorderly conduct at a $15 minimum wage protest in Seatac, Washington. She was released on $500 bail. On May 1, 2015, a SeaTac municipal court judge dismissed charges against Sawant. The judge determined that testimony provided by police demonstrated that it was technically the police themselves, not protesters, who had blocked traffic.
In a February 2017 piece in the socialist magazine Jacobin, Sawant called for a “wave of protests and strikes” on May Day, including “workplace actions as well a mass peaceful civil disobedience that shuts down highways, airports, and other key infrastructure.” Sawant’s statement was controversial: Seattle Mayor Ed Murray said that it was “unfortunate and perhaps even tragic for an elected official to encourage people to confront and engage in confrontations with the police department” and the Washington State Patrol called the writings “irresponsible” and “reckless.”
10 Quick Facts About Kshama Sawant
- Name: Kshama Sawant
- Age: 46
- Birthday: October 17
- Zodiac Sign: Libra
- Height: Around 5 feet 6 inches (1.67 m)
- Nationality: American
- Occupation: Politician and economist
- Marital Status: Married
- Salary: Under review
- Net worth: $490,000
Kshama Sawant Age
Born on October 17 1973 she is 46 years of age as of 2019 .Sawant was born to Vasundhara and H. T. Ramanujam in Pune, in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra, in a Hindu middle-class family. Her mother is a retired principal and her father, who was a civil engineer, was killed by a drunk driver when Sawant was 13. Sawant’s observations of poverty in her native country and her unhappiness with the Indian caste system helped shape her political views before her adoption of socialism. Sawant grew up in Mumbai where she later studied computer science and graduated with a BS from the University of Mumbai in 1994.
Kshama Sawant Height
She stands at a fair height and has a fair body weight to match her Height.
Kshama Sawant Husband|Kshama Sawant Calvin Priest
She was Married to Vivek Sawant and the Couple Separated ways in 2014. in the year 2016 she married Calvin Priest who is an Engineer at Microsoft .After marrying Calvin she moved to the united states.
Kshama Sawant Paul Allen
Just hours after Paul Allen’s death was made public, Councilmember Kshama Sawant criticized him for how he spent some of his money.
st hours after Allen’s death was publicly revealed, Sawant posted on her personal page:
“Paul Allen was known as a philanthropist. He spent $250 million on the biggest yacht in the world in 2003; he also owned two more yachts and a fleet of private jets, several sports teams. He paid to put the Qwest Field on the ballot so that working people picked up most of the $425M tab. He spent half a million dollars to defeat the I-1098 Tax the Rich statewide initiative in 2010.”
She linked to an article titled “Remember the Greediest.”
Her post was not well received.
It has been shared close to 200 times, with many people calling her a hypocrite, or accusing the elected leader of playing loose with the facts.
Kshama Sawant Seattle City Council
After her unsuccessful run for the House, Sawant entered the race for Seattle City Council with a campaign organized by the Socialist Alternative. She won 35% of the vote in the August primary election, and advanced into the general election for the at-large council position 2 against incumbent Richard Conlin, making her the first socialist to advance to a general election in Seattle since 1991. On November 15, 2013, Conlin conceded to Sawant when returns showed him down by 1,640 votes or approximately 1% of the vote.
During her campaign, Sawant said that, if elected, she would donate the portion of her salary as a City Council member that exceeded the average salary in Seattle. On January 27, 2014, she announced that she would live on $40,000 of her $117,000 salary. She places the rest into a political fund that she uses for social justice campaigns.
During the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, Sawant urged the Seattle City Council to condemn both Israel’s attacks on Gaza and Hamas’s attacks on Israel, and called on President Obama and Congress to denounce the Israeli blockade of Gaza and to cut off all military assistance to Israel. Sawant’s call to condemn Israel’s actions prompted a response from Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer, calling for Sawant to retract the statement.
Kshama Sawant Salary
On January 27, 2014, she announced that she would live on $40,000 of her $117,000 salary.
Kshama Sawant Net Worth
Kshama Sawant estimates her net worth at $490,000 and list an income from both her city council position and as a political organizer for Socialist Alternative, her political party, which pays her between $10,000 and $25,000 a year. Sawant owns a home worth between $200,000 and a million dollars and is married to Calvin Priest, who works for an organization called 15 Now.
Sawant said she would only take $40,000 of the salary and donate the rest, but came under fire after the blog SCC Insight reported that she donated portions of her salary to Socialist Alternative and 15 Now, the two organizations that her family gets an income from.
Kshama Sawant Twitter
Homelessness is a growing nationwide crisis. The solution? Housing & support services. Arresting our homeless neighbors, forcibly displacing homeless encampments, are not solutions. State violence will not solve for homelessness, only public investment will. #BringChicagoHome
— Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa🌹 (@CDRosa) November 4, 2019
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