Meet Seattle’s New Mayor, Katie Wilson

A day after Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration, 3,000 miles west of New York, Seattle residents celebrated their own democratic socialist miracle, inauguration of Mayor Katie Wilson. Katie defied the odds by unseating a powerful incumbent with an agenda rooted in fairness and an authenticity that appealed to the city’s most precarious voters.

I was fortunate to be among the speakers at Wilson’s inauguration, which, unlike Mamdani’s, was intentionally not star-studded. There were very few costumes. Mayor Wilson’s clothes were purchased at Goodwill. A thousand Seattle residents gathered at City Hall, hundreds of whom had never thought of it as home. Along with me, Katie invited three speakers who presented a mosaic of hope: a Somali-American graduate student, a formerly homeless person, and an elder who reminded us again and again to be courageous and not be complacent.

While Zohran was sworn in before Sen. Bernie Sanders, Katie was sworn in before Pauline Van Senus, a low-income transit rider known as Seattle’s “Transit Fairy” to clean bus stops across the city.

Katie’s victory was won by the precariat: renters, transit riders, and democratic socialists who rallied behind Katie, rang her doorbell, created mainstream social media, and registered new voters.

They are not recognized power men in Seattle, but Katie’s victory shows that they can mobilize and inspire the base to elect a mayor who embraces working-class values ​​and policies that will allow residents to thrive, including affordable child care, public transit and housing.

Today, the challenge Katie faces is universalizing childcare and social housing. In previous decades, progressives attempted to create progress with progressive victories in an extremely powerful corporate context. I am personally familiar with this work as a long-time advocate of progressive economic policy. I have seen the pitfalls of this approach. It’s time for fundamental, systemic, and universal progress for Seattle. Katie can bring it.

It won’t be easy as the Trump administration and Congress defund social services like child care and health care. Even if Seattle has the means to finance these social goods, we are about to find out whether our leaders have the political courage to tax the oligarchs, the rich, and global corporations headquartered in Seattle, including Amazon and Starbucks.

Katie has never hesitated to take on corporate power. Her first post-election stop was at a picket line at Starbucks, where she proclaimed, “I don’t buy Starbucks and neither should you.” It’s not just lip service: Katie is behind the JumpStart tax on big businesses.

With the election of three progressives, she now has allies on the city council. She built a grassroots movement that could engage in initiative campaigns if the city council refused to act. This is how we might end up building our city. As Katie’s inauguration ceremony beautifully demonstrated, Seattle’s new mayor built a coalition of community organizations, labor, activists, immigrants, Democrats, socialists, educators and small businesses to win her election. Now this coalition must be connected to real political advancement.

Katie’s platform is about more than creating a thriving economic community. It’s also about creating the conditions that allow ordinary people to enjoy the simple pleasures of life: a walk in a park, having time to read a book. Watching Mamdani’s swearing-in from Seattle, I was moved to tears as Lucy Dacus sang “Bread and Roses.” In Seattle, Katie, echoing these words, asserted that we must open up “the time and space where life happens, where people can breathe and experience and create, where we can be full human beings and not just means to an end… Because we need bread, but we also need roses.” We deserve roses.