Last November, Seattle’s socialist city council member Kshama Sawant was up for reelection, and unsurprisingly her opponent’s campaign was backed and bankrolled by Seattle’s economic elite. Amazon, the Seattle-based multi-trillion-dollar corporation owned by the richest man in the world, funneled enormous sums of money to defeat Sawant, and on election night the race was too close to call. But a few days later Sawant, a member of the organization Socialist Alternative, emerged victorious.

The capitalist class of Seattle had good reason to mount an aggressive offensive against Sawant: she campaigned on a promise to raise taxes on large corporations to pay for social programs. Sawant had brought this proposal to the city council in 2018 and in fact managed to get it passed unanimously. But Amazon and other large corporations threatened to move out of Seattle, leading the majority of the city council to reverse their position.

In 2019, Sawant campaigned on the promise to reintroduce the proposal. When she declared victory, she did so before a giant banner that read “Tax Amazon.” Last week, the Seattle City Council passed a new version of Sawant’s “Tax Amazon” proposal.