Kshama Sawant Vs. Pamela Banks: Grandiose Designs Vs. Local Grounding

Cheers and whoops made Seattle U’s Piggott Auditorium  sound as if two football rivals were holding simultaneous pep rallies Sunday night, but this was a debate in the increasingly heated District 3 City Council race between incumbent Kshama Sawant and Seattle Urban League CEO Pamela Banks. On stage, the set-to featured a collision between the grandiose vision of the militant socialist Sawant — “We need a cultural transformation of our city” — and the locally grounded politics of Banks, self-described as “a community activist who gets things done.” Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant:  “We all know how big business dominates politics and how their dirty game is played.” (Joshua Trujillo,