We have 15 Now chap­ters in 17 oth­er cities or states . There’s move­ment already in the New York City coun­cil, there’s a num­ber of Chica­go alder­men that are push­ing 15 for­ward, there’s a bal­lot ini­tia­tive in San Fran­cis­co for 15. So we’re already see­ing move­ment on a nation­al scale. We think it’s impor­tant to spread 15 Now nation­al­ly and use the same type of grass­roots move­ment build­ing nation­al­ly to real­ly push these dif­fer­ent cities to adopt a $15 an hour min­i­mum wage.

I was the orga­niz­ing direc­tor for 15 Now, and I was involved with get­ting peo­ple active in pres­sur­ing city offi­cials, pres­sur­ing the may­or’s com­mit­tee to real­ly deliv­er for work­ers. We had a week of action in March where peo­ple did dif­fer­ent things like ban­ner drops along high­ways and ride bus­es in order to talk to peo­ple about 15 Now. That cul­mi­nat­ed with the March for 15 on March 15.

Spear, a cli­mate sci­en­tist by trade, spoke with Work­ing In These Times about how she helped win a $15 min­i­mum wage for work­ers in Seat­tle, which passed by city ordi­nance on June 2, as well as about the chal­lenge she’s mount­ing against Demo­c­ra­t­ic Speak­er of Washington’s State House, Frank Chopp and why union sup­port will be crit­i­cal to her campaign.

Jess Spear was at social­ist can­di­date Kshama Sawant’s elbow when Sawant announced her plans to oust incum­bent Seat­tle city coun­cil­man Richard Con­lin in 2013. And, as vol­un­teer coor­di­na­tor for the cam­paign, she was there again when Sawant gave her vic­to­ry speech eight months lat­er, becom­ing the first social­ist elect­ed in a major US city in decades. But on May 21 of this year, the roles were reversed. With Sawant at her elbow, Spear announced her own social­ist cam­paign for Wash­ing­ton State Representative.

You’ve said the Seat­tle ordi­nance is dif­fer­ent from what 15 Now was push­ing for. Could you explain?

The may­or’s pro­pos­al that came to the City Coun­cil on May 1 had a num­ber of cor­po­rate loop­holes, as did the ver­sion he even­tu­al­ly passed. It allowed a three- to 4‑year phase-in for big busi­ness­es and a 5- to 7‑year phase-in for small­er busi­ness­es, which they define as busi­ness­es with less than 500 employ­ees. It includes what is essen­tial­ly a 10-year path­way, because after 7 years, the small busi­ness­es have to phase-in to $15. At that point, they’re still going to be pay­ing less than what big busi­ness­es pay because the cost-of-liv­ing adjust­ment does­n’t occur until you get to $15. So for anoth­er 3 years, they will be pay­ing sub-min­i­mum wages com­pared to big businesses.

To us, these loop­holes were com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary, and it’s unfair to work­ers to make them wait even anoth­er day for relief. So we did what we could to close them, but the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty major­i­ty in the City Coun­cil — we only have one social­ist sit­ting there — allowed these cor­po­rate loop­holes, and actu­al­ly added a few more.

In the end, coun­cilmem­ber Kshama Sawant vot­ed for the pack­age, and 15 Now is cel­e­brat­ing because for us, this is a step for­ward. We’re now cov­er­ing all work­ers — it’s not just a hand­ful in a few indus­tries. It is a major step out of pover­ty for many work­ers. One out of 4 in Seat­tle are going to see 15, so we’re very excit­ed about it.

You’re run­ning against Frank Chopp, who is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Why did you choose to run against a Democrat?

Wash­ing­ton State is com­plete­ly con­trolled by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. We’re chal­leng­ing the Speak­er of the House because he rep­re­sents every­thing that is bro­ken in our state, every­thing that is bro­ken with the whole idea that we have to give cor­po­rate tax hand­outs for jobs, but [that] if we want to fund social ser­vices, we have to tax ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple. That type of lead­er­ship does­n’t get us anywhere.

A lot of peo­ple talk about how [Frank Chopp] is gen­er­al­ly pro­gres­sive. He sup­ports rais­ing the min­i­mum wage, he sup­ports help­ing home­less peo­ple, he sup­ports most of the same issues that we care about. But it’s not just about sup­port­ing some­thing; it’s about whether or not you’re going to fight for it. We are show­ing through Sawant on the City Coun­cil how it’s pos­si­ble, even with just a sin­gle seat in gov­ern­ment, to win real gains for work­ing people.

Both the Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans talk a lot about the ​ “ mid­dle class.” You and Sawant talk more about ​ “ work­ing peo­ple” and the ​ “ work­ing class.” What’s the dif­fer­ence, and why is it impor­tant for socialists?

Any­body that has to work for a liv­ing, has to labor [or] is paid a salary or a wage is part of the work­ing class. This can mean peo­ple who con­sid­er them­selves mid­dle class, like pro­fes­sion­als, teach­ers, sci­en­tists, engi­neers, and the like, as well as those that work in retail all the way up [to management].

Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans like to talk about the mid­dle class ver­sus the upper-mid­dle class, and the 1%, and then those below the mid­dle class. We would chal­lenge the notion that there is sep­a­rate mid­dle class, low­er class, upper-mid­dle class, and instead look at all work­ers as being in the same boat togeth­er, being affect­ed by [cap­i­tal­ist poli­cies] — in dif­fer­ent ways, but affect­ed by them in a neg­a­tive way as com­pared to those that are in the cap­i­tal­ist class, those that own what we would call the means of pro­duc­tion. And so, as social­ists we would say that it’s in the inter­ests of all work­ers to be in sol­i­dar­i­ty with one anoth­er and fight for a world in which the econ­o­my is orga­nized to meet our needs.

Over the course of the 20 th cen­tu­ry the word ​ “ social­ist” cycled through many dif­fer­ent mean­ings and elicit­ed a range of reac­tions, many of them neg­a­tive. But recent­ly it seems that social­ism has been mak­ing some­thing of a come­back. Do you think Amer­i­cans are com­ing around to social­ism — or is social­ism com­ing around to Americans?

I think it’s both. I think that the eco­nom­ic reces­sion we expe­ri­enced in the Unit­ed States [and] glob­al­ly has real­ly shak­en the foun­da­tions for a lot of peo­ple and made them ques­tion their once deeply held belief that the sys­tem works as a mer­i­toc­ra­cy. That if you work real­ly hard, if you go to school, if you get good grades, you’ll get a good job, you’ll be suc­cess­ful, you’ll be able to get a home, you’ll have a good life. Because the eco­nom­ic reces­sion has caused a lot of peo­ple to ques­tion that, they start to look for alter­na­tives, and one of those alter­na­tives is socialism.

Social­ist Alter­na­tive has tak­en the ini­tia­tive to show what a social­ist is, explain the ideas, get out there and talk to peo­ple about this alter­na­tive. It’s one thing to say social­ism is more favor­able than cap­i­tal­ism, but it’s anoth­er to real­ly under­stand what we mean by that, and what it means to have a social­ist elect­ed to office. Here in Seat­tle, elect­ing the first social­ist [to Seat­tle pub­lic office] in a hun­dred years, and then six months lat­er see­ing a $15 an hour min­i­mum wage pass, I think it’s been demon­strat­ed for peo­ple what it looks like to elect some­body that unam­bigu­ous­ly stands on the side of work­ing people.

A big part of your plat­form is envi­ron­men­tal issues. Were you an envi­ron­men­tal­ist first or a social­ist, and how do these come togeth­er for you?

I guess I called myself an envi­ron­men­tal­ist first. I got involved in cli­mate sci­ence when I was an under­grad in col­lege. I think a lot of peo­ple were quite demor­al­ized by the time I got to grad­u­ate school. It was 2005 and peo­ple felt by that point we real­ly were head­ed towards a tip­ping point, and we did­n’t see any polit­i­cal action.

I stud­ied, got a degree, and went on to work in the US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey. I was work­ing there in 2011 when the upris­ings occurred in Tunisia, then Egypt. Just watch­ing the top­pling of the Egypt­ian dic­ta­tor Hos­ni Mubarak was life-shak­ing. And the upris­ing in Wis­con­sin, which was inspired by the Egypt­ian upris­ing, then of course Occu­py Wall Street break­ing out — [it] was incred­i­bly inspir­ing and made me feel opti­mistic and hope­ful for the first time.

I was liv­ing in Seat­tle at that point, and so I went down to the Occu­py encamp­ment in Seat­tle and had a con­ver­sa­tion with [Social­ist Alter­na­tive] about the root of glob­al warm­ing, the eco­nom­ic reces­sion. I got involved with Social­ist Alter­na­tive and have been ever since.

So in gen­er­al, yeah, I start­ed off as an envi­ron­men­tal­ist and now I call myself a social­ist. But I think any envi­ron­men­tal­ist could [iden­ti­fy] a social­ist at this point.

The Seat­tle Week­ly News described Kshama Sawant as your ​ “ good pal”. What is your rela­tion­ship with her?

Kshama and I are good friends. I worked on her cam­paign in 2012 against my cur­rent oppo­nent, Speak­er Frank Chopp, and I was a vol­un­teer coor­di­na­tor for her cam­paign last year. Since then, I’ve worked very close­ly with Kshama in build­ing this grass­roots move­ment around 15 Now.

How is your cam­paign sim­i­lar or dif­fer­ent from Sawan­t’s, espe­cial­ly since she ran in a city, and you’ll be run­ning at a state level?

There are dif­fer­ent issues that you can raise at a state lev­el that don’t seem fea­si­ble at a city lev­el. Just for an exam­ple, it would­n’t seem fea­si­ble for just the city offi­cials to call for tak­ing the big com­pa­nies like Boe­ing, Star­bucks, Ama­zon or Microsoft into pub­lic own­er­ship because those cor­po­ra­tions are not inside the city and are part of the state.

There [are] also gen­er­al issues that peo­ple in our dis­trict face, such as sky­rock­et­ing rents. We actu­al­ly have one of the fastest-ris­ing rents in the coun­try. But there’s a ban on rent con­trol at the state lev­el, so there’s very lit­tle that you can do at the city lev­el to real­ly enact rent control.

You’ve said you plan to refuse cam­paign dona­tions from big busi­ness­es. How do you define big busi­ness, and do you feel it’s pos­si­ble to win an elec­tion with that kind of finan­cial restriction?

We would­n’t take any mon­ey from any busi­ness, not just big busi­ness­es. We only take mon­ey from ordi­nary peo­ple [and orga­ni­za­tions that rep­re­sent ordi­nary peo­ple]. On the issue of whether or not it’s viable, I think all we have to do is look at the elec­tion last year where Kshama Sawan­t’s cam­paign was able to raise $140,000 from ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple and beat a 16-year incum­bent. We would in no way say that we could some­how run this race on an emp­ty stom­ach. We absolute­ly need grass­roots mon­ey, but we would not take a dime of cor­po­rate mon­ey. We feel that we have a real­ly good oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise $200,000 and take out the Speak­er of the House. In an age where [the Supreme Court cas­es] Cit­i­zens Unit­ed and McCutcheon have unleashed mas­sive amounts of cor­po­rate mon­ey into elec­tions, it’s a breath of fresh air for a lot of peo­ple to see a can­di­date take no cor­po­rate mon­ey, and be com­plete­ly uncom­pro­mised by that. So we see that as an asset for our campaign.

Do you plan to get sup­port from unions?

Absolute­ly, yes. The unions have poured mil­lions of dol­lars into elect­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty all over the coun­try, and I think that rank-and-file mem­bers and their lead­ers need to con­sid­er what they gain by sup­port­ing the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in Wash­ing­ton State lined up behind Boe­ing after that $8.7 bil­lion tax hand­out. [They went on to] pres­sure the Machin­ist union of Boe­ing to accept a 10-year con­tract that slashed pen­sions. The union vot­ed that down and were then very much pres­sured to vote on it again, and then it passed. And the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty basi­cal­ly [argued it was] nec­es­sary [for the union to accept the deal] so the state could have Boe­ing jobs.

We invite [the unions] to sup­port our cam­paign because we would in no way have sup­port­ed that con­tract, we would have in no way sup­port­ed that $8.7 bil­lion hand­out. We would have sup­port­ed what the work­ers want­ed and [we would] have gone to the work­ers to dis­cuss with them what they thought was nec­es­sary to keep the pro­duc­tion in the state and not give in to the cor­po­ra­tion again.

What is the sig­nif­i­cance of your cam­paign on the nation­al scale?

I think it’s incred­i­bly impor­tant for peo­ple that do not live in Wash­ing­ton State, who are not going to be able to vote for me, to under­stand why it’s impor­tant to sup­port these cam­paigns from afar. It’s impor­tant for every­body on the Left, all pro­gres­sives, all union rank-and-file mem­bers to real­ly sup­port these inde­pen­dent cam­paigns so that we can open up the space for a dis­cus­sion about actu­al­ly build­ing an inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal par­ty to rep­re­sent the 99%.