The Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University has announced that Kshama Sawant, the well-known Seattle City Councilor, will deliver the second annual Prof. Chin Banerjee Lecture in Anti-Racism later this month. The lecture, scheduled for October 30 at 6 PM at the downtown campus of SFU (515 West Hastings Street), Vancouver.

By Harinder Mahil

The Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University has announced that Kshama Sawant, the well-known Seattle City Councilor, will deliver the second annual Prof. Chin Banerjee Lecture in Anti-Racism later this month. The title of her lecture will be “Anti-Racism, the Labour Movement, and the Role of Elected Officials.”

The lecture, scheduled for October 30 at 6 PM at the downtown campus of SFU (515 West Hastings Street), Vancouver, will be co-sponsored by the Vancouver & District Labour Council, Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation, South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD), and the West Coast Coalition Against Racism (WCCAR).

Prof. Chinmoy Banerjee taught 18-century and Restoration English literature, literary criticism, and post-colonial studies at Simon Fraser University for 35 years. An accomplished teacher, celebrated by students and colleagues, he was also an active human rights and anti-racism activist in the Vancouver community for 45 years. This annual lecture was started by the University’s Institute for the Humanities to commemorate the life, work, and political activism of Professor Banerjee, who passed away on July 29, 2020.

The inaugural lecture was delivered in 2022 by Robyn Maynard, author of Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present.

Kshama Sawant is the first elected socialist in Seattle in nearly a century. She was first elected to the Seattle City Council in 2013, running openly as a member of Socialist Alternative, long before Bernie Sanders and AOC were household names. She is currently the longest-serving sitting Seattle Council member.

It was her efforts that resulted in Seattle City passing a law in February 2023 to amend anti-discrimination protections in employment, public places, housing, and contracting to include caste as a protected class. Seattle is the first city in the United States to ban caste discrimination.

An outspoken socialist who has taken no corporate campaign money, Kshama has won four elections defeating Seattle’s elite, corporate landlords, and some of the most powerful corporations in the world like Amazon, who have spent millions of dollars to try and unseat her. Winning these elections also meant overcoming the opposition of the city’s Democratic Party, who have attempted to defeat Kshama by running both big-business-backed and self-described “progressive” candidates against her. Socialist Alternative and Kshama have consistently clarified that despite their differences, both Democrats and Republicans serve the wealthy, and that working people need a new party of their own.

Kshama has used her elected office to help lead movements that have won historic working-class victories. Alongside rank-and-file union members and other workers, they made Seattle the first major city to gain the $15/hour minimum wage in 2014 and won the Amazon Tax in 2020 on big business to fund affordable housing and Green New Deal programs. 

Kshama has unwaveringly used her office to fight alongside rank-and-file union members and workers fighting for a union. Alongside Starbucks workers, Kshama fought to win a unanimous City Council resolution in 2022 in support of the Starbucks union drive. 

Her office has a long track record of building united working-class struggle against discrimination and oppression: replacing Seattle’s Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day; making Seattle the first-ever jurisdiction outside South Asia with a ban on caste discrimination; making Seattle and abortion sanctuary and fully funding abortion needs for anyone in the city, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade; banning police use of chokeholds, chemical weapons, and other so-called “crowd control” devices, a victory won in the midst of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement.

Every single one of the victories has been won by Kshama’s office by mobilizing rank-and-file union members and progressive labor unions, non-unionized workers, renters, and community members.

More information about the anti-racism lecture can be obtained at the following link: https://events.sfu.ca/event/37232-second-annual-drchinmoy-banerjee-lecture-in

Harinder Mahil is a human rights activist and is secretary of the Dr. Hari Sharma Foundation.