Hundreds Gather in Seattle to Fight the Rich!
A report from the Fight the Rich Organizing Conference
March 8th, 2025 by Gwendolyn Hart
Hundreds Gather in Seattle for Fight the Rich Organizing Conference
On February 22nd, Workers Strike Back hosted the day-long Fight the Rich Organizing Conference in Seattle, to fight back against the billionaires and both their political parties. The event featured Workers Strike Back co-founder and socialist former Seattle city councilmember Kshama Sawant, independent journalist Chris Hedges, and Jill Stein. Members of other working-class organizations and the labor movement spoke as well, including Hassan Abdel Salam, co-founder of Abandon Biden/Abandon Harris, Carolina Amazon workers, union members from the UAW, Teamsters, Iron Workers and more.
All came together because of a singular mission: to declare war on the rich!
Chris Hedges speaks at Fight the Rich Organizing Conference
A Fighting Approach
With three hundred working-class people from across the country in attendance in-person and over two hundred thousand more attending via livestream, there was a clear understanding that the capitalist system is at the root of the crisis working people are facing. The cost of living is crushing workers between soaring rents, punishing grocery prices, and record-setting levels of debt. The climate crisis is intensifying with 2024 becoming the hottest year on record, leading to another devastating hurricane season, and the most destructive wildfires in US history ravaging Los Angeles. Meanwhile the world’s five richest billionaires increased their wealth by $542 billion last year alone. Biden, Harris, and the Democratic Party championed this rotten status quo, the genocidal war on Gaza, and spent enormous effort shamefully gaslighting workers that the economy was doing just fine.
Many attendees were drawn to the conference because of Workers Strike Back’s fighting approach in the last election, campaigning powerfully for the Stein campaign while completely rejecting the genocidal, anti-worker campaigns of both Harris and Trump . WSB activists completely rejected lesser evilism and fought to get out the vote in the critical swing state of Michigan to win as many votes as possible for Jill Stein.
As Kshama explained, however, the Democrats are no longer the ones in power and working people must fight against Trump and the Republicans as ferociously as we fought Biden and the Democrats. Trump won the election due to massive anger against the Democrats and the rotten status quo. Many working people voted for Trump with the hope he might address the cost of living crisis and end the war in Gaza. But Trump is no friend to working people or the oppressed. Already he has ramped up the attacks on workers which has been the consistent policy of both parties of big business — slashing funding for critical services that working people need while cutting taxes for billionaires. Trump has escalated deportations and political attacks on immigrants, and doubled down on genocidal rhetoric against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Workers Strike Back members outside of the conference hall
What Works and What Doesn’t
The working class has a historic opening. The billionaire class, their institutions, and their representatives are rapidly losing credibility, as was pointed out by participants in the conference. The question is not whether working people are angry and ready for change. The question is how to channel this anger into concrete action.
Working people have the power to fight the rich and win because it is our labor that is necessary for society to function, and we can organize to shut down the bosses’ profits. But to wield this power effectively requires clarity about what works and what doesn’t.
Bernie Sanders’ campaigns for president mobilized millions of working people around bold demands like Medicare for All and free college education, but Sanders’s refusal to break with the Democrats enabled them to dismantle both campaigns on behalf of their corporate masters. The Democrats showed they prefer allowing Trump to be elected twice rather than willingly cede an inch to working people’s demands. After years of shameful silence while the Democrats were in power, while his party broke strikes and backed genocide, Sanders has suddenly reappeared, trying to pose once again as a leader of movements and redirect people back inside the Democratic Party.
Jill Stein warned about what this move by Sanders represents:
“Do not allow this movement to be hijacked. Because that is what the Democrats are trying to do right now. That is what Bernie Sanders is doing, that is what AOC is doing. That is what all of them are doing, saying, ‘See, look how bad Trump is. Put us back in power.”
The Democratic Party is a graveyard of the movements, which they always try to hijack and destroy. To be successful, working-class movements must not place any faith in either of the two parties of big business, nor in any person or organization tied to them.
Amazon workers from Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment (CAUSE) speak at organizing conference
Labor Leaders Fold Instead of Fight
Unfortunately, much of the union leadership in this country is linked to the Democratic Party and also does not want to organize working people to fight back. Strike action is the most powerful weapon workers have to fight the bosses and win. Many union members at the conference from across the country spoke to the fact that most labor leaders refuse to build genuine rank-and-file militancy and instead prefer the mythical idea that there is some easy middle ground between the interests of workers and bosses. These labor leaders prioritize cultivating cozy personal relationships with the bosses and their institutions like the Democratic Party. Instead of leading workers on the picket lines, many labor leaders channel disputes into backroom negotiations where they sign away workers’ leverage in exchange for minimal or no gains.
This bankrupt strategy of capitulation before the bosses is why the unionization rate has steadily fallen over the past fifty years. Look no further than labor leaders’ silence as Trump fires thousands of union members to see their craven politics on display. Shawn Fain of the UAW, who shamefully carried water for the strikebreaker Joe Biden in the last election, now says he’s ready to work with Trump. Teamsters president Sean O’Brien has publicly backed Trump’s support for anti-union “right to work” legislation and brutal attacks on immigrants.
Kshama Sawant clearly identified what is necessary in this situation:
“We need a reckoning in the labor movement, to take down the business unionist leadership, and restore the militant, radical, rank-and-file organizing on which the labor movement was built.”
A similar reckoning happened in the 1930s, when, even in the midst of the Great Depression, a rotten labor leadership sold out workers again and again. A string of defeats and setbacks was finally broken by strikes of tens of thousands of workers led by socialists, including the historic 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters general strike. The example of these victories sparked a powerful wave of organizing that swept the country, a labor movement that won big wage increases, job security, union recognition and more. Such a movement is needed today, to break with the two parties of big business and establish a new party of the working class.
Launching the Fight the Rich Campaign
That is why Workers Strike Back held this conference, officially launching the Fight the Rich campaign. To prepare the ground for a fighting workers’ movement, the muscles of class struggle first need to be rebuilt through campaigns to tax the rich to pay for things like free public transit, social housing, Medicare for All, and the other things working people need to live. Most importantly, these campaigns must be led by a clear fighting strategy and militant working class that directly takes on the bosses — demonstrating that when we fight, we can win!
If you want to build that movement, become a member of Workers Strike Back today and join the fight against the rich!
