A RESOLUTION expressing the Seattle City Council’s solidarity with farmers protesting the passage of farming bills in India and in support of affected members of Seattle’s South Asian community.
Agenda item nine. Resolution 31983 expressing the Seattle City Council's solidarity with farmers protesting the passage of farming bills in India and in support of affected members of Seattle South Asian community. Thank you. I will move to adopt resolution 31983. Is there a second? Okay. It's been moved and seconded to adopt the resolution. Councilmember Mosquito, you're listed as a prime sponsor and are recognized in order to address this item. Thank you very much. Council President colleagues. This is a continuation of this council's commitment to continue to stand with folks who are rising up and expressing our solidarity with those in India , fighting back against changes that continue to come down, especially on some of the most vulnerable residents and workers in India. After hearing with workers and members of the Punjabi community on the Friday introduction and referral calendar, the resolution that is in front of us was published expressing Seattle City Council's solidarity with farmers protesting the passage of farming bills in India and in support of the affected members of the city of Seattle's South Asian community. Over the course of the last few weeks in India, over 250,000 farmers, workers and their allies joined in what is typically what is believed to be the largest organized strike in world history. These workers are protesting three devastating deregulation agricultural bills that were passed by the Modi government in September. These laws deregulate the sale of crops, allowing private buyers more power in a marketplace that has long been incorporated and supported by government subsidies. Farmers worry now that these these pieces of legislation could devastate their prices and their livelihood. Farmers have said, including through reports on Democracy Now! And the link that I sent around, as you also saw from CNN and in Time magazine, it's been widely reported that farmers say that these neoliberal policies are a boon to corporations and roll back key labor and crop price protections that could have a deadly impact on the livelihood of farmers. Farming is the leading source of income for the population of India. This will leave farmers at the mercy of big corporations who will, in effect, drive down prices and could result in huge losses for farmers, effectively handing over farms to private corporations. Farmers, farmers, unions and the community who are supporting these farmers have said that these changes made by the bills passed in September will put them at risk for losing their businesses and land to large corporations. 60% of India's populations rely on agriculture as their main source of income, and the plight of farmers in India affects us. Here in the city of Seattle. The city of Seattle, as well as the country and the world, rely on India and their farmers. India is the leading exporter of mighty rice and the world's largest milk producer to the global market. We want to make sure that the production that is happening in states like Punjabi, in places like Haryana and Delhi, where farmers are protesting that their voices are heard and that we stand in solidarity with their efforts across the world. Farmworkers have had a long history of organized protests from the United Farm Workers here in the United States to farmworkers in India. Now, we continue to want to show support for those who are helping to put food on the world's table and who are themselves often struggling to put food on their own table. We also want to show solidarity with what is believed to be the largest demonstration in world history as farmers marched on the country's capital of New Delhi. They were met with by violent response from the Indian government. Water cannons were used in freezing cold temperatures on mostly elderly men in their fifties, sixties and seventies, and they experienced violent response via tear gas again deployed during a global deadly pandemic that affects the respiratory system. The police put up barricades with barbed wire, dug ten by ten trenches in the nations highway to prevent farmers from reaching the nation's capital. Please take a look again at the sources that we sent around over the weekend and much of the local and national news to bring attention to the workers in India and the farm workers who specifically stood up and shown a tremendous amount of courage in the face of opposition and repression from the government. I want to thank specifically Kent Councilmember Winder Carr for bringing this resolution with the Punjabi community to our attention. They in Kent are working to pass a similar resolution and as I noted this morning, the Kent mayor has sent a very strong statement of solidarity as well for the farm workers in India and appreciate the solidarity to our sister city in Kent for their work on this and their upcoming action in January. The South Asian community, specifically the Sikh community, has been in or has been organizing local protests to bring attention to what is going on in India and have been working to pass resolutions in other cities as well. I'm honored that we are able to bring this forward today, that it has been able to grab the attention of all of us in the city of Seattle to continue to show our support with the farmers in India and will continue to support our colleagues across this country to bring greater attention to this issue and stand up against violent repression and support the farm workers appreciate our congressional partners, who we are also calling on to help support farm workers and to oppose the repression that they've experienced. I look forward to working with all of you to continue to call attention to the issues that these farmworkers are demanding justice for. And again, I want to thank Councilmember Stewart as a co-sponsor of this and also for your earlier actions this well this year, starting in February, to bring attention to this issue. And as folks have said, this is the latest iteration of attacks from that government. So we all stand in solidarity and want to make sure folks here in our community, especially South Asian community in Seattle and Sikh community, Punjabi community, know that we see, hear and support the protests of farmworkers in India. Thank you very much. And thanks again for your co-sponsorship. Thank you, Councilmember Muscadet, because we're excellent. I know you have an amendment that you'd like to put before the city council, but before you do that, I wanted to offer you an opportunity to make general comments, if you'd like. As a co-sponsor of the resolution. Yes. I would like to thank you so much, President Gonzalez. Good afternoon to everybody who is watching this. Members of the public. Our community members. And almost a century ago. Greetings and solidarity to the hundreds of South Asian community members who have been in touch with my office over the last week and whom I've spoken to personally in the last weeks with a burning sense of urgency to fight the injustice being faced by the farmers and workers in India. Thank you, Councilmember Mosquito, for bringing this forward. I'm honored to co-sponsor this resolution on behalf of my sisters and brothers and siblings in India. India's government, headed by Prime Minister Narendra modi and his reactionary Hindu fundamentalist. Part of the agenda, the party or the BJP, have introduced three new laws in September that will dismantle the bare minimum protections or regulations relied on by millions of small farmers for survival. One of the new laws, for example, would repeal the minimum support price, which is a publicly mandated price floor, a minimum price at which the government promises to buy produce from small farmers as a measure of basic economic protection for them. I also agree with Reynoso Cohn, who said during public comment that the ration card system allows the multitude of poor people and working people to access grain, cooking oil and other basic food needs at affordable prices. I personally have childhood memories of getting rice at the local ration shop in Mumbai. Dismantling the Russian system would be a ticket to mass starvation and increased malnutrition. Yesterday morning, my staff and I joined hundreds of sick students and other young people at a protest action near the Space Needle in solidarity with the farmers in India. As an elected representative of Seattle's working people and as someone who grew up in India and was politicized and radicalized by the understanding of how global capitalism and imperialism have led to continued impoverishment of the Indian masses and the masses in the neocolonial world as a whole. I was proud to join the protest rally yesterday as myself and other speakers at the rally said the new laws are going to directly further enrich the already obscenely wealthy billionaires like Mukesh Ambani, who is India's richest man and is like the Jeff Bezos of India and Gautam Adani, both of whom are among the 40 richest people in the world. Farmers and agricultural workers make up 60% of the country's population. A 2018 study found that more than half of the farmers in India were in debt, and this was before the current pandemic and deep capitalist crisis. More than 20,000 farmers in the country have died by suicide from just from 2018 to 2019. And as the resolution says, over 360,000 since 1995, farmer indebtedness has been a major factor in these suicides. The protests have made world headlines and have led to solidarity actions by South Asian immigrant communities in an especially by the Sikh community globally, including right here in the Seattle region as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. These solidarity protests have even forced establishment politicians to speak publicly in support of the farmers protest, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and a member of the Australian Parliament. I really agree with the community members who testified in public comment today who said that the overwhelming majority are facing a race to the bottom globally and unless we fight back, we are at a loss. I agree with those who said in public comment that they fought with us for the $15 minimum wage and we have direct stake in the farmers in India winning their demands. The Indian government has inflicted brutal repression against the farmers and the protesters, with police using batons, water cannons and gas. But as the farmers have said, the police are using tear gas against us. But we were already crying at this point. The protests have sustained for nearly three weeks. This is a remarkable. The protest actions of selected multiple transportation and commuting chokepoints with hundreds of thousands of protesters blocking roads and squatting on railway tracks. The farmer protests are also noteworthy in the level of preparation they carried out before launching the actions. For instance, farmers interviewed at the Delhi action say they are prepared enough to be able to sustain the action for months. The protests also have an impressive degree of coordination between the actions in metros such as Delhi and Mumbai and the actions in rural areas in the individual states. They have organized shifts with some attending the protest actions and others tending the land. Women's committees have helped with providing food or, as are Sikh community members, justified longer every day for the thousands of activists. The protests have not been short of food even for a day. This level of organization and confidence is one of the reasons why the farmers are not intimidated. Despite the brutal tear gas and water cannons used against them by the police, of course, such organizing is not the result of some clever top down management based on ideas of business unionism. Such a level of preparation can only be achieved by first building the political conviction, solidarity and cohesion among hundreds of thousands of oppressed people. The rank and file farmers strengthening the clarity that we have to fight together against the ruling class. That it will be a long and hard fight and will involve significant sacrifice, but that it is worth doing precisely because that is the only way we can successfully push back against the gross injustices faced by the overwhelming majority under this bankrupt system of capitalism. It is this type of solidarity that is enabling the protesters to spend night after night in the cold winter in northern India on the back of trucks and tractors. This is the kind of organizing needed for any serious strike action by the labor movement anywhere, because big corporations and the capitalist state have all the wealth and the resources to wait for protests and strikes to grow exhausted and demoralized. Yesterday, at the request of the South Asian community members, my office initiated a petition to urge President elect Joe Biden and Vice President elect Kamala Harris to make a public statement in solidarity with millions of Indian farmers protesting privatization, poverty and indebtedness. Members of the public can find a link to it on my social media accounts and on our council office blog. Nearly 350 people have now signed the petition just since last night, and as a number of the speakers in public testimony said, my office alongside the South Asian community organizations, the Sikh students organizations and labor unions , is organizing a car caravan rally on January eight in solidarity with the general strike in India, which is going to be extremely important because it is this kind of solidarity among workers and farmers that can really put the Modi Modi regime on the defensive, on the back foot. And we need escalating tactics like this in order to ensure that we don't get complacent and that we win our victories. I'm also proud of the track record of my Socialist Council office in helping to build international working class solidarity, which is crucial for the global fight back against capitalism. As was mentioned before, just in January and February this year. I know it feels like an age ago. I also kept thinking it was last year, but it just this year my office brought forward the resolution against Modi's anti-Muslim and for citizenship laws, which South Asian activists and socialists fought for together. And we saw the Modi pro Modi supporters, the Bucks, the the Sun guys who came here and spoke in such divisive, deeply rightwing language. Last year, we brought forward a proclamation condemning the repression by the Modi regime in Kashmir in August 2014. My office sent a public letter in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine, calling on Obama, then President Obama and the members of both Houses of Congress to condemn the bombardment and violence by the Israeli regime in Gaza. When the City Council passed a resolution from my office in February opposing Modi and the BJP's citizenship laws, we made Seattle the first city to take a position. Since then, five additional cities have done the same, with San Francisco being the sixth city to pass a resolution in July. And my general comments by echoing the slogan and adding another slogan of the movement. The movement has settled on 8000, which means farmers stay united or long live farmer unity. I think as we head into the January 8th action, which is absolutely crucial for hundreds of millions of workers who will be on strike alongside the farmers, along with the student movement, we have to also raise the slogan Kissan Mazdoor Zindabad, which is Long live the unity between farmers and workers. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Salant Okay. We're going to go ahead and consider Amendment one now that we've heard general comments. So before we open it up for any additional comments on the underlying resolution, there is an amendment that was circulated previously today consistent with council rules. So I'm going to go ahead and recognize council members want for that motion of Amendment One. Thank you. I move Amendment one inserting the following sentences. Section three The Seattle City Council stand in solidarity with the farmers organizations, trade union federations and student unions in India. Organizing for a General Strike on January eight, 2021 to unite the movement of oppressed peoples, demanding the restoration of protections for small farmers, increasing the minimum wage, ending privatizations, and defending the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. We heard from a number of ordinary people today in public comments, specifically from the Sikh community and also the broader Asian community. And every single person of those spoke in favor of this amendment was the proposed amendment. The protest movement has already shown enormous strength, as I mentioned before, having lasted nearly three weeks with an impressive degree of organization and political strength. However, it would be fatal if we got complacent. The movement has to escalate in order to force the Modi regime to concede to the movement's demands. The Modi regime will keep trying various divide and conquer tricks to try and break the back of the movement, for example, labeling Sikh farmers as terrorists. They will keep trying these tactics if they don't succeed in their in that horrendous effort. Then the regime, the super wealthy and big business will simply try and wait out the movement, wait for protesters to get exhausted and demoralized. As members of the labor movement like myself know, we we have seen this happen and we know that when we are fighting the bosses, we need to have tactics that will escalate the struggle and put increased pressure on the bosses to force them to concede to workers and unions demands. So it is absolutely crucial that the trade union movement in India has announced the general strike for January eight. The call for the general strike, as I said, is being supported by 100 farmer organizations, ten trade union confederations that represent hundreds of millions of workers, union members and student organizations. The unions are demanding the restoration of protections for small farmers, increasing the minimum wage, establishing pensions and Social Security for workers, ending privatizations and defending the rights of religious and ethnic minority. To understand the potential impact of such an action and why, I am urging Council members to support this amendment. We should know that the Indian trade movement has carried out three general strike actions recently one in January 2019, one in January of this year, and a third one just weeks ago in late November. Each of those general strikes has been the single largest general strike in global labor history. The one in 2019 was the largest in global labor history, and the one in January this year was the largest. And then now the one that happened in November was the largest. The last two general strikes, including the one in November, brought 250 million work union members out, not 250,000 people. And so these are these are absolutely massive. These are earth shattering actions. And I think this is exactly the kind of earth shattering action that we need in order to be able to combat the hundreds of billions and indeed trillions of dollars that are facing the poor farmers and workers at the hands of the billionaire class. I really urge council members to support this amendment. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Council member Solent Councilor Silent has made a motion to put Amendment One before us. Is there a second debate? Okay. It's been moved and seconded to amend the resolution as presented on Amendment one. Council members want you when you have already made comments about Amendment One. So I'm going to go ahead and open it up to the floor to see if there are any additional comments on Amendment one. And as usually is, the case councilors want, you will. Have the. Final. Word. On Amendment One. But for now, we're going to go ahead and open up for any additional comments on amendment. Councilmember Strauss, please. Thank you. Council President. Thank you. Councilmembers and the state in support for bringing this resolution forward. I will be supporting the base resolution since public comment. Councilmember stop underscore from Kent who brought this resolution to our city council for consideration. Called me to ask what other public commenters were speaking about when discussing Section three, as she had not previously been aware of Section three. She from my communications and my phone call with her just in the last number of hours. It is her preference to retain the focus of this resolution on sections one and two. And for those reasons, I will not be voting for this amendment, although I support this resolution and everything that is brought forward. Thank you, Councilmembers. Thank you. Councilmember Strauss. Any additional comments on Amendment one? Hey, hearing no additional comments on Amendment one? Councilmember Swann. Any closing remarks that you'd like to make before we take up the vote on this amendment? Yes. I appreciate Councilmember Strauss. I don't I completely disagree with Councilmember Strauss for not supporting this amendment and also the reasons he stated. I think they're quite stunning. But I do appreciate that Councilmember Strauss was open about why he was going to vote no on the amendment. And I think that's a rare instance of where it is. It can become clear to members of the public why certain things are happening in the halls of government. But unfortunately, nobody else has spoken to, which I'm not sure what to make of it. I do appreciate councilmember horrible seconding of my amendment so that we can at least have a discussion. But I think that it is extremely important to recognize that regardless of what ethnicity elected officials may have at the end of the day, that the test that we have, we as an ordinary people have to put them to is are they standing with the ordinary people of whatever issue is at hand or are they standing with the establishment? And I think it's very telling that, at least according to what Councilman Bustos has said, and I'm and I'm, you know, assuming that other council members or whoever other council members share that position, I would say that it is deeply unfortunate because it is not a question of one elected official, even if they may be from a certain community. Dozens of people from the same ethnic community testified in public comment, saying that they wanted you to support that action and they had their own version. Describe why they think it's important, because they understand that this action is has the potential to greatly escalate the struggle which the farmers and the workers understand the need to do. They understand that they need to build unity, which is why there was a general strike in November by the workers in solidarity with the farmers, because they understand that actually they not only strengthen the farmers movement, they strengthen their own movement, and that the struggles of oppressed peoples are interlinked. And so I just want all the ordinary people, community members sake and social South Asian community members to understand what is going on here. At the end of the day, we have to observe if politicians are doing the bidding of other establishment politicians or are they actually listening to community members who one after one after one came and said that they want the city council to support this amendment. So I will, of course, be voting yes on this amendment, and I still urge council members to vote yes on it. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to close out debate on this particular amendment. So let's go ahead and have the clerk call the roll on the adoption of Amendment One. One. Yes. Strauss. Oh. Book? Yes. Whereas now. Lewis. Yes. Morales. Yes. Rosetta. No. Peterson. It's just nice to see. Councilmember Peterson had to leave. Unfortunately for Council President Gonzalez, no votes were in favor and four opposed. Okay. The the motion fails for a lack of majority one way or the other. So the amendment is not adopted. We're not going to move to consideration of the resolution, and I think we've had a lot of debate on it. Were there any additional comments on the resolution as proposed? Which data, please? Thank you very much, Madam President. So I want to be really clear as well that the folks that I'm hearing from, including members not only that have been elected, but members who are working directly with the Punjabi community and the community at large who've been asking for this. I think that folks want to send a clear message about what is currently happening in India. A message to the congressional delegation. And for me personally, that does not mean not wanting to support a general strike. I think that there is going to be another meeting and more opportunities for us to continue to show solidarity with the general strike. But I want to make sure that I'm following the lead of the Punjabi community who's been reaching out and asking for the specific language in the resolution today. I will be making sure that we're pushing out information about the general strike. I know that folks don't come to a strike easily. This is often the last line that gets brought. Sorry, the last line of effort to try to make sure that messages are being heard. We know time and time again that these farmers have tried. They have tried to negotiate. They have protested. They have put their lives in harm's way, both because of COVID and because of the ongoing repressive attacks from the police and the governments being exposed to very cold temperatures and water cannons. Their life is on the line. And so we know that they have done everything they can. Personally, I support the general strike. I'll be putting out messages from our office in support to make sure that folks know how to participate in the caravan. Thank you very much. Council member silent. But in following what what the Punjabi community has asked for today, which is a very clear resolution specific to a international I'm sorry, a national message across the globe. I am very excited about this resolution. I think it's an unfortunate sort of conversation about who we're following, but I don't think that those two things have to stand in isolation. We can send forward this clear resolution today and also stand in support of the upcoming general strike, which I plan to do, and I plan to send out messages from our office. So I just want to make sure folks here directly that this is absolutely something that I am interested in doing in support of those who have reached out initially. Very happy to have this resolution passed today. And that says and that said, I'm also going to be supporting the call for the general strike. I know that that is not a decision people come to lightly, often the last line of defense when thinking about the strategies in front of us. And it takes a huge act of courage to do so. So personally, I want to focus now where we were at, but wanted to stand in solidarity and follow. The lead of the Punjabi community has been reaching out to our office and more information forthcoming obviously on that first week of action in January. I think it comes from a mosquito. It was more silent. Thank you. I don't agree as a member of the labor movement myself that it's not easy for workers to go on strike. It is a very difficult decision because it requires a tremendous amount of sacrifice. There's a lot of uncertainty. There are lots of twists and turns because bosses or in this case, the more the regime and the billionaire class were not given easily, in fact, they will, in fact, try to wait out the movement as much as they can. And so during the strike action is requires a lot of resilience, a lot of strategic and tactical political clarity for the workers and continued solidarity for them to not be able to vote for the strike, to not be broken. But I'm not sure what is being achieved by this council not supporting this by not supporting the amendment for the strike action, because they have already declared the strike action. So when we agree that it's not easy for them to do this. So that means that it has been it has been an extremely hard and long and hard road for them. So they have already declared the strike action. I'm not sure how it helps to fight for the general strike by sending a message of, well, this is not what the Punjabi community wants. I also don't agree, unfortunately, with the idea that that not having the clause for the the general strike support is somehow following the lead of the Punjabi community. It's not some homogeneous community. We heard from dozens of Punjabi and Sikh working people today and dozens more and hundreds more have, you know, have spoken in different ways, not just today, that they are supporting this strike action that they wanted the city council to also supported. Absolutely agree that we all should be supporting the January 8th Act. And I appreciate you expressing support for the action that we are organizing. And I wanted to call on everybody, all the ordinary people, members of the public who are watching this. Let's make sure we organize a massive, massive, historic January 8th, 2021, car caravan rally in Seattle at 3 p.m.. I'm not saying the location yet because we are going to decide the location and let everybody know. But my point is that it is a let's make it a massive and successful action and let's stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the masses in India who are struggling for a better world. Thank you. Okay. But that we're going to go ahead and close out debate here since the sponsors have spoken last on this particular resolution. So will the clerk please call the role on the adoption of the resolution? Want. Yes. Stress? Yes. Verbal? Yes. Whereas. Yes. RUIZ Yes. Morales Yes. Mosquera Yes. Council President Gonzalez. Yes. It in favor of. The resolution is adopted and the chair will sign it. Will the police effects my signature to the legislation on my behalf? Other business? Is there any other business to come before the council? Council Member Mosquito. Thank you very much, Madam President. I would like to thank all of you as well. Council Member House President means that. Thanks to everyone this morning to you for stewarding us through a really tough and challenging 2020. And I appreciate the stewardship that you provided. Also want to thank my office and Aretha, who has been working on this resolution that just passed today and her presence at the rally at the Seattle center as well yesterday. And all of the work that our team has been doing between Aretha Friday and a lawyer interim, we got some 20,000 emails just specific to the budget in the last few weeks. And really they're going to continue to come from her office as we endeavor to get responses back out to everybody and look forward to working with all of you on various issues coming up in 2021. And I want to say thanks for all of your hard work this year on the budget. I know that we took a lot of your time and your family's time and your community time to work with the community, with our budget process here and and through the committee deliberations that were very lengthy at times. So thank you very much. Thanks to Essential Staff, our entire team and I look forward to working on more with Andrew on housing coming up and seasonal workers rights and what do you think on health issues and on everything related to community safety? And Lori, who's just been tremendous in our office on how we're responding to constituent inquiries, I just want to say thanks as per usual councilmember, whereas I couldn't get away with not doing it. Madam President, I'd like to also request to be excused on January one. There we go. There's the city council business. All right. There's been a motion for members data to be excused on January 4th. Is there any objection to that? I object. This better. Not cause I don't. Have a lot of paper before I object. Okay. I'm going to take that objection in in the ingest and assume that there is no actual objection number. Ms.. Gay that will be excused for January 4th, 2020. Is there any other business to come before the Council? All right. Colleagues, this does conclude the items of business on today's agenda. This is our last regularly scheduled Marathon City Council meeting for the year of 2020. Our next regularly scheduled City Council Council meeting is on Monday, January 4th, 2021 at 2:00 PM. I hope that you all have a wonderful evening. We are adjourned. See you all in 2021.