On July 12, Columbia City experienced a hiphop/R&B/funk event organized by Beatwalk. A festival held primarily on a closed off section of South Ferdinand Street, Beatwalk includes participation from small area businesses (including Island Soul and Taco City) and a good number of performances (including singer/pianist Darrius Willrich and The Double Dutch Divas). Because the weather was perfect—not too hot but lots of sun—people crowded the street, most of them Black, middle-aged, middle class, with kids and grandkids. Also in attendance was, much to the surprise of Beatwalk’s organizers, Kshama Sawant’s team. They had three tables and about 10 volunteers searching for voters in the race for Congressional District 9, a seat that Adam Smith has held since 1997.
Now, why is this at all important? For one, as Beatwalk’s director Tisha Gallow pointed out to me in a text: “The fact that [Sawant] even knew about Beatwalk is impressive because it is small and all about community… It’s a mini Black Festival in South Seattle.” It’s mostly absent from Seattle’s main cultural radar. But somehow it’s on Sawant’s. But it’s clearly not on that of her main rival in the race, the conventional and pro-war Dem Adam Smith (Melissa Chaudhry, the third main candidate in the race can be dismissed for reasons relating to her non-public position on LGBTQ rights and her bizarre plan to eventually do a party “switcheroo” if she wins a slot in the primaries.)
Why wasn’t Smith in Columbia City on Sunday? Kate Bond, Beatwalk’s operations manager, has this answer: “Adam Smith not showing might loosely relate to a lack of visibility into what happens in SE Seattle because we are so often overlooked.” In an email sent the day after Beatwalk, Smith’s team countered her interpretation by claiming that Team Smith is actually very plugged in. They had attended “Auburn 4th, Federal Way 4th, Kent Cornucopia, Mercer Island Summer, and Seattle Pride.” But Sawant’s team not only attended two of those mentioned events (Kent Cornucopia, Pride), but also, and get ready, attended: Green River Farm Stand, Federal Way Farmers Market, SeaTac Farmers Market, Music at Angle Lake Park, Kent Music at Morrill Meadows Park, Auburn Farmers Market, Trans Pride, and 13 more events. And while Smith was attending the Auburn 4th, Sawant attended the Somali Independence Day in Rainier Beach on July 4th. What a class difference…