Adam Smith: Scourge of the Seattle Area and Bellevue’s Top Priority

Bellevue city police stationed outside of rep. Adam Smith's home during a SAW press conference.

Adam Smith (no relation) is a 60 year old man raised in Seatac, Washington. He has been serving as U.S. representative for WA’s 9th congressional district since 1997 and had previously served in the state senate as a Democrat. While in Congress, Smith has had a long record of voting in favor of funding packages for the apartheid state of Israel, offering only performative condemnations of the murderous Israeli government.

The extent of his opposition begins and ends at calling to leverage this massive amount of aid. Leverage it for what, exactly? Encouraging Israel to kill less civilians than their hollow hearts desire? Limiting expansion of existing illegal West Bank settlements without demands to end the occupation? Encouraging a “ceasefire” without accepting the demands of an independent Palestinian state? Isreal will never stop its genocidal campaign of violence and oppression without real opposition, and Smith voting to fund them exposes the kayfabe played out by the bourgeois government and their willingness to allow genocide to go unopposed.

All of this is very clear to organizers in the Seattle area, such as Seattle Against War (SAW) who have taken up a months-long campaign of protesting outside Adam Smith's large Bellevue home. Upset by these protests, Smith has accused the protesters of undermining “representative democracy.” In response to these actions, the Bellevue City Council has introduced and passed Ordinance 6917, effectively criminalizing residential protests as a gross misdemeanor, punishable by a $5,000 fine and up to one year in jail.

Smith is fighting the people and working class of this country, both in Washington and Palestine, harder than he would ever fight the culprit: the capitalist class that he represents. Smith feels the pressure mounting against him. He is rarely to be found in his Kent, WA office, screens opposition out of town hall meetings, and refuses to speak to SAW members following a sit-in at his aforementioned office. Adam Smith can run, Adam Smith can hide, but the working class will not give up until he and all of the bourgeiosie’s lackeys are forced into ending the genocide. Until then, an independent political vehicle of working class power must be built, to lead revolution and bring the decisive blow to imperialism.