Indian-American socialist leads 'Black Lives Matter' protests in Seattle

A 46-year-old Indian-American software engineer turned socialist is at forefront of "Black Lives Matter" protests in Seattle to permanently oust city police officials from downtown area that has w been designated "Capitol Hill Automous Zone" (CHAZ), according to media reports.

Kshama Sawant, Seattle City Councilwoman, is encouraging activists in CHAZ "to hold out on giving back precinct to cops or allowing officers inside barriced region", according to Fox News.

Widespre protests have been taking place for weeks across US following death of 46-year-old African American George Floyd in Minneapolis while he was in police custody. Protesters have sparred with police for weeks.  

Pune-born Sawant urged protesters to hold strong to six-block region y've designated a " cop" zone, report said.

Sawant has said she will introduce legislation to convert precinct into "a community center for restorative justice."

"Our movement needs to urgently ensure East Precinct is t handed back to police, but is turned over permanently into community control. My office is bringing legislation to convert East Precinct into a community center for restorative justice," she tweeted on Friday.

On Tuesday, she also participated in demonstrations calling to defund police and allowed over a thousand demonstrators into City Hall in a late-night protest calling for Mayor Jenny Durkan to resign.

She said she did it to show City Hall belongs to people and she wanted diverse group of demonstrators to be heard in halls of power, Komonews.com reported.

More than 1,000 protesters spent an hour talking about defunding Seattle Police Department, banning chemical weapon use by police, and railing on Mayor Jenny Durkan, demanding she step down immediately, report said.

Even though social distancing was n-existent, everyone wore masks and evening remained peaceful. Assistant Police Chief Deanna llette also says laws were broken, so officers did t respond, it ded.

Born to Vasundhara and H T Ramanujam in 1973, Sawant grew up in Mumbai where she later studied computer science and gruated with a BS from University of Mumbai in 1994.

Sawant married and moved to United States. After moving to United States Sawant decided to abandon computer engineering field.

She began to pursue study in ecomics due to what she described as her own "questions of ecomic inequality." She entered ecomics programme at rth Carolina State University where she earned a PhD. She became a United States citizen in 2010.

Sawant joined Socialist Alternative in 2006 and became a councilwoman in 2013 after defeating a 16-year incumbent Democrat Richard Conlin to become first socialist elected in a major US city in deces.