When Seattle city councilwoman Kshama Sawant, of the Socialist Alternative party, denounced the “brutal murder” of Che Taylor, an unarmed Black man, by police, the two cops sued her for defamation. “They want to punish the activists who come out in response to these unlawful killings,” said Emerson Johnson, of the Kshama Solidarity Committee. The aim is to “intimidate and silence movements -- that’s why they’re going after her.”