Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary Socialist Alternative (SAlt or SA) is a Trotskyist political party in the United States.

SAlt formed as Labor Militant in 1986, when members of the Committee for a Workers' International created a US branch.

SAlt's highest-profile public representative was former Seattle City Councillor Kshama Sawant, who left the party and created her own, Revolutionary Workers, in 2024.

[17] Sawant had previously run for election as the Socialist Alternative candidate in the 43rd district of the Washington House of Representatives against incumbent Democrat Frank Chopp in 2012.

The Sawant campaign won a subsequent court battle against the Secretary of State for the right to list her party preference on the ballot in the elections.

[22] Sawant's platform included a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour, rent control and taxes on higher-income individuals.

[26] In 2014, SAlt member and Washington House candidate Jess Spear was arrested during several protests against oil and coal trains moving through Seattle.

[30][31] Socialist Alternative is a Trotskyist, revolutionary socialist party[1] that advocates democratic socialism as an alternative to bureaucratic socialism of the former Soviet Union and the capitalist democratic model, which it describes as designed to benefit only the "ruling class and disenfranchise working people".

[34] Socialist Alternative expressed solidarity with 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests and opposes the Chinese Communist Party's suppression of opposition.

[42] In 2024, SAlt labelled both Cornel West and Jill Stein as "the strongest left, anti-war" candidate.

In 2017, Socialist Alternative member Ryan Timlin was named President-elect of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 in Minneapolis after running unopposed.