Jonathan Rosenblum

Revolutionaries in the Halls of Power

From inside Kshama Sawant's historic tenure in Seattle City Hall comes a blueprint for 21st-century socialists, a counterpoint to the strategies favored by The Squad and other progressive activists. Seattle was the first major city to mandate a $15 minimum wage; the first to implement a payroll tax on Amazon to build affordable housing; the first to secure a bevy of renters’ rights laws, making good on the slogan, “Housing is a human right.” Behind these remarkable breakthroughs in the 2010s stood a small but feisty Marxist movement, Socialist Alternative, and the City Council member they helped to elect, Kshama Sawant. In a municipal government dominated by pro-business Democrats, Sawant and the popular street movements she led against major corporations headquartered in the region—including Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks—won battles that would transform the city’s trajectory for years to come. We’re Coming for You and Your Rotten System tells this extraordinary story from the inside. Rosenblum, who worked in Sawant’s office and alongside community activists throughout this dynamic decade, weaves together intimate story-telling and political analysis to show how and why the movement succeeded where other progressive outsiders—such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—have failed. For political activists searching desperately to make sense of the world after the reelection of Donald Trump, the Seattle experience offers a vital framework for fighting our way out of the despairing miasma of 21st-century capitalism.