We're Coming For You and Your Rotten System
How Socialists Beat Amazon and Upended Big-City Politics
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Labor rights activist Rosenblum (Beyond $15) recollects in this perceptive and detailed insider account how socialists in 2010s Seattle won major legislative victories that galvanized similar movements across the country. The narrative is centered on Kshama Sawant, a software engineer and socialist who in 2013 became an "extreme long-shot challenger" to the Seattle City Council's incumbent president. With the support of a grassroots movement mobilized by the fight for a minimum wage increase, Sawant won the City Council seat and served from 2014 to 2024 despite the Democratic establishment's many attempts to oust her, including a contentious 2021 recall vote. During her tenure, Sawant led successful battles to secure the nation's first $15/hour minimum wage, tax Amazon and other large Seattle-based corporations, and protect renters' rights. While the city's Democratic politicians often publicly claimed to support such issues, behind the scenes they would "reliably" work against Sawant's efforts in order to please donors and lobbyists, Rosenblum writes. So, rather than making nice with fellow politicians, Sawant instead focused on activating members of the working class who were disengaged with politics, even forming unexpected alliances with conservative union organizers—an approach that Rosenblum, who worked on Sawant's council staff, offers as a core takeaway as he breaks down the lessons of the Seattle socialists' victories. It's an inspiring story and a useful tool for activists.
