Buy “the book that the political establishment doesn’t want you to read”

NEW BOOK

We’re Coming For You and Your Rotten System:

How Socialists Beat Amazon and Upended Big-City Politics

ABOUT THE BOOK

Seattle, Washington, is home to Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, and other corporate titans. But in the 2010s Seattle improbably became the scene of transformative working-class wins: The first major city to adopt a $15 minimum wage. The first municipal tax on Amazon to build affordable housing. A bevy of renters’ rights bills that empowered tenants and muzzled landlords.

Behind these breakthroughs 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, and in a region dominated by some of the world’s largest businesses, Sawant and grassroots street movements disrupted politics and transformed the city’s trajectory.

We’re Coming for You and Your Rotten System tells this extraordinary story from the inside. Author Jonathan Rosenblum, who worked in Sawant’s office and alongside community activists, weaves together intimate storytelling and political analysis to show how the Marxist-led movement succeeded where progressive outsiders have failed. Waging major legislative battles and winning four consecutive elections, Sawant demonstrated a distinctive theory of political power. This theory is shaped by 175 years of socialist experience, but its application is new to the US landscape. The Seattle socialist experience represents a sharp counterpoint to the dead-end inside-the-party strategies favored by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other progressives.

For political activists searching desperately to make sense of the world after Trump’s reelection, Seattle offers a vision for how we can break free from the despairing miasma of 21st-century capitalism.

  • “Rosenblum challenges the socialist left — through his sober analysis and concrete examples — to take on the too-often ignored rich potentials of municipal-based politics.”

    Sam Gindin
    Former assistant to the president, Canadian Auto Workers (now UNIFOR)

  • “Jonathan Rosenblum’s illuminating account of Kshama Sawant’s decade as Seattle’s first and only socialist city councilmember and the dynamic movement she led is a model for how to build working-class power through class struggle.”

    Robin D.G. Kelley
    Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History, UCLA

  • "Here is the book that the political establishment doesn’t want you to read. In brilliant detail, We’re Coming for You and Your Rotten System shows how, with a fighting, socialist approach, we overcame fierce resistance from big business and its two parties to achieve transformative working-class victories. Now, as we build our movement nationally through Workers Strike Back, the lessons of our decade in Seattle City Council could not be more timely."

    Kshama Sawant

  • “We’re Coming for You and Your Rotten System is ... a testament to the organized power of the working-class when armed with a sophisticated analysis of the balance of forces, the possibilities and limits of strategic alliances, a clear-eyed assessment of the political terrain, and above all, what Rosenblum calls a Marxist theory of insurgent politics."

    Robin D.G. Kelley
    Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History, UCLA

  • “In a system where liberal to far-right forces constantly block the working class’s efforts to bring about change, socialists must find ways to build power in neighborhoods and workplaces that can also strengthen class struggles within parliament. Rosenblum’s book offers important insights for this.”

    Nam Duy Nguyen
    Die Linke (The Left political party), member of Saxon State Parliament, Germany

Beyond $15:

Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement

OR BUY AT

Powell’s Books (union)

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

The Elliot Bay Book Company (union)

Bulk discounts available at Beacon Press.

ABOUT THE BOOK

“The fascinating inside story of how a few labor unions, faith leaders, immigrants and community groups united to build a grass roots citizens movement that won the nation’s first $15 minimum wage…”

— Hedrick Smith, Pulitzer prize-winning former New York Times reporter and editor; author, “Who Stole the American Dream”

Beyond $15: Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement offers a blunt recitation of how missteps and narrow thinking by labor unions contributed to our current predicament. Yet Beyond $15 also shows how the makings of a powerful justice movement are embedded within today's struggles. In 2013, just outside Seattle, an unlikely alliance of Sea-Tac airport workers – most of whom were new immigrants – along with union and community activists and clergy faced down corporate leaders in a struggle over power. I was fortunate to be campaign director of this historic campaign, the first successful fight for $15 in the country. Beyond $15 brings to life the remarkable workers and community members who led this fight, and outlines what we must do to build a new labor movement that fights for all workers in our society.

REVIEWS

A new path for unions in America
Tom Deignan, America Magazine: The Jesuit Review

“Beyond $15” is a memoir and a call to action
Goorish Wibneh, the Seattle Globalist

Veteran Organizer Gives Inside Look at the First $15 Minimum Wage Campaign
Jonathan Timm, In These Times

Lessons from Sea-Tac: Rebuilding the Labor Movement in the 21st Century
Dan Sisken, Occupy.com

How Fight for $15 Took Off
Steven Sherman, The Indypendent

STUDY GUIDES

Beyond $15 Cushnie Study Guide for Students

Beyond $15 Discussion and Action Guide for Activists

  • “Jonathan Rosenblum delivers not only an impressive analytical presentation but also one inspiring people to see labor struggles as about far more than just wages and benefits. It is about workers attaining dignity and respect, as well as finding their own voice through action.”

    Elaine Bernard, Ph.D.
    Retired Executive Director, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School

  • “For years, Jonathan Rosenblum has been sharing his winning analysis, history of struggle, and strategy with ordinary workers. In Beyond $15, he invites all of us into the learning. With stunning simplicity and clarity, Rosenblum walks the reader through exactly how giant corporations have decimated the American Dream. Better still, he explains what it will take to get out of our current mess and rebuild the power we need to defeat out-of-control corporate power.”

    Jane McAlevey
    Organizer and author of "No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age"

  • “Beyond $15 is an excellent choice for teaching about contemporary worker struggles against economic inequality. My students were captivated by Rosenblum’s firsthand account of the SeaTac campaign. The book also opens up much broader discussions with its careful analysis of the causes and human impact of deteriorating U.S. working conditions over past four decades. Beyond $15 also teaches important lessons on the practical challenges of building coalitions across lines of identity.”

    George Lovell
    Harry Bridges Endowed Chair in Labor Studies
    Professor and Chair, Political Science University of Washington

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