Jonathan Rosenblum presents 'We're Coming For You and Your Rotten System'

Third Place Books welcomes local author, reporter, and organizer Jonathan Rosenblum to our Seward Park store for a conversation about his book, We're Coming For You and Your Rotten System: How Socialists Beat Amazon and Upended Big-City Politics. Drawing on his experiences working with Seattle councilwoman Kshama Sawant, Rosenblum charts a path for socialists to fight for affordable housing, living wages, and more on both a local and a national scale.

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This event is free to attend. For important updates, registration is highly recommended in advance.

About We're Coming For You and Your Rotten System. . .

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.

Jonathan Rosenblum has caused trouble for the rich and powerful for over forty years. When not perusing the aisles of his favorite neighborhood bookstore (Third Place Books in Seward Park, of course), he can be found helping workers throughout North America organize, bargain, and strike in a wide range of industries—warehousing and logistics, higher education, healthcare, and public service. A member of the National Writers Union and veteran newspaper reporter, he has published dozens of articles about organizing, and is the author of Beyond $15: Immigrant Workers, Faith Activists, and the Revival of the Labor Movement, on his experience leading the first Fight for $15 campaign in SeaTac, Washington. During Kshama Sawant’s decade on the Seattle City Council, he worked on her council staff and as an election campaigner.

About Third Place Books

Founded in 1998 in Lake Forest Park, Washington, Third Place Books is dedicated to the creation of a community around books and the ideas inside them. With locations in Lake Forest Park and Seattle's Ravenna and Seward Park neighborhoods, Third Place Books is proud to serve the entire Seattle metro area. Learn more about their event series at thirdplacebooks.com/events.