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FEATURING JONATHAN ROSENBLUM - There was a time when socialists were so rare in elected office, most people could cite only Bernie Sanders and Eugene Debs as having power. Today, more people are proudly wearing the mantle of “socialist” as capitalism’s failures become ever-apparent. For that, we can thank not just the likes of Sanders,  but Kshama Sawant who is arguably far bolder than the Vermont Senator. 

When Sawant, an Indian immigrant, burst into the local political scene in Seattle, running for a City Council on an overtly anticapitalist agenda, many people, including Jonathan Rosenblum, were skeptical. Jonathan has helped workers throughout North America organize, bargain, and strike in a wide range of industries—warehousing and logistics, higher education, healthcare, and public service.

During Kshama Sawant’s decade on the Seattle City Council, he worked on her council staff and as an election campaigner. He is the author of We're Coming for You and Your Rotten System: How Socialists Beat Amazon and Upended Big-City Politics and spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the new book.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: So, I said that you were initially skeptical, and that's how you start your book. You were skeptical of Sawant because she showed up to an event, a rally for SeaTac airport workers, who, more than a decade ago were lobbying for pushing for a $15 an hour minimum wage. Lay out that scene for us where you first encountered Kshama Sawant and how she struck you, how her brand of politics struck you initially with a little fear, and then you came around. 

Jonathan Rosenblum: Yeah, This was my first encounter with, with Kshama and the organization that she had belonged to at the time, socialist Alternative. And they came down to SeaTac Washington, miles south of Seattle in 2013, where airport workers were fighting to get an initiative on the ballot there for a $15 minimum wage, which they were successful at doing, and they were successful in winning a few months later. 

And, Kshama spoke at this public hearing, and you know, compared to the other speakers who are very modest and moderate in their tone, seeking to persuade a fairly conservative electorate in SeaTac to vote for this transformative wage increase for airport workers, Kshama held nothing back and talked about the maladies of capitalism and why we needed to fight not just the corporations, but the mainstream political parties, both the Republicans and the Democrats, who were holding workers back. 

And I was really, frankly, a little bit askance at the sharpness of her tone. But then after the meeting, just talking to the airport workers who were there about who they liked hearing from at the hearing everyone said to a person we liked that Indian lady from Seattle. And I realized that Kshama had had tapped a core emotion, energy that workers had, that they'd been screwed, time and again by the system. 

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