Jonathan Rosenblum has caused trouble for the rich and powerful for over forty years. He’s helped 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.

Chapter 1: A political earthquake strikes Seattle

Like many others, I failed to recognize the first tremors of the socialist political earthquake that struck Seattle in 2013.

It was July, in SeaTac City Hall, 15 miles south of Seattle. I was director of the SeaTac Airport workers Fight for $15 campaign, and workers had gathered to navigate a hostile City Council hearing to get our $15 minimum wage measure on the November ballot.

The SeaTac workers knew that to win the historic initiative they’d have to persuade a conservative electorate of 11,000 mostly white voters to enact a 63 percent pay hike for an overwhelmingly immigrant airport workforce. Drawn by the novelty of the bold demand, regional and national media were swarming into SeaTac. Accordingly, we instructed our hearing speakers to refrain from harsh rhetoric and instead focus on their personal economic struggles and how a raise for the lowest wage workers was good policy for the community and for local businesses.

I was surprised to see Kshama Sawant, a Seattle City Council candidate, and her coterie of red-shirted campaigners at the SeaTac hearing. Ballots had just gone out to voters in Seattle’s summer primary election, where Sawant, a member of Socialist Alternative (SA), was an extreme long-shot challenger to City Council President Richard Conlin, a Democratic fixture and four-term City Hall incumbent. What was Sawant even doing here? Shouldn’t she be door-knocking voters back in Seattle?

When Sawant’s turn to speak came, she held nothing back. “The rich are getting richer, and they are the ones who are getting the free lunch!” she declared. “The SeaTac workers have shown that we as working people need to fight for our own interests. We cannot rely on corporate politicians. We need to… come together independent of the two big business parties to fight for our own interests!”

This was about a million miles off the campaign’s disciplined messaging. I was in the back of the hearing room, gritting my teeth and dreading how our corporate-funded opposition would demonize us by replaying Sawant’s blistering, polarizing rhetoric to SeaTac’s conservative electorate.

That evening, after the hearing, I debriefed with a group of workers and union staff. What was the highlight of the event? I asked them. The clergy who spoke movingly about justice? The community members who extolled the local economic benefits? The workers’ answers came quickly: None of the above. “We liked that Indian lady from Seattle!” a worker exclaimed. “Yes—she was the best,” said another. Heads nodded in agreement: Sawant’s lashing assault on corporate greed had stirred their passions and provided a level of moral clarity that had been absent from our polished talking points.

I was far from the only activist jarred by Sawant’s sharp rhetoric. But as I drove home that night, I thought the airport workers might be onto something that the rest of us had missed: Here was a person whose words distinctively captured their anger, tapping the frustrations of the millions of low-wage workers who had suffered through the Great Recession while billionaires got richer; who had been promised better times under Obama only to fall victim to bankruptcies, evictions, foreclosures, and pink slips, while Wall Street got bailed out; who had been told to support Democrats because Democrats supported workers only to get stiffed, time and time again.

The airport workers sensed that Sawant was an unusual political ally, and they were elated. Her words brought them dignity. For the rest of us, it would take a few more shockwaves before fully understanding that Sawant was a different kind of radical—and that a scrappy band of socialists who had never won elected office were about to spark a revolution that would transform the region’s political landscape.

This book tells the story of that revolution. It is not just the story of policy battles and Sawant’s four consecutive electoral victories, but of how a distinctive theory of political power was put into practice. Sawant was not simply more radical than other US elected officials who, over the years, have claimed the left side of the political spectrum. She and Socialist Alternative exercised political power differently. Their insurgent politics combined bold demands, a class struggle approach, and hard-hitting tactics with grassroots organizing and participatory democracy, raising the socialist banner to achieve breakthrough gains for working people.

Jonathan Rosenblum has caused trouble for the rich and powerful for over forty years. He’s helped 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.

Chapter 1: A political earthquake strikes Seattle

Like many others, I failed to recognize the first tremors of the socialist political earthquake that struck Seattle in 2013.

It was July, in SeaTac City Hall, 15 miles south of Seattle. I was director of the SeaTac Airport workers Fight for $15 campaign, and workers had gathered to navigate a hostile City Council hearing to get our $15 minimum wage measure on the November ballot.

The SeaTac workers knew that to win the historic initiative they’d have to persuade a conservative electorate of 11,000 mostly white voters to enact a 63 percent pay hike for an overwhelmingly immigrant airport workforce. Drawn by the novelty of the bold demand, regional and national media were swarming into SeaTac. Accordingly, we instructed our hearing speakers to refrain from harsh rhetoric and instead focus on their personal economic struggles and how a raise for the lowest wage workers was good policy for the community and for local businesses.

I was surprised to see Kshama Sawant, a Seattle City Council candidate, and her coterie of red-shirted campaigners at the SeaTac hearing. Ballots had just gone out to voters in Seattle’s summer primary election, where Sawant, a member of Socialist Alternative (SA), was an extreme long-shot challenger to City Council President Richard Conlin, a Democratic fixture and four-term City Hall incumbent. What was Sawant even doing here? Shouldn’t she be door-knocking voters back in Seattle?

When Sawant’s turn to speak came, she held nothing back. “The rich are getting richer, and they are the ones who are getting the free lunch!” she declared. “The SeaTac workers have shown that we as working people need to fight for our own interests. We cannot rely on corporate politicians. We need to… come together independent of the two big business parties to fight for our own interests!”

This was about a million miles off the campaign’s disciplined messaging. I was in the back of the hearing room, gritting my teeth and dreading how our corporate-funded opposition would demonize us by replaying Sawant’s blistering, polarizing rhetoric to SeaTac’s conservative electorate.

That evening, after the hearing, I debriefed with a group of workers and union staff. What was the highlight of the event? I asked them. The clergy who spoke movingly about justice? The community members who extolled the local economic benefits? The workers’ answers came quickly: None of the above. “We liked that Indian lady from Seattle!” a worker exclaimed. “Yes—she was the best,” said another. Heads nodded in agreement: Sawant’s lashing assault on corporate greed had stirred their passions and provided a level of moral clarity that had been absent from our polished talking points.

I was far from the only activist jarred by Sawant’s sharp rhetoric. But as I drove home that night, I thought the airport workers might be onto something that the rest of us had missed: Here was a person whose words distinctively captured their anger, tapping the frustrations of the millions of low-wage workers who had suffered through the Great Recession while billionaires got richer; who had been promised better times under Obama only to fall victim to bankruptcies, evictions, foreclosures, and pink slips, while Wall Street got bailed out; who had been told to support Democrats because Democrats supported workers only to get stiffed, time and time again.

The airport workers sensed that Sawant was an unusual political ally, and they were elated. Her words brought them dignity. For the rest of us, it would take a few more shockwaves before fully understanding that Sawant was a different kind of radical—and that a scrappy band of socialists who had never won elected office were about to spark a revolution that would transform the region’s political landscape.

This book tells the story of that revolution. It is not just the story of policy battles and Sawant’s four consecutive electoral victories, but of how a distinctive theory of political power was put into practice. Sawant was not simply more radical than other US elected officials who, over the years, have claimed the left side of the political spectrum. She and Socialist Alternative exercised political power differently. Their insurgent politics combined bold demands, a class struggle approach, and hard-hitting tactics with grassroots organizing and participatory democracy, raising the socialist banner to achieve breakthrough gains for working people.