We’re coming for you and your rotten system

FIGHTING FOR PORTLAND’S FUTURE

The Portland Rising committee of Portland Jobs with Justice is excited to announce that it will host a four-session reading group, starting Wednesday March 11^th, 2026, to discuss the recently published book, We’re coming for you and your rotten system: How socialists beat Amazon and upended big-city politics, by Jonathan Rosenblum.  We hope you will join us!

From the publisher: 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.

We are dealing with fascism nationally. Now more than ever people are looking at the potential of municipal-based politics, as was demonstrated in NYC’s and Seattle’s recent mayoral elections.  But as Rosenblum notes, “Holding political office is not the same as wielding political power—especially for the left. To win bold demands, social movements must go on the offensive.”

In Portland we are fortunate to have progressive City Council members, including four self-described socialists. Many of us worked hard to elect them.  The challenge we face now is how to use that beachhead to build a movement with the commitment and capacity to radically, democratically, and sustainably transform our city in ways responsive to majority needs.  Rosenblum’s book, which focuses on just such a struggle in Seattle, offers us an opportunity to learn from that effort and sharpen our own thinking about what is possible in Portland.

The book can be obtained many ways, including through its publisher OR Books.

If you are interested in joining the group or just learning more, please send your name and email address, with “Reading Group” in the subject line or body of the message, to portlandrisingprograms@gmail.com.

Here is our plan:

We will meet four times on Zoom, each time for an hour, from 6:30 to 7:30 pm.

• Wednesday, March 11^th, when we will discuss the Foreword and Chapters 1 and 2.
• Wednesday March 25^th, when we will discuss Chapters 3 and 4.
• Wednesday April 8^th, when we will discuss Chapters 5, 6, and 7.
• Wednesday April 22^th, when we will discuss Chapters 8,9 and 10.

We ask that you read the material to be discussed before the meeting date.  However, please do come and participate even if you are unable to finish the reading.

We will send out reading prompts before each meeting to provide a focus for our discussion and start each meeting with a very short summary of the designated chapters.  We will then use moderated breakout groups for discussion.

Our goal for each meeting is a robust discussion of (1) the ways left forces used their beachhead in the Seattle city council to build a working class movement for change and (2) lessons for our political work here in Portland.