In 2018, 27 year old Democratic Socialist candidate Julia Salazar won a seat in the New York senate. Embedded within her colorful campaign staff of community organizers was New Yorker cartoonist Sofia Warren. For the next year, Warren would see how the political machine worked from the inside, and exactly what it takes to affect real change at the legislative level. These observations would become the basis of her graphic novel “Radical: My Year With a Socialist Senator.”
We spoke with Warren about the process, Salazar herself, and most importantly… coffee. We’d also like to thank Warren for her time.
[This interview has been lightly edited for clarity]
You met up with Julia Salazar in 2018?
Sofia Warren: Yeah. Towards the end of the year.
How long were you there?
SW: We first met in October of 2018. And then the most intense, like embedded part of it, was from that December through the end of June. So through the end of the legislative session. And then I was kind of still around but less through the end of 2019. So I’m calling it a year, because it’s a year and change.
And at least you got there before COVID hit, because judging from the end of the book, things got a little wild there.
SW: Oh my god, yeah. Really really intense for them. I mean… Heroic. The staff there were pretty incredible during that time. But it would have been a lot harder to do this project for sure.
Do you think there are parts of it that have become more relevant? Especially a lot of the stuff with Cuomo. He’s had a little bit of a roller coaster since COVID.
SW: That part’s been interesting. Because he doesn’t come off great in my book. My experience following Julia and other progressive activists is that he was a very, very unliked, bullying, known quantity among people who had anything to do with state government. But outside of that sphere, I think it was sort of not common knowledge. The personality traits of him, or the negative aspects of that were sort of glazed over. So it was really interesting seeing that whole thing happen and his fall. Because to be honest, I was really skeptical having seen him survive through just brute force a number of near misses with getting really close to corruption and various stuff. I was skeptical until he was gone that he was going to leave.
But beyond that, I think COVID brought a lot of people in contact with state apparatuses in new ways. With relief, and with certainly New York and other places, eviction moratoriums. And there are kind of a lot of new people certainly developing interest and finding it relevant to their lives. With mask mandates and stuff, it was a step up in understanding of our relationship to government. So in that way, I felt like it was super relevant.
Reading the comic, it almost seemed like the local government pretty much found you too, how it was just sort of bubbling up. And then it’s like “I’ve got to engage with this.”
SW: Yeah. It was two years into the Trump presidency. Context for me that felt important. I was certainly coming from a place of having all this initial vim and vinegar around protests and donation. By 2018 and the midterms, I was really kind of considering how far I had moved away from that. My daily life was not all that different from how it had been beforehand. And seeing Julia’s campaign brought that to light for me. I was like “Other people have maintained the momentum. How do you do that? What does that look like? Why am I not doing that?”
How much surprised you with the push and pull? Because, at least judging from the book, it took a lot to get some of these bills passed. And even just going to the sessions and sitting for ten hours…
SW: There’s a lot that goes on, right? And when you’re in the thick of it, as close to the thick of it as I was, it’s really compelling and fascinating and tedious. It’s all of those things. But I certainly was completely swept up in it in the time that I was there. That in some ways was surprising. Because I just really didn’t know what to expect. But just a lot, a lot goes into all aspects from this. From advocacy, writing the legislation, getting votes, figuring out how to get it on the calendar, getting it to committee, who do you have to talk to, and when are there public hearings going to be? What’s the back and forth with the advocates? And who do you tell what? All the stuff. It’s a lot.
Continued belowHow do you keep the governor in the dark too?
SW: Totally, right? What strategy do you build off of from years past? What knowledge you can use? It’s a lot.
There is a line in the book that I did kind of want to ask you. Especially with how in the thick of it you were. I believe it’s a question you actually asked to Ramon at one point. “How are you feeling now versus how you started?”
SW: What a good, thought provoking question [laughs]. I am sincere in the beginning in saying that it felt really– the process of following this team around dramatically shifted my viewpoint. A lot of it had to do, for me, with reframing what it means to be engaged and political. Not exclusively relating to government as in canvasing, or running for office, or being directly related to campaigns. Also collective action and organizing. I have a lot more insight into how just as a citizen your ways to kind of move things in your life– you have to collectively organize. That’s just the most effective strategy. And that has a really close, intense relationship with government. Organizing outside of government does have the potential to really shift legislation, and policy, and all the things that directly impact your life.
A piece of what shifted for me has to do with information. I think there was a lot of anxiety around the question “How do I, Sofia, make an impact?” in this sort of generalized, vague, and very individual way. That was where the question was for me when I started this. Now it feels more “What are the things that directly impact me?” How do I be involved with my community and the people around me? An example that I use is Medical for All for instance. That’s an issue that matters to me both because of my broad politics and because I as a freelancer–
Yeah, you’re telling me!
SW: Right? As far as how I’m feeling, I think I feel less stressed in that aspect. Because I feel like I am asking better questions. Not necessarily that I have all the answers. But also just to return to the feelings part for a minute, it really was a profoundly hopeful experience for me. I was feeling incredibly bleak. Government felt very distant. Again, 2018. 2019. Trump presidency. Relentlessly bleak. And my relationship to it felt incredibly powerless. So to be in the thick of this movement, where there was a lot of people power and sincere community organizing and strategy that had taken years, really quite years to build off of, and to see it come to fruition in a way that was very meaningful from a legislative standpoint was profoundly hopeful. So I hope that comes through in the book, and that feels earned, because that was a genuine feeling for me.
Especially in the book, there’s this sense of antagonism from the people who are supposed to theoretically have your best interest at heart. I believe there’s another line where the exact phrase is “It’s hard to make somebody understand when their salary depends on not understanding.” I think I butchered that too.
SW: [Laughs] That’s a quote. One of the staffers says that and they were quoting someone. Forgive me, because I forget who at the moment. The book was me following a Democratic senator in a chamber that was entirely Democratic, or rather the majority Democratic, and the governor and the assembly were also Democratic that year. So it was a really interesting look at the conflict, rather than it being these two big Republican versus Democrats opposing forces, this was interfacing conflicts. The conflict had to do with different poles of the Democratic party. And of course the Democratic party covers quite a lot of ground. When it comes down to a bill like this, it was super interesting to see where the conflicts arose. Who was centrist. Who was on the left side of it. Who was in marching step with the governor and had special interests to consider. And how those things came out. That all felt really interesting. And I expect pretty evergreen.
Continued belowYou don’t go into a lot of Julia’s past. You focus on the process and procedures. You focus on the now. I got the impression that was kind of your intention going in. You also mention a lot of rumors surrounding her at first. Was it difficult to keep that parsed?
SW: It was my intention from the beginning. This is something that I hadn’t really considered in light of Julia’s politics. My feeling was it would be a more interesting book to look at the broader system and this movement rather than focus on her specifically. That was my initial thought. It does align pretty solidly with her politics. Throughout the book there are a few different people who really emphasize this school of thought, which is that you can’t be reliant on the charisma of individuals. It has to be a movement where individuals might be charismatic. Like Bernie Sanders or AOC. They might have great influence. And that’s great. But the success of this movement can’t be resting exclusively on that. Because if it does, then it only takes one scandal to crumble.
So in that same way, it was not interesting to me to write a biography of Julia Salazar. That did not feel like a compelling question to me. Of course she’s in it. And yeah, I came into really wondering because of all this focus on her character during the campaign. I was super curious. Who is this person? What is her personality? And what I found her personality to be was frankly an introvert and a policy wonk. And someone who really loves this job and takes it really seriously.
Judging from some of the sparring that goes on, you kinda have to!
SW: Right! Being a local politician is not exactly– most people don’t know who you are. It’s not a particularly glamorous profession honestly. There are people who go into local government and use that to accrue personal power. Julia doesn’t take money from corporations. She’s entirely accountable to a movement. There’s not an angle there other than just sincerely a deep commitment of her’s to public service. But as far as structuring the book, one of the early decisions that I made was to have myself be a character in it.
My very early thought on this didn’t include that. I thought that I wanted to be more fly on the wall. But it became clear to me that it was pretty important to keep my own bias in the book transparently. Of course I came in with my own set of expectations, with my own blind spots. I didn’t know a lot about government. I also think that because of that, I hope the character that is me is a pretty good surrogate for people who also don’t know a lot about state government through the story. And some of the experience for me was, on a human level, getting to know everyone. And so it did feel important to me to include bits of that in the book.
Like I initially felt pretty shy around Julia. So there are sometimes where that comes through, or me being awkward, colored in inexperience in a way that I wanted to be honest about. It did feel like a lot to juggle narratively because it’s sort of decentralized. If it had just been a story about Julia, then it would have been easier to pick out a narrative. Because I wanted to make sure this was a story with more of a collective sense to it, it did mean figuring out how to make that work in narrative and book form. Which is sometimes a challenge.
When you do get the collective, you do have characters who stand out. Like… Boris seemed like a really interesting dude.
SW: Yeah! It was interesting because Julia’s certainly an introvert. I learned certain things about Julia by spending time with her. As you see from the book, some of the insights about Julia’s character is coming from other people. Other staffers be like “Julia spent fourteen hours on a hearing! And then did all this other stuff!” She would never tell me that. Or she would never be like “I’m having a really hard time because my job is hard!” She is not the kind of person who would think to do that. Where as Boris was a lot more open with me about his emotional experience. It was one of the ways to get insight and act kind of as a foil to Julia as I was getting to know them personally.
Continued belowOne of the interesting things too is how the public is a character. How in many ways too you have the shifting masses. When you’re in the middle of this campaign and you’re seeing public reaction, what was it like being on the other side of the masses, or seeing the mood change?
SW: It’s a long experience. I think going into this, my understanding of movement work– like for example the Civil Rights movement. For a long time I had the impression that it was all just really big protests and really good speeches. Of course, those are the visible things. And behind that you have hundreds of hours of organizing, long boring conversations where factions of coalitions come to loggerheads and get in fights.
And spreadsheets!
SW: Because Julia was from an organizing background, because a lot her staff were from an organizing background, and they really developed an office that put emphasis on organizing as strategy, what that meant was what I was seeing was less like– there were less moments of public confrontation. And a lot of it was “How do we link in with existing groups who are doing this work?” So for example, with tenants rights. There is a huge movement around tenants rights. Housing Justice for All was this big, really incredible coalition. I spent some time with them in the book. I wish I could have spent more, but it would have been a different book. But they’re the ones who were developing this strategy.
A lot of this is not speeches. It’s going door to door. It’s knocking. It’s getting people to organize their buildings with their neighbors. A lot of this is on the ground and quite slow. And that’s the strategy. If it’s personal, then people have more investment in it. From those small neighborhood groups, from those building wide tenant organizations, they then form these coalitions where they can figure out where they align. And then go to legislation from that point. So it’s a long, long process [laughs].
Shifting gears for a moment, you’re publishing this through Top Shelf. How has it been working with them? Did you take them the finished product? Had you been working with them from the beginning? How was that relationship?
SW: I was working on the book before I knew who it was going to go to, or if anyone was going to want it. I started pitching to publishers in the very end of 2019. So once I finished following Julia and her staff around, I put together a proposal and some sample chapters. And then Top Shelf and I signed a contract in I think early or late February of 2020. Somewhere around there. So then I’m working with Leigh Walton, who was my editor.
Once I had a first draft, which was another year after that I guess, that’s when we started having more back and forth as far as editorial insight. Which was super helpful. I think that really made it feel like it was becoming a book. It was certainly kind of a drifty experience before that, off on my own with it. So it’s been good! I’m really happy to be with a comics publisher. I was stoked about Top Shelf because I was really inspired by the “March” trilogy, which they published and Leigh worked on.
Have you actually heard from any of the folks you spent time with? Like the staffers. Has Julia reached out to you? Have they called up and said “Hey! Book’s coming out! How ya’ doing?”
SW: I was trying to actually kind of take a step back from— these were people I spent a year with, so they’re people I care about. And so while I was shaping the book, it was weird to not be in contact. It felt important to me to have some creative distance. And at no point were any of them— I really can’t emphasize enough how much they were on board with this project. No one has asked to be more involved creatively. They were always very cool about me having independence. But it felt to me important to keep some distance.
Continued belowOnce I finished a draft, once it was pretty close to being done, then I did send it to everyone. Just to say— just kind of as a courtesy— I care what you think. So yeah! I’ve been in touch. And luckily no one is too mad at me as far as I know [laughs]. Which is great. I was for sure nervous about having other people’s lives and shaping them into a narrative. So I’m lucky that we’re still in touch.
This is the most important question I had while reading the book. This is the one that has stuck with me: Coffee. Is it a bribe or not?
SW: [Laughs] Not a bribe! But you should check what your rules are!
“Radical: My Year With a Socialist Senator” is in stores now. You can also find it on Top Shelf’s website.
