![Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator](https://cdn.statically.io/img/books.apple.com/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
![Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator](https://cdn.statically.io/img/books.apple.com/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
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Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
You won the election… now what? Activist organizing meets government gridlock as a millennial New Yorker cartoonist follows a first-year senator on her unforgettable journey — from outsider to insider. In early 2018, cartoonist Sofia Warren was not paying attention to New York state politics. But that summer, her Brooklyn neighborhood began buzzing about Julia Salazar, a 27-year-old democratic socialist running for state senate whose grassroots campaign was inspiring an army of volunteers. When they beat the odds and won, Warren found herself wondering what would happen next. How does it work when an outsider who runs on revolutionary change has to actually do the job? So she decided to find out. Using the graphic memoir format, Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator is a remarkable first-hand account of Warren’s experience embedded with Julia Salazar and her staff during their first year in office. From candid conversations and eyewitness experiences, Warren builds a gripping and intimate portrait of a scrappy team of community organizers battling entrenched power structures, particularly to advance Julia’s marquee issue of housing rights. At every key point during the year — setting up an office, navigating insider politics, public pushback, testy staff meetings, emotional speeches, protest marches, setbacks, and victories — Warren is up close and personal with Julia and her team, observing, questioning, and drawing, as they try to translate their ideals into concrete legislation. Along the way, Warren works toward answers to deeper questions: what makes a good leader? What does it mean to be a part of a community? Can democracy work? How can everyday people make change happen? All these themes are explored — with nuance, compassion, and humor — in Sofia Warren’s remarkable debut.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Yorker cartoonist Warren is the first to admit she's been too busy and occasionally felt too guilty (as a gentrifier in Bushwick, Brooklyn) to pay attention to local politics, but that's what makes her a good layperson narrator for this edifying account of New York State senator Julia Salazar's first year in office. Warren embeds herself with Salazar's grassroots campaign and post-election follows the socialist freshman senator as she attempts to reform rental laws in a system mired by real estate interests. Salazar is a young, Latina community organizer who loves her job if not the spotlight. With confident character design and effective symbolic graphics, Warren documents the highs, lows, strategies, and many tedious moments of the legislative process. The third section, in which Salazar—backed by a group that stages regular #TenantTuesday advocacy trips to Albany—helps pass the most progressive rental legislation in decades, is particularly moving; by now readers know the effort and compromises that went into it. Warren devotes perhaps a few too many pages to the former, choosing realism over a concise dramatic arc. The result is part Schoolhouse Rock!, part participant-journalism, connecting a winding but hopeful thread between what Salazar's team refers to as "deep organizing" and substantive change. For comics readers raised on the March series who may be contemplating voting for their first time (or considering their own political futures), Warren offers grounded inspiration.