Bernie's Brooklyn

“[Captures] how the New Deal was actually lived at the ground level by Bernie’s generation” — featured in the Jewish Currentsnewsletter (4/16/2021)

“Favourite Reads in 2020” — recommended on the Repeater Books Blog(12/21/2020)

“AOC For NYC Mayor in 2021” — author Theodore Hamm writes for the Indypendent(12/1/2020)

“Brooklyn borough president candidate Robert Cornegy rails against ‘political gentrification’ by socialist upstarts while lining his coffers with campaign contributions from high-end real estate developers.” — author Theodore Hamm writes for the Indypendent(11/24/2020)

“Facebook Sued Over Kenosha Killings” — author Theodore Hamm writes for the Intercept(9/25/2020)

“The New York City Left Could Get a Chance to Define the Post-COVID City” — author Theodore Hamm writes for Jacobin(9/18/2020)

“From Humble Beginnings to New York’s ‘Upper Echelons,’ Tali Weinstein Sets Her Sights On the Manhattan DA’s Office” — author Theodore Hamm interviews Tali Weinstein for the Indypendent(8/21/2020)

“A Life-Long Fight For Justice Spurred Alvin Bragg Into the Manhattan DA Race” — author Theodore Hamm interviews Alvin Bragg for the Indypendent(8/14/2020)

“The Rise of Hakeem Jeffries Is Being Disrupted From Below” — author Theodore Hamm writes for the Intercept(8/14/2020)

“How Brooklyn Turned Bernie Sanders Into a Democratic Socialist” — author Theodore Hamm interviewed on Scheer Intelligence(8/7/2020)

“In Bernie’s Brooklyn, Political Revolution Was Mainstream” — excerpt published in Jacobin(7/20/2020)

NEW VIDEO: author Theodore Hamm interviewed on the Katie Halper Show(7/6/2020)

“Bernie Sanders’s Socialism Is New York Born and Bred” — author Theodore Hamm interviewed by Public Seminar(6/26/2020)

“How growing up in a New Deal city shaped Bernie Sanders’s vision for America” — excerpt published in Public Seminar(6/26/2020)

“The World in Which Bernie Sanders Grew Up” — excerpt published on Lit Hub(6/18/2020)

“Heastie-Controlled Slush Fund Props Up Embattled NY State Assembly Incumbents” — author Theodore Hamm writes for the Indypendent(6/18/2020)

“Media-Darling Cop Terence Monahan’s Legacy of Brutality” — author Theodore Hamm writes for the Indypendent(6/9/2020)

“Frank Sinatra, Woody Guthrie, Arthur Miller & the Reds on the Brooklyn Waterfront” — excerpt published in the Indypendent(6/5/2020)

“Albany County District Attorney David Soares, once a promising criminal justice reformer, faces primary challenge from the left” — author Theodore Hamm writes for the Intercept(6/1/2020)

“Far from being totally alien to the American way, the sort of socialism Bernie advocates was commonplace where he grew up” — excerpt published on ScheerPost(5/25/2020)

“We Can’t Lose the Right to Protest in the Age of Coronavirus” — author Theodore Hamm writes for Jacobin(5/13/2020)

“Bernie Sanders owes more to Brooklyn than his accent. His politics were profoundly shaped by its radicalism—from New Deal reforms to the Yiddish socialism that brought his grandparents into active politics.” — excerpt published in Tribune(4/9/2020)

Bernie Sanders’ tilt at the US presidency has come under fire from an establishment that derides his social democratic policies as alien to the American way. But, as Ted Hamm reveals in this engaging and concise history, the sort of socialism Bernie advocates was commonplace in the Brooklyn where he grew up in the 1940s and 50s.

Policies like free college tuition, rent control, and infrastructure projects including extensive public housing, parks and swimming pools were part of the New Deal city run by a progressive Mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, and supported by FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. While Arthur Miller, resident in Brooklyn Heights, was staging Death of a Salesman, a play with which Bernie’s dad closely identified, Woody Guthrie was penning his paeans to the American worker in Coney Island and Jackie Robinson was breaking the color bar on Ebbets Field in a Dodgers team yet to be relocated in California.

Drawing deeply on interviews with his brother and friends, and delving skillfully into the history of the borough, Bernie’s Brooklyn shows how, far from being an anomaly in US politics, Sanders’ 2020 platform is rooted firmly in the progressivism of the New Deal.