Refinery Town

by Steve Early

  THE CHEMISTRY OF COMMUNITY

  When he visited Richmond in October 2014, Bernie Sanders—now well known for thinking big about national problems—stressed the importance of smaller-scale change too. “I love municipal government,” he told his Richmond crowd. “I’ll tell you why. Because at the end of the day, establishing community, bringing people together, creating a sense of place where people feel good about each other, that’s the best that we can do. And that’s what you can do at the local level.”

  Under a visionary mayor, city hall can definitely bring people together for all kinds of virtuous civic purposes, particularly in a human-scale polity of one hundred thousand or less. Mayors and their city council allies can promote much-needed public policy experiments, even if some stall or fail. They can throw roadblocks in the path of powerful private interests long used to getting their own way, the public be damned. They can try to address, with the limited resources at their disposal, some of the pressing social and economic needs left unmet by the failures of government at higher levels. Municipal reformers can also foster a stronger sense of community and place, making people feel better (at least some of the time) about where they live and who they live with.

  Cronyism, corruption, corporate domination, and economic decline once made Richmond a poster child for doing city business the wrong way. “Divide and conquer” sometimes feels like it was invented here, despite much historical evidence to the contrary. Richmond’s old political culture helped to reinforce America’s best-known mantra of citizen frustration and resignation: “You can’t fight city hall!” Even among local activists experienced in fighting for peace, justice, labor rights, racial equality, or revolution elsewhere, Richmond city hall was not initially viewed as something you could also fight for—and win.

  Fifteen years of political organizing by RPA activists and other Richmond reformers before them has altered that calculus. Richmond’s exemplary mix of electoral campaigning around issues and candidates, principled and persistent follow-up by elected officials, and some skilled professional city managing have made it a model for municipal action on behalf of people poorly served by local government in the past. Those responsible for Richmond’s renaissance are not always on the same page politically. Personal spats and pet causes can be a source of distraction and, at times, embarrassment. But no process of change anywhere—much less in a place like Richmond—can occur without there being some community disagreements and divisions, personality conflicts, or racial and ethnic tensions.

  Collectively, Richmond reformers have listened to city residents rather than downplaying or ignoring their concerns. They have not lined their own pockets or shilled for Big Oil, like some local “public servants” in the past. They have reduced popular estrangement from municipal government and fostered a high level of citizen engagement. Results of semiannual polling by the National Research Center, during the eight-year period between 2007 and 2015, show broad agreement about Richmond’s “before” and “after.” Residents surveyed believe that the city has improved, often dramatically, by each metric used: overall quality of life and image, community characteristics (whether it is a good place to work, live, or raise children), governance (including services like public safety and street repair), and, last but not least, sense of community.45

  What the Richmond experience demonstrates are the continuing advantages of making change locally as part of a longer-term and eventually more sweeping progressive strategy. What activists have going for them at the city level—an advantage almost nonexistent in the big-money-dominated realms of state or national politics—is greater personal connection to voters. Forging what Gayle McLaughlin calls authentic relationships isn’t a spontaneous process, however. It takes time, organization, and systematic outreach around issues that affect peoples’ daily lives. It also demands a great deal of emotional energy, plus—for those in elected positions—a very thick skin. It is understandable why many who want to make Richmond a better place do so through various forms of community service rather than partisan political combat.

  In all its local forms, civic engagement helps create personal connections and community solidarity. In successive electoral campaigns, these have become the great equalizer in Richmond. Dedicated political volunteering has facilitated face-to-face contact and one-on-one conversations with thousands of people. The conversations are not always pleasant; everyone does not always agree. But what former city hall reporter Robert Rogers calls “this noisy democracy we have now” is a big improvement on what existed in Richmond before. And, in most election years, the grassroots mobilization capacity of the local left has been able to neutralize the usual advantages enjoyed by corporate adversaries with overall campaign budgets fifteen or thirty times larger.

  There is no single road map for social change in the United States, no one-size-fits-all organizing strategy for countering and containing corporate influence. Certainly Richmond’s challenge to the power and prerogatives of a global energy giant points the way forward for other communities, frontline or not, where similar struggles for environmental justice and election law reform are underway. Counterintuitive as it may be, going local may be the most effective individual and collective response to economic challenges and environmental threats that are dauntingly national and global in scope.

  If urban political insurgencies are going to succeed in more places, they will need models for civic engagement like Richmond provides. Our city’s emergency response lesson is this: when we shelter in place together, we can change our communities for the better. If we remain frozen in a state of individual fear, apathy, alienation, or powerlessness, the world around us remains the same—until the next warning siren sounds, and all the ones after that, until there are too many fires to put out and not enough time left to reverse the damage they’ve done.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  REFINERY TOWN HAD MANY sources of inspiration. My primary muse is a very special California city, where getting to know a colorful cast of local characters was not just a book-writing exercise. It was also a valuable form of social and political networking for a newly arrived refugee from New England winters.

  Back east, I was a union activist for forty years and employed for much of that time by the Communications Workers of America. On a freelance basis I also wrote for various organizational publications, national newspapers, monthly magazines, some academic journals, and online media outlets. As readers of my previous labor-related books know, much of that freelance journalism, book reviewing, and newspaper opinion piece writing addressed trends and issues related to the workplace. (For details, see steveearly.org.)

  Embarking on this Richmond-related project, I had to familiarize myself with a broader range of subject matter. At the outset I was much inspired by reading Tracy Kidder’s Hometown, Gordon Young’s Teardown, and Charlie LeDuff’s Detroit: An American Autopsy—insightful accounts of community life, politics, and policing in Northampton, Massachusetts; Flint, Michigan; and Detroit, respectively. In a fashion most similar to Young’s work, Refinery Town is an exercise in participatory journalism, reflecting a personal perspective on citywide social, economic, and political problems in my new hometown.

  In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I’m not a neutral observer of Richmond politics. I’ve paid dues to the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) since moving to the city in early 2012. I also joined the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), two other groups mentioned in this book. None of the views expressed herein should be mistaken as speaking on behalf of any of the above. All three groups have their own official spokespeople.

  In various Richmond election years, I have donated money to the campaigns of Gayle McLaughlin, Jovanka Beckles, Eduardo Martinez, Tom Butt, Mike Parker, Marilyn Langlois, Melvin Willis, and Ben Choi. I’ve also done volunteer work for these candidates, and in 2016, four of them supported my mayoral appointment to the Richmond Personnel Bo
ard. In 2014 I helped organize several fund-raisers that benefited either the RPA or its endorsed candidates. During part of that year, my daughter Alexandra served as a canvassing coordinator for the RPA. I also helped bring an old comrade from Vermont (and later 2016 presidential candidate) Bernie Sanders to Richmond for RPA fund-raising and publicity purposes. Like several million other people “feeling the Bern” in 2015–16, I was a contributor to the Sanders for President campaign. I also assisted a national network called Labor for Bernie.

  I have with mixed results tried to interview people on all sides of local and national controversies described in this book. In 2014, after sending Chevron a detailed information request related to an article I was writing for the Nation, the company’s media relations department provided a rather generally phrased e-mail response. Two years after that piece appeared, I contacted the company again, with an updated set of book-related questions. I also sought a personal audience with its media relations people, who work just a ten-minute walk from my house. Again, they responded only by e-mail, in a fashion pithier than before. Two of the company’s main outside mouthpieces, Singer Associates and Whitehurst/Mosher, were similarly tongue-tied, both in 2014 and since then, when I sought interviews about their lucrative work on behalf of Chevron.

  In writing about the words and deeds, good or bad, of various public figures in Richmond, I’ve tried to meet the fairness standard set by radical sociologist C. Wright Mills. “I don’t claim to be impartial,” Mills once said, “but I do try to be objective.” In that spirit, Refinery Town draws on a huge body of political work and insightful reporting by many others on various sides of the participant-observer divide in Richmond. The book also uses information and opinions shared, in multiple ways, by elected city officials and municipal employees, members of Richmond commissions and neighborhood councils, local ministers and lawyers, nonprofit organization leaders, and representatives of the business community.

  Among them, I would like to thank Nat Bates, Jovanka Beckles, the Reverend Alvin Bernstine, Bruce Beyaert, Ron Blodgett, Devone Boggan, Corky Booze, Allwyn Brown, Andrew Butt, Dan Butt, Tom Butt, Leah Casey, Whitney Dodson, Vivian Feyer, Mark Gagen, David Gray, John Goia, Felix Hunziker, Margaret Jordan, Kory Judd, Donnel Jones, Alex Knox, John Knox, Heather Kulp, Marilyn Langlois, Ruben Lizardo, Chris Magnus, Gayle McLaughlin, Eduardo Martinez, Jael Myrick, Al Nero, Vinay Pimple, Melissa Ritchie, Jeff Ritterman, Joey Schlemmer, David Schoenthal, Jeff Shoji, Ben Therriault, Nicole Valentino, Vern Whitmore, and Kyra Worthy.

  Among local political activists, the following were particularly helpful: Tarnel Abbott, Marcos Banales, Michael Beer, Patsy Byers, Miguel Cavalin, Gail Eierweiss, Diane Feeley, Daniel Goodwin, Stephanie Hervey, Janet Johnson, Margaret Jordan, Greg Karas, Jeff Kilbreth, Paul Kilkenny, the Reverend Earl Koteen, Tim Laidman, Jonathan Mayer, Byron Miller, David Moore, Jessica Monteil, Yvonne Nair, Edith Pastrano, Mike Parker, Jeff Parker, Richard Perez, Joe Puleo, Jamin Pursell, Juan Reardon, Eugene Ruyle, David Sharples, Jane Slaughter, Charles Smith, Gerald Smith, Andres Soto, Pam Stello, Kathleen Sullivan, Melvin Willis, Kathleen Wimer, and Zak Wear.

  Among my fellow trade unionists who have helped out, special thanks go to Buck Bagot, Gail Bateson, Garrett Brown, David Campbell, Millie Cleveland, Brad Dodge, Tom Edminister, Carl Finamore, Chris Finn, Jon Flanders, Ryan Haney, Aram Hodess, Bill Hoyle, Craig Merrilees, Mike Miller, Junior Ortiz, Jim Payne, Sal Rosselli, Tracy Scott, Mike Smith, Robert Travis, Marie Walcek, Mary Virginia Watson, B. K. White, Jeff Wickham, and Michael Wilson.

  On the local media front, as the footnotes to this volume indicate, I am greatly indebted to the dedicated reporters, community journalists, and journalism students who have written about Richmond. Among them, I want to thank Rebecca Rosen Lum and Robert Rogers, formerly of the Contra Costa Times, and Robert’s successor on the Richmond beat, Katrina Ioffee; John Geluardi, for his many years of informative Richmond coverage at the East Bay Express; Malcolm Marshall and his talented staff at the “youth-led” Richmond Pulse; Harriet Rowan, Jimmy Tobias, and their fellow students, past and present, at the UC-Berkeley School of Journalism’s Richmond Confidential project; Chip Johnson and Tom Barnidge, regular columnists for the San Francisco Chronicle and East Bay Times, respectively; and Joe Eskenazi, former investigative reporter for SF Weekly and a very incisive observer of Richmond.

  Mike Parker’s two long accounts of RPA activity in Social Policy (Summer 2013 and Winter 2016) should be consulted by progressives involved in local electoral politics anywhere in the United States. For historical detail missing in chapter 2 for space reasons, consult Parker. The story of Gayle McLaughlin’s first mayoral election victory is also recounted in Mike Feinstein’s contribution to Jonathan Martin’s excellent collection, Empowering Progressive Third Parties in the United States: Defeating Duopoly, Advancing Democracy (2016). Gayle is writing about her own political work in a book tentatively titled Against All Odds: A Decade of Progress in Richmond. For publication details, when available, see the RPA website, http://richmondprogressivealliance.net/, where links to Parker’s Social Policy articles can also be found.

  The personal archive and written recollections of RPA cofounder Juan Reardon were extremely helpful and generously shared. Juan’s attention to detail as a successful campaign manager is exceeded only by his meticulous collection and filing of material from two decades of Richmond political activism. His instructive history of the early years of the RPA can be found at http://richmondprogressivealliance.net/docs/RPA_Origins.pdf. Mayor Tom Butt offered similar access to his voluminous files, but who needed that when the archives of his E-Forum provided many years’ worth of detailed commentaries on events described in this book. Tom is a prolific and felicitous Richmond wordsmith, whose un-ghosted blogging is a testament to his ability to get by on little sleep! His E-Forum entries may not always be politically correct but never fail to inform (or, on April 1, fool) in one fashion or another.

  Professor Shirley Ann Wilson Moore’s To Place Our Deeds: The African American Community in Richmond, California, 1910–1963 and the Reverend Alvin Bernstine’s A Ministry That Saves Lives were indispensable as source material. Betty Reid Soskin, US park ranger extraordinaire, cannot be thanked enough for her enormous contribution to living history in Richmond and chapter 1 of Refinery Town. She and her colleagues at the Rosie the Riveter Historical Park are National Park Service treasures. Bill Jennings, a former member of the Black Panther Party in Richmond and a wonderful BPP archivist, supplied much-needed background on local BPP activity.

  Brenda Williams’s documentary film Against Hate vividly recounts Richmond’s struggle over homophobia and hate speech in 2013–14. I benefited greatly from information sharing related to our overlapping projects. Against Hate is available for use as a teaching tool; for ordering information, contact BK Williams Productions at againsthate2015@gmail.com. Nat Bates for Mayor, a ninety-minute video documentary by Eric Weiss and Bradley Berman, is another valuable resource. It is available online at www.natbatesformayormovie.com. Weiss and Berman provide important insight into the African American community resentments and insecurities that have been stoked by Richmond’s changing demographics, gentrification pressures, and, of course, by our local dispensers of big money in politics (Big Oil, Big Soda, et al.).

  The Golden Shore: California’s Love Affair with the Sea, by Richmond journalist and environmental activist David Helvarg, provides a firsthand account of the campaign to save Point Molate. For further information about local, national, and international campaigns involving Chevron, readers should consult, as I did, the website and reports of the True Cost of Chevron Network, the largest coalition seeking to reform this company and the entire oil industry. (See http://truecostofchevron.com/.) Oil Change International also does valuable research and advocacy revealing the true costs of fossil fuel use and promoting clean energy alternatives. (See http://priceofoil.org/.)

  In the San Francisco Bay Area, the Sunflower Alliance’s Chevron Watch perfo
rms a similar watchdog function at http://www.sunflower-alliance.org/campaigns/chevron-watch. The Climate Justice Alliance’s Our Power Campaign promotes a “just transition” to green jobs in Richmond and other communities through the activities described at http://movementgeneration.org/our-work/movementbuilding-2/cjaourpower/. The defense of “frontline communities” by Communities for a Better Environment is described in several chapters of this book. Many thanks to CBE staffer and former city council candidate Andres Soto for his “toxic tour” of Richmond, always valuable local history lessons, and tireless efforts to protect refinery town residents.

  Fred Glass’s book, From Mission to Microchip: A History of the California Labor Movement, provided insight into Richmond teacher struggles in the past. Even though controversies over public education were, for space reasons, beyond the scope of this book, I also learned a great deal from Lillian B. Rubin’s Busing & Backlash: White Against White in an Urban School District.

  As noted in chapter 4, Richmond Standard and Radio Free Richmond believe their online commentaries provide a counterweight to the views expressed in Tom Butt’s E-Forum and the RPA Activist, the e-newsletter skillfully edited by Patsy Byers. I agree more often with the Chevron-related postings of Butt and Byers but do want to thank Standard editor Mike Aldax and RFR cofounders Don Gosney and Felix Hunziker for material from their sites referenced in this book. Many thanks also to Doria Robinson and Najari Smith for creating the Real Rich Facebook page, with its lively (and often very quotable) exchanges about community affairs. I also learned much from the Richmond Historical Society, directed by Melinda McCrary, and the Point Richmond History Association.