Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City

by Steve Early, Bernie Sanders (Foreword by)

Overview

The People vs. Big Oil—how a working-class company town harnessed the power of local politics to reclaim their community

With a foreword by Bernie Sanders

Home to one of the largest oil refineries in the state, Richmond, California, was once a typical company town, dominated by Chevron. This largely nonwhite, working-class city of 100,000 suffered from poverty, pollution, and poorly funded public services. It had one of the highest homicide rates per capita in the country and a jobless rate twice the national average.

But when veteran labor reporter Steve Early moved from New England to Richmond in 2012, he discovered a city struggling to remake itself. In Refinery Town, Early chronicles the 15 years of successful community organizing that raised the local minimum wage, defeated a casino development project, challenged home foreclosures and evictions, and sought fair taxation of Big Oil.

A short list of Richmond’s activist residents helps to propel this compelling chronicle:

• 94 year old Betty Reid Soskin, the country’s oldest full-time national park ranger and witness to Richmond’s complex history
• Gayle McLaughlin, the Green Party mayor who challenged Chevron and won
• Police Chief Chris Magnus, who brought community policing to Richmond and is now one of America’s leading public safety reformers

Part urban history, part call to action, Refinery Town shows how concerned citizens can harness the power of local politics to reclaim their community and make municipal government a source of much-needed policy innovation. 
 
 

“Refinery Town provides an inside look at how one American city has made radical and progressive change seem not only possible but sensible.”—David Helvarg, The Progressive

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807029664
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	01/16/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Steve Early has been an organizer, lawyer, union representative, and labor activist for the past forty-five years. He is the author of three other books, including Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress. He lives in Richmond, California, with his wife.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD
To Change U.S. Politics, We Need More Cities Like Richmond, California by Bernie Sanders

INTRODUCTION
From Company Town to Progressive City

ONE
A Refiner’s Fire

TWO
The Greening of City Hall

THREE
Richmond’s Community Policeman

FOUR
Tuesday Night Cage Fights

FIVE
An Election Not for Sale

SIX
Celebrating Our Differences?

SEVEN
Gentrification and Its Discontents

EPILOGUE
Making Local Progress

Acknowledgments

Notes

Editorial Reviews

A specific tale of governance at the local level that should appeal to labor activists and scholars of urban studies.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Readers interested in American politics, progressivism, community practice, and local, labor, and social history will find Early’s book to be informative, engaging, and inspiring.”
—Booklist Review

“Exceptionally well written, impressively informed and informative, a compelling and thoughtful read from beginning to end, Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City is very strongly recommended for both community, college, and university library American History collections.”
—The Midwest Book Review

“Refinery Town suggests that there is hope yet...folks: 2020 will be upon us in a flash; Richmond shows one way it can be a better time.”
—Dissent

“Early is well positioned to tell this story. A lifelong labor activist and reporter who relocated to Richmond just in time to witness Chevron’s spectacular 2012 refinery explosion that nearly killed a dozen workers and sent fifteen thousand residents to the emergency room, he has a natural feel for the flow of grassroots political movements and the forces shaping working-class life...indispensable reading for activists thinking about the real problems of governance once an insurgency gains a toehold of power.”
—Mark Dudzic, Jacobin Magazine

“His book is a ray of hope for anyone wondering how to survive, and possibly even thrive, under Donald Trump and a hostile, Republican Congress...Community activists who are just starting out could find examples like Richmond a bit daunting, which makes intimate, contemporary histories like Refinery Town so valuable.”
—Shaun Richman, In These Times

“It is a tale well-told, and a good antidote for the despair that now runs rampant among many American progressives...[Early] successfully combines lively anecdotes, easy to read narrative, skillful analysis of often-complex issues, portraits of local leaders including the engaging Green Party former Richmond mayor Gayle McLaughlin, and commentary that places RPA in the larger context of American society and politics.”
—Mike Miller, Counterpunch

“A truly invaluable book on a tremendous urban political achievement. The importance of national resistance to Donald Trump does not reduce the importance of local struggles such as that in Richmond...[Early] has brought forth another powerful chronicle of how progressives can win against big money and powerful interests. At a time when people are looking for inspiration, Refinery Town could not have come out at a better time.”
—Randy Shaw, Beyond Chron

“Compelling on many levels.”
—Seth Sandronsky, The Progressive Populist

“A case study for activists looking to build power at the local level through grassroots organizing and independent electoral work...an invaluable documentation of their journey and a testimony of what might be possible in other cities.”
—Ryan Haney, Talking Union blog

“[A] hopeful narrative about how bottom-up citizen action can restore a city’s pride and make a real difference in people’s lives around such issues as affordable housing, community policing, sustainable job growth, open space, clean energy, and immigrant rights...Refinery Town provides an inside look at how one American city has made radical and progressive change seem not only possible but sensible.”
—David Helvarg, The Progressive

“Refinery Town should be on the reading list of all aspiring political revolutionaries, including those who may be temporarily discouraged and in need of a critical boost.”
—Jonathan H. Martin, The Huffington Post

“As Washington remains in gridlock, the everyday citizen-heroes of Richmond, California have been getting things done to make their city work for all. Refinery Town is essential reading for anyone seeking inspiration for what grassroots organizing can accomplish, one community at a time.”
—Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, and former U.S. Secretary of Labor

“Frontline communities have a key role to play in our climate movement. Richmond’s creative resistance to Chevron is a model for environmental justice campaigners everywhere—in the U.S. and abroad—who face tough struggles of their own against Big Oil and big money. Steve Early’s retelling of Richmond’s story proves that making real change is possible.”
—Annie Leonard, Executive Director, Greenpeace USA and author of The Story of Stuff

“This is the story of a paradigmatic urban resistance movement that is successfully challenging the myth that corporate power and gentrification are inevitable, almost geological forces. Deeply rooted in local traditions of labor and black-liberation activism, the Richmond Progressive Alliance—Sanderistas pay attention—exemplifies what a grassroots ‘political revolution’ actually looks like. We need two, three, many Richmonds!”
—Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

“In a political system of Republicans and Democrats beholden to corporate cash, Refinery Town demonstrates there is an alternative in working people and community activists taking independent political action based on their own interests. From Seattle to Richmond, an emerging grass roots movement is developing for whom this book is an important read.”
—Kshama Sawant, Socialist Alternative Seattle City Council Member

“Refinery Town is a substantial contribution to the literature on local political struggles over poverty, inequality, and environmental degradation. Early has done for the contested terrain of Richmond, California what Mike Davis did for the much larger, majority minority metropolis of Los Angeles in City of Quartz. His first-hand reporting is invaluable for researchers in urban studies, city planning, and geography.”
—Immanuel Ness, professor of Political Science, City University of New York (Brooklyn College) author, Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class

“Refinery Town provides deep insight into problems that our local progressive movement faced in its continuing struggle against corporate domination. Early captures the spirit as well as the facts of our Richmond campaigns and puts them in the context of community struggles throughout the country. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to challenge corporate power at the local level.”
—Mike Parker, Richmond Progressive Alliance organizer and co-author of Democracy is Power

“Steve Early’s new book describes the making of a ‘political revolution’ at the local level. Despite Chevron’s financial bullying and attempt to buy local elections, citizens of Richmond were able to organize and fight back relying on their own resources and energy. Like Bernie 2016, their story demonstrates that real change is possible through issue-oriented campaigns and effective electoral organizing.”
—Larry Cohen, past president of Communications Workers of America and senior advisor to Bernie 2016 Campaign

“For those of us wondering how to carry on the spirit and the activism of the Bernie Sanders campaign after 2016, this book contains a cornucopia of lessons to be applied in other cities and towns. The electoral success of the Richmond Progressive Alliance shows that maintaining a clear and radical anti-corporate politics is the way to win.”
—Jane Slaughter, former editor, Labor Notes

From the Publisher

Corporations are people. This we know; the U.S. Constitution tells us so. And cities are alive. This we know, with or without the U.S. Constitution's oracularity, because we can witness the shape- shifting of neighborhoods -- of whole metropolitan areas -- from buzzworthy to vilified to back again to back again, sometimes gradually, sometimes mercurially, sometimes inscrutably. Labor activist Steve Early's Refinery Town chronicles just such a morphing in the life of Richmond, California. Early calls the work narrative journalism, but for us it is simply a story, both well told and true.

Richmond is one of those industrial burghs suitably distanced from its mother city so as not to be aromatically offensive, like Chicago's Gary or Venice's Mestre. Richmond's mother is San Francisco. In the pre–WWII era, Richmond was a prototypical company town; in this case, under the thumb of the energy giant Standard Oil of California, where it operated one of the largest refineries in California. Richmond was working class -- in addition to oil, there were rail yards, wineries, Pullman car works, chemical and automotive plants -- and white: African Americans numbered less than 300 when Richmond reached its prewar population peak of 24,000, living "a tenuous existence on the outer edges of the city's industrial vision, trapped at the bottom of the economic and social hierarchy." Among Richmond's ailments was a strong streak of bigotry: "Klan parades and minstrel shows reinforced the racial status quo" in the city, as in many white working-class towns.

World War Two changed that. Standard Oil held fast to its union- busting, racist, wayward paternalism, but there was a new face in town: Henry Kaiser, of metal-making and dam-building fame. Kaiser had at his disposal massive federal funding to build ships to replace all those sitting at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Kaiser was a one-man-making boomtown. With wartime labor shortages, he hired thousands of workers from all over the country to build cargo ships at four new shipyards, targeting "young African Americans eager to escape post-Depression hardship and Jim Crow constraints," for jobs long restricted to white males. Suddenly, nearly 15 percent of Richmond's population was African American, if segregated and consigned to temporary housing (plenty of which is still inhabited).

Then peace came, and fresh problems. The jobs spawned by the war disappeared. Other industries slumped or moved to more profitable climes. Standard Oil, soon to become Chevron, remained, unfazed by the demographic tides. But who got the benefit? "The Richmond refinery's wartime workforce of three thousand initially included just nine African Americans. By 1944, after federal government prodding, its nonwhite head count rose to . . . 114." (Quick math: that's 0.038 percent -- even though the city's population was nearly 15 percent African American, a figure that kept climbing. Deindustrialization led to even further joblessness, poverty, and substandard schools and housing, while drug trafficking, street crime, and gang violence led to an unenviable per capita homicide rate.

Shaped by the optimism of the civil rights movement and a surge in Democratic voter registration, Early relates, African Americans soon started making their presence felt. There was the Black Panther Party, of which Richmond was one of the first chapters, and there was a growing presence of African Americans in the political establishment. By 1980, African Americans were the majority of the population, and by century's turn, Richmond had a black mayor and black city manager. Every department head was black, as was a majority of the City Council. The result, however, was not what a previous generation of activists had imagined. A little investigative journalism by Early found that the "corporate- backed African American political machine, aligned with conservative, self-serving, and predominantly white police and firefighters unions, dominated city government. Cronyism, corruption, and bureaucratic incompetence became deeply entrenched." Where insurgent African-American politicians in other cities -- such as Gary, Chicago, Cleveland -- experimented with new forms of direct participation, public enterprise, property regulation, and service structure, Richmond took the low road.

Only for a short stint, however, which shows how three decades can disappear when you look back. The crux of Early's tale, when his storytelling begins to glow with embers of promise, is with the creation of the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA). The RPA is one of those rare birds that, having found common footing in a fight against Chevron's abysmal labor and environmental records, not only successfully grappled with Big Oil but stayed in alliance to take charge of the Richmond city government. They threatened to use eminent domain to thwart home foreclosures, regulated rents and evictions, raised the minimum wage, defeated a casino development scheme, created a municipal ID card, curbed discrimination against former prisoners in job applications, and hired a visionary gay police chief to institute community policing.

All of these issues were mooted at the RPA's first People's Convention. This raised RPA's profile enough that one of their number, Gayle McLaughlin, won a seat on the City Council, despite Chevron's lavish spending on her opposition. Early then carefully, neatly follows the gradual ascendency of the RPA, including McLaughlin's stunning mayoral victory in 2006. Although the mayor didn't have the immediate clout of the city manager, the position did afford McLaughlin a bully pulpit to "develop and inform City residents of policies and programs which he or she believes are necessary for the welfare of the City." McLaughlin played it to the hilt.

RPA and its kitchen cabinet of liberal Democrats, socialists, independents, California Greens, and Peace and Freedom Party members inherited a bankrupt city government, a citywide toxic hot spot (including a radioactive landfill), a laughable level of corruption in city agencies, a police force rampant with "cowboys." On top of that were periodic raids by Immigration and Customs to detain and deport undocumented workers -- terrifying the expanding Latino population, which was 40 percent of the Richmond citizenry according to the 2010 Census.

And yet, the alliance turned the city around -- not into Oz but into one where "civil rights, the environment, education, open government and quality of life issues" were paramount and, crucially, at a time when the state and federal governments were gridlocked, showed that town and city governments could enact legislation at the grassroots level, that shoe leather could defeat all the propaganda that Big Oil spent millions on -- $3.1 million, to be moderately exact -- to manipulate a municipal election. Bernie Sanders came to Richmond during the 2014 elections. "Sanders proclaimed our city" -- Early lives in Richmond, let that be noted; Early was there -- "to be ground zero in the struggle against Citizens United."

McLaughlin was legally barred from running for a third term in 2014, and fissures started to open, as they will in alliances. There were complaints of a first-among-equals steering committee; key RPA activists are mostly registered Greens, while "the membership is overwhelmingly registered Democrats"; and there are the vexing, sometimes sundering "gray areas. One person's tactical issue is another person's principle." The united front lost its molecular bonds.

As the quality of life began to improve, came the signs of gentrification. The government held together to pursue affordable housing, then split over the construction of market rate buildings. The University of California Berkeley made great plans for a Berkeley Global Campus to transform all of Richmond before finding itself cash-strapped: the pipe dream was summarily canceled. Rent-control negotiations, which were passed by the city council, were stalled by a phony petition campaign. Chevron, too, had its lawyers appeal all the fines levied against the company for one egregious energy-related fiasco after another.

The beauty of the Richmond experiment, that warm glow emitted as Early feeds his campfire storytelling, is that it testifies to the "continuing advantages of making changes locally as part of a longer-term and eventually more sweeping progressive strategy. What activists have going for them . . . nonexistent in the big- money-dominated realm of state and national politics -- is greater personal connection to voters." Personal engagement, in the best of worlds, creates solidarity, and political insurgencies require civic engagement. "When we shelter in place together," Early writes, his tongue in cheek -- "shelter in place" is Chevron's catastrophe alert; doors must be closed and windows taped shut -- "we can change our communities for the better." The option is apathy, alienation, and powerlessness, "until there are too many fires to put out and not enough time left to reverse the damage they've done."

Peter Lewis is the director of the American Geographical Society in New York City. A selection of his work can be found at writesformoney.com.

Reviewer: Peter Lewis

The Barnes & Noble Review

2016-10-05
In Richmond, California, overlooking scenic San Francisco Bay, is a company town bankrolled by Chevron. A resident reports, in some detail, on his town’s fraught governance.Labor activist and journalist Early (Save Our Unions, 2013, etc.) moved to Richmond in 2012 and soon became intrigued with the largely nonwhite community’s municipal life. Naturally, Chevron took a large part in the electoral process. Yet there was an active left-of-center cadre in opposition to the influence of the refinery and other powerful interests. For example, the Richmond Progressive Alliance, in a fight with big soda, endeavored to tax soft drinks to promote good health, and the creation of casinos in the town was halted. To prevent the foreclosure of homes financially underwater after the Great Recession, the Alliance proposed the use of governmental eminent domain. Fair housing was often the topic of town council battles. It seemed, according to Early’s account, a Manichaean fight. The forces of good were led by an admirable mayor, the Green Party’s Gayle McLaughlin. On behalf of her town, she engaged in foreign relations with Ecuador. (McLaughlin is writing a book of her own.) The author also admired the effective and efficient police chief, Chris Magnus. Early suspensefully chronicles the town’s 2014 political campaign. Spoiler alert: the good guys won, but the Frank Capra–like script took a turn, and the new mayor proved disappointing to his former friends. Early’s ongoing study of community action is, assuredly, not objective, and his earnest text is marred somewhat by an excess of acronyms—e.g., “but all of them—the CSB, DOT, EPA, Cal-OSHA and BAAQMD—proceed at a snail’s pace.” Otherwise quite accessible, the story remains focused on one municipality, as wide-ranging lessons are scanted while the text progresses. A specific tale of governance at the local level that should appeal to labor activists and scholars of urban studies.

Kirkus Reviews