Refinery Town

by Steve Early

  7. John Geluardi, “Richmond Developer Pushes Two Ballot Measures,” East Bay Express, November 11, 2015.

  8. See John Geluardi, “The Man Behind Richmond’s Renaissance,” East Bay Express, May 18, 2011. In 2015, when the city manager’s contract came up for renewal, Lindsay came under fire from critics of his compensation package. By 2013, he was receiving $288,372 in annual salary, plus an additional $123,600 in benefits, for total compensation of $411,972. “While it could be argued that city manager salaries in general are too high,” noted Gayle McLaughlin, “the compensation the city council has negotiated with our current city manager is not out of line based on current levels in the Bay Area.” One foe of Lindsay’s, developer Richmond Poe, placed a ballot measure before Richmond voters in June 2016 seeking to cap the city manager’s pay; it was only narrowly defeated.

  9. The Measure T litigation settlement—negotiated by city councilors Jeff Ritterman, Tom Butt, and Jim Rogers—was denounced as a sellout by a few RPA members. Charles Smith, a retired union activist, left the organization over the issue and has continued to criticize it ever since, saying that “so-called progressives squandered this major victory.” See Smith, “Bad, Bad Jerry Brown,” letter to the editor, Nation, July 15, 2014, http://www.thenation.com/article/letters-477/.

  10. For more on Kilbreth’s property tax analysis and critique, see Jeff Kilbreth, “Overview of Chevron and Contra Costa County Property Taxes,” presentation, November 2013, Richmond Progressive Alliance, http://richmondprogressivealliance.net/Issues/Chevron/Kilbreth13-11-21.pdf.

  11. David Helvarg, The Golden Shore: California’s Love Affair with the Sea (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013).

  12. “Draft Environmental Impact Statement/Environmental Impact Report, Point Molate Mixed-Use Tribal Destination Resort and Casino,” vol. 1, app. O, “Environmental Noise Analysis,” City of Richmond, http://www.ci.richmond.ca.us/DocumentCenter/Home/View/7523.

  13. Upstream and its tribal allies forced Richmond to spend nearly $2 million on attorney’s fees in this litigation before a federal judge finally ordered them to reimburse the city for its post-referendum legal costs. The plaintiffs then appealed that fee award, but defeated casino developer Richard Levine offered to settle the case based on Richmond’s acceptance of an immediately controversial plan to have Upstream build a thousand housing units on Point Molate. In mid-2016, settlement talks were continuing.

  14. Nat Bates for mayor campaign mailer, 2010. Document in possession of the author. In Richmond, candidates for municipal office are identified on the ballot only by their chosen description of their occupation—not as a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or Green Party member.

  15. In 2010, Whitehurst/Mosher was also hired by Richmond card club operators to campaign against the Point Molate casino project.

  16. See Edward Walker, “The Uber-ization of Activism,” New York Times, August 7, 2015, and Walker’s valuable book-length study Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

  17. Norimitsu Onishi, “California City Savors Role in Fighting ‘Big Soda,’” New York Times, November 4, 2012.

  18. Marion Nestle, Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 382. In June, 2016, Philadelphia became the largest city in the United States to embrace soda taxation after its local advocates downplayed public health as a rationale and campaigned instead on the need for new revenue for parks and recreation, public libraries, and universal pre-school programs. See Margot Sanger-Katz “Philadelphia Finds Winning Strategy For Soda Tax, and Other Cities Notice,” New York Times, June 17, 2016.

  19. In Richmond itself, city councilor Jim Rogers told me that he turned against Richmond Cares because its backers tried to convince him “that we did not need insurance to protect us from the promised industry lawsuit.”

  20. Rebecca Burns, “A Company Town Becomes Our Town, In These Times, September 18, 2013.

  21. Quoted in ibid.

  22. Karina Ioffee, “Bay Area Mortgage Relief Target of Mayors,” Contra Costa Times, June 19, 2015.

  23. Quoted in ibid.

  24. For further details, see Local Progress and Center for Popular Democracy, Policy for Local Progress: Case Studies and Best Practices from Around the Country (Washington, DC: Local Progress, 2016), http://localprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Local-Progress-Policy-Briefs-Booklet.pdf.

  25. Quoted in Steve Early, “Meet the Group of Feisty Urban Progressives Who Want to Transform the Country One City at a Time,” Nation, December 10, 2014. See also Nick Licata, Becoming a Citizen Activist: Stories, Strategies, and Advice for Changing Our World (Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2016).

  26. Quoted in John Geluardi, “From Richmond to the Rainforest,” East Bay Express, October 16, 2013.

  27. Quoted in ibid.

  28. Chip Johnson, “Richmond’s Activist-Mayor Blurs Line over Chevron,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 2013.

  29. “Time to Move on Dangerous Tank Cars,” editorial, New York Times, May 30, 2014.

  30. Jad Mouawad, “Oil Industry Asks Court to Block Rail Transport Safety Rules,” New York Times, May 12, 2015. In September 2015 the California legislature did help curb the one-member-crew trend by requiring all freight trains operated in the state to have both a conductor and engineer. A year later, however, the Federal Railroad Administration proposed a new rule, over the objection of railroad unions, that would enable carriers to get federal approval for single-employee operations, even for hazardous-material hauling.

  31. Quoted by Patsy Byers, “Protesting Crude by Rail in Richmond: The People Here Thursday Showed Some Guts,” RPA Activist, September 7, 2014, archived at http://richmondprogressivealliance.net/docs/KinderMorganActionSeptember4.pdf.

  CHAPTER 3: RICHMOND’S COMMUNITY POLICEMAN

  1. Nancy Deville and Joaquin Palomino, “The White Cop Who Embraced #BlackLivesMatter and Saved Richmond,” Pacific Standard, December 31, 2014, http://www.psmag.com/.

  2. Stacy Finz, “Fargo’s Top Cop Ready for Richmond,” San Francisco Chronicle, December 17, 2005.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Quoted in Wallace Turner, “Anti-Police Suit Focuses on a Town’s Ills,” New York Times, February 13, 1983.

  5. Quoted in Wallace Turner, “Racial Problems Continue in a California City,” New York Times, July 7, 1983.

  6. Quoted in Joe Eskenazi, “From the ‘Arm Pit of the Bay Area’ to a Progressive Utopia on Earth,” San Francisco Magazine, May 21, 2015, http://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/the-arm-pit-of-the-bay-area-progressive-utopia-earth.

  7. One of the few local cops who followed the chief’s example of living in Richmond was Ben Therriault, who was elected president of the Richmond Police Officers Association in 2016. Since 2011, Therriault has taken advantage of a program that enables officers to live rent free in any low-income housing project run by the city. For an account of his experiences in previously troubled Richmond Village, see Shawn Baldwin, “A Cop, and a Resident, of Richmond Public Housing,” Richmond Confidential, September 29, 2014.

  8. Elizabeth Weise, “‘All Lives Matter’ a Creed for Richmond, Calif. Police,” USA Today, September 23, 2015.

  9. Robert Rogers, “Richmond Police Captain Described Intimidation, Sabotage in Department in 2006–7,” Contra Costa Times, March 27, 2012.

  10. John Geluardi, “Updated: Jury Exonerates Richmond Police Chief Chris Magnus,” East Bay Express, April 10, 2012.

  11. Kevin Sack and Megan Thee-Brenan, “A Broad Division over Race in US Is Found in Poll,” New York Times, July 24, 2015.

  12. Richard Ford, “Why We Tolerate Biased Policing,” Boston Review, January 22, 2015, http://bostonreview.net/blog/richard-thompson-ford-biased-policing.

  13. Michael Schmidt, “FBI Director Speaks Out on Race and Police Bias,” New York Times, February 13, 2015.

  14. Zusha Elinson and Dan Frosch, “Police-Misconduct Costs Soar,” Wall Stree
t Journal, July 16, 2015.The settlement of litigation over the police shooting of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice cost Cleveland $6 million—in line with the payouts to the Garner and Gray families in New York City and Baltimore respectively.

  15. Radley Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (New York: Public Affairs, 2014).

  16. Quoted in Steve Rubenstein, “Youths Sound Off on Abusive Officers,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 27, 2015.

  17. Quoted in Robert Rogers, “Richmond Police Chief a Prominent Participant in Protest Against Police Violence,” Contra Costa Times, December 9, 2014.

  18. Quoted in Henry K. Lee, “Richmond Union Criticizes Chief for Wearing Uniform to Protest,” SF Gate, December 13, 2014. The RPOA disputes the accusation that union officers or members have been pictured improperly in Richmond election campaign material.

  19. After his direct-mail battering by the RPOA and council campaign defeat in 2004, Andres Soto invoked the same statute in his legal challenge to the RPOA’s use of a departmental logo on election campaign literature. That lawsuit did not end well for him; the RPOA filed a successful counterclaim and sought and won attorney’s fees, forcing Soto to declare personal bankruptcy when stuck with a $9,000 bill for the union’s legal costs.

  20. David Brooks, “The Union Future,” New York Times, December 19, 2014. For a detailed analysis of police union litigation strategies and contract provisions that can thwart reform, see Adeshina Emmanuel, “How Union Contracts Shield Killer Cops: There’s a Reason Department of Justice-Mandated Reforms Don’t Stick,” In These Times, July 2016.

  21. Quoted in Sarah Jaffe, “Black Labor Organizers Urge AFL-CIO to Reexamine Its Ties to the Police,” Truthout, August 13, 2015.

  22. Quoted in “Richmond Police Chief’s New Approach Is Revitalizing a Tough Town,” Associated Press, February 2, 2015. A year after the RPOA meeting with Magnus over his controversial sign holding, Virgil Thomas was voted out as union president. His successor, Ben Therriault, told me that “there was a lot of upset” among RPOA members over the chief’s “problematic symbolism.” As Therriault explained, the movement known as Black Lives Matter “is not viewed as law-enforcement friendly.”

  23. Quoted in Robert Rogers, “Use of Deadly Force by Police Disappears on Richmond Streets,” Contra Costa Times, September 6, 2014.

  24. Ibid.

  25. According to Amnesty International, “More than 500 people have died in the United States since 2001 after being shocked with stun guns or tasers,” as Nick Madigan reported in “No Charges for Officer in Miami Taser Death,” New York Times, July 24, 2015.

  26. In March 2016 California state senator Mark Leno introduced a bill, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, to amend the 1977 Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights Act to limit its privacy protections for the personnel files of police officers. Leno argued that keeping information about police-misconduct investigations confidential erodes public trust in law-enforcement agencies. Faced with opposition from twenty-nine law-enforcement and labor groups, Leno’s bill was killed in committee, as Ali Winton reported in “Cop Blocked: California Effort to Increase Police Transparency Dies at State Capitol,” East Bay Express, June 1–7, 2016.

  27. Jake Halpern, “The Cop,” New Yorker, August 10 & 17, 2015.

  28. The skepticism expressed by Chief Magnus about the need for a police commission overhaul was shared by his sometime critics in the RPOA. “The police department already has processes on top of processes . . . to improve ourselves,” argues union president Ben Therriault. “How much money are we going to spend on investigations that lead to the same results?”

  29. Quoted in John Geluardi, “Too Much Police Oversight in Richmond?,” East Bay Express, March 2–8, 2016.

  30. Chris Magnus, RPD Update, Spring 2014. Document in possession of the author.

  31. Quoted in Eskanazi, “From the ‘Arm Pit of the Bay Area’ to a Progressive Utopia on Earth.”

  32. Quoted in Joaquin Palomino and Kevin Hume, “North Richmond Church Grapples with Recent Killings,” Richmond Confidential, October 2, 2013.

  33. For representative coverage of Boggan and the ONS, see Tim Murphy, “Life Is Cheap: Did DeVone Boggan Bring Down His City’s Murder Rate by Paying Kids to Stay Alive?,” Mother Jones, July/August 2014; and Heather Tirado Gilligan, “How One California City Began Bringing Its Murder Rate Down—Without Cops,” Nation, November 12, 2014.

  34. Megan Thompson, “California Program Offers Cash to Reduce Gun Crimes,” PBS NewsHour, May 7, 2016, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/controversial-california-program-offers-cash-to-reduce-gun-crimes/.

  35. See NCCD’s “Process Evaluation for the Office of Neighborhood Safety,” archived at https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2178945/nccd-richmond-report.pdf.

  36. Quoted in Chris Hayes, “Did Paying People Not to Kill Bring Down Murder Numbers?,” MSNBC.com, July 20, 2014, http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/did-paying-people-not-to-kill-bring-down-murder-numbers--482381891900.

  CHAPTER 4: TUESDAY NIGHT CAGE FIGHTS

  1. Eskanazi, “From the ‘Arm Pit of the Bay Area’ to Progressive Utopia on Earth.”

  2. Robert Rogers, “Could It Be Corky Time?,” Richmond Confidential, October 22, 2010.

  3. “Full Biography for Courtland ‘Corky’ Booze,” SmartVoter, http://www.smartvoter.org/2010/11/02/ca/cc/vote/booze_c/bio.html.

  4. Quoted in Carolyn Jones, “Councilwoman Perseveres Through Taunts, Rants, and Homophobic Slurs,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 2014.

  5. Robert Rogers, “NAACP Richmond’s Choice for Martin Luther King Jr. Peace Award Sparks Controversy,” East Bay Times, January 26, 2013, http://www.eastbaytimes.com/ci_22455053/naacp-richmonds-choice-martin-luther-king-jr-peace.

  6. Quoted in Robert Rogers, “Political Theater Rules Richmond City Council Meetings,” Contra Costa Times, May 11, 2014.

  7. Rogers later ceased practicing personal-injury law after problems with the California Bar Association. According to Stanford law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom, his license was surrendered while disciplinary charges were still pending over his operation of a “settlement mill.” See Engstrom, “Sunlight and Settlement Mills,” New York University Law Review 86, no. 4 (October 2011): 817–21.

  8. Privately Jeff Ritterman and Tom Butt both suggested that the RPA’s prior encouragement of vocal citizen activism at council meetings, on behalf of its favored causes, may have inadvertently paved the way for the “cage fights” of 2013–14. As Butt told me: “Gayle and her group champion grassroots movements and they turn out a lot of people at meetings. . . . Hooting and hollering in the audience—that’s what movements do. They don’t behave themselves.”

  9. For Soskin’s always incisive observations about politics and life in Richmond and elsewhere, see CBreaux Speaks, http://cbreaux.blogspot.com.

  10. Following a federal grand jury probe of alleged payoffs for city contracts, Reese pled guilty in 2001 to felony income tax evasion for not reporting tens of thousands of dollars in extra income. He was sentenced to wear a monitoring device for four months, followed by three years of probation, but he remained active in Richmond politics as a behind-the-scenes election-year strategist and “hit piece” producer. See Will Harper, “The White Shadow,” East Bay Express, October 24, 2001.

  11. Nat Bates, “RPA Trying to Win Black Vote,” Richmond Standard, March 17, 2014, http://richmondstandard.com/2014/03/councilman-bates-rpa-trying-win-black-vote.

  12. Harriet Blair Rowan and Jimmy Tobias, “What Does It Take for One Small City to Vanquish an Oil Giant?,” Nation, November 21, 2014.

  13. As quoted in ibid.

  14. Mike Parker, “A Social Policy Case Study and Follow-up on Richmond Progressive Alliance Two Years Later: Richmond Progressive Alliance: Defeating Big Money in Politics,” Social Policy (Winter 2015), http://richmondprogressivealliance.net/docs/RPAHist2-mp.pdf.

  15. Richmond’s system of public matching
funds was enacted in 2008, a reform championed by council member Jim Rogers and others. Under its current formula, a candidate who raises $10,000 can receive an initial grant of $5,000 in public money; each additional $5,000 raised from private donors brings in a matching amount, up to a total of $25,000 from the city election fund. To qualify, a candidate must accept what is now a $70,000 limit on total private contributions.

  16. Anthony Arthur, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair (New York: Penguin Random House, 2006), 274.

  17. Rory Carroll, “Chevron’s One-Man Newsroom Defends His Work,” Guardian, November 7, 2014. As Mike Aldax confessed to Carroll, “Being called a prostitute is hard. It can make you wonder about your career.”

  18. Michael Hiltzik, “How Chevron Swamps a Small City with Campaign Money and Bogus News,” Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2014; Michael Hiltzik, “A Chevron PR Website Pretends to Be an Objective News Source,” Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2014.

  19. For more details of this episode, see Jimmy Tobias, “Stealth Chevron Consultants Administer Richmond News Website,” Richmond Confidential, October 30, 2014, http://richmondconfidential.org/2014/10/30/stealth-chevron-consultants-administer-richmond-news-website. Radio Free Richmond cofounder Felix Hunziker contends that there was no intention to deceive readers and that he had disclosed BMWL’s connection to RFR on Facebook and in other ways. On RFR’s site today, BMWL is credited with providing “the initial programming of the website” which, according to Hunziker now “requires little time and money to operate” because it is primarily Facebook-based. The site is jointly owned by Hunziker and Don Gosney but is still a “partnership with BMWL, a consulting firm that includes Chevron among its list of other local clients.” Hunziker insists that “RFR isn’t funded by Chevron, nor is it pro-Chevron or engaged with Chevron in any way.”

  20. See Marilynne Mellander, “Community View: RPA Attempts ‘Shakedown of Chevron’ at Planning Commission,” Richmond Standard, July 11, 2014, http://richmondstandard.com/2014/07/community-view-rpa-attempts-shakedown-chevron-planning-commission/.