by Steve Early
21. In 2014, Mellander ran unsuccessfully for the Doctors Medical Center board on a platform of closing the hospital. See Jennifer Baires, “Quiet Race for Contentious West Contra Costa Healthcare District Seats,” Contra Costa Times, October 6, 2014.
22. Mike Aldax, “Chevron Richmond’s Latest Refinery Modernization Project Proposal Wins Community Praise,” Richmond Standard, July 23, 2014, http://richmondstandard.com/2014/07/chevron-richmonds-latest-refinery-modernization-project-touted-best-possible-plan/.
23. Quoted in Robert Rogers, “Richmond Approves Massive Chevron Refinery Project with $90 Million in Community Benefits,” Contra Costa Times, July 30, 2015.
24. Victoria Colliver, “Lost Hospital Leaves Region with Big Void,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 21, 2016.
CHAPTER 5: AN ELECTION NOT FOR SALE
1. Brett Murphy and Elly Schmidt-Hopper, “Accusations and Money Fly as Chevron Spends on Richmond City Council Races,” Richmond Confidential, October 19, 2014.
2. Drew Weston, “Why Attack Ads? Because They Work,” Los Angeles Times, February 19, 2012.
3. In June 2016, EMC Research conducted a survey of Richmond Standard readers, designed to gauge their views of its credibility as a local news source. Survey participants, including the author, were informed that “part of the function of the website is to provide a voice for Chevron Richmond.” Nevertheless, the survey assured us that “the Standard is managed by an independent reporter,” who, of course, was not identified as a senior account executive at Singer Associates, Chevron’s public relations firm in San Francisco.
4. Michael Crowley and Michael Kruse, “The Foreign Minister of Burlington, Vt.,” Politico, July 31, 2015, http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/the-foreign-minister-of-burlington-vt-120839.
5. For more on Vermont Progressive Party history and recent activity, see Steve Early, Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013), 264–70; and Steve Early, “Union Member Recruitment by Vermont Progressives,” Social Policy 44, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 5-17, http://www.progressiveparty.org.2014/08/union-member-recruitment-vermont-progressives.
6. The soundness of the RPA approach to voters was confirmed in research about local elections in New Haven conducted by Yale political scientists Donald Green and Alan Gerber nearly two decades ago. “Talking to them face-to-face, the longer, the better, turned out to have a dramatic effect,” according to Green and Gerber, as reported by Andrew Cockburn in “Down the Tube: Television, Turnout, and the Election Industrial Complex,” Harper’s, April 2016, 63–68.
7. For more on organizing in other states, under the “Working Families” banner, see Molly Ball, “The Pugnacious, Relentless Progressive Party That Wants to Remake America,” Atlantic, January 2016.
8. Jennifer Baires and Robert Rogers, “Anti-Chevron Candidates Sweep to Victory in Richmond Races,” Contra Costa Times, November 4, 2014.
9. As quoted by John Geluardi, “Chevron Bids to Retake Richmond,” East Bay Express, October 22–28, 2014.
10. For more on this historic phenomenon, see Mary Frances Berry, Five Dollars and a Pork Chop Sandwich: Vote Buying and the Corruption of Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 2016).
11. Quoted in Samantha Cowan, “Young Journalist Fights Big Oil to Save One City’s Elections,” TakePart, October 20, 2014, http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/10/20/oil-company-spends-big-influence-local-elections.
12. Quoted in Tom Goulding, “Losing Candidates Say Money May Have Hurt Their Campaigns,” Richmond Confidential, November 19, 2014.
13. Quoted in ibid.
14. Quoted in ibid.
15. Quoted in “Richmond Can’t Be Bought Off,” editorial, San Francisco Chronicle, November 7, 2014. As if to confirm Myrick’s accusation of irrelevancy, BAPAC went out of business after the 2014 election.
16. “Chevron’s Excuse,” May 1, 2015, e-mail message from Public Citizen. Document in possession of the author.
17. “Dark Money’s Deepening Power,” editorial, New York Times, June 29, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/29/opinion/dark-moneys-deepening-power.html.
18. The case for SEC action is well argued by Kathleen M. Donovan-Maher and Steven L. Groopman, “Why Dark Money Is Bad Business,” New York Times, May 10, 2016.
19. Eduardo Porter, “Companies Open Up on Giving in Politics,” New York Times, June 6, 2015.
20. George Avalos, “Chevron Defends Environmental Record,” San Jose Mercury News, May 27, 2015, http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_28198464/chevron-defends-environmental-record-ecuador-sees-bright-future.
21. Clifford Kraus, “Profits Slide for Exxon and Chevron in a Brutal Year for the US Oil Industry,” New York Times, October 31, 2015. While Chevron was not making much as a crude-oil producer, with the price of oil under $50 per barrel, its “refinery and retail profit picture, including the Richmond refinery, was relatively bright,” according to George Avalos in “Chevron Sees Its Profits Plummet,” Contra Costa Times, August 1, 2015.
CHAPTER 6: CELEBRATING OUR DIFFERENCES?
1. A year after Butt’s “State of the City” report, the mall was for sale, and at least one Chevron-friendly candidate for city council, Cesar Zepeda, president of the Hilltop District Homeowners & Stakeholders Association, was making its revitalization the centerpiece of his campaign.
2. Quoted in Tim Redmond, “In Richmond, a Battle over a Council Seat—and the Role of Grassroots Groups,” 48Hills (blog), February 24, 2015, http://www.48hills.org/2015/02/24/4174/.
3. Chip Johnson, “18 Vie for Hot Vacant Seat Dividing Richmond Council,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 9, 2015. The RPA demanded a retraction over this column, and the paper subsequently ran the following correction: “Chip Johnson’s ‘On the East Bay’ on politics in Richmond mischaracterized the Richmond Progressive Alliance. The political group has no rule requiring its members on the City Council to clear their votes with the broader membership.”
4. Redmond, “In Richmond.”
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid. Redmond also reviews the relevant history of Berkeley Citizen Action (BCA), a local left-wing de facto political party in Berkeley during the 1980s. According to Redmond, “The BCA council members at times had trouble seeing other points of view. But they passed some great legislation, including the most important pro-tenant measures in the state.”
7. Soon after his appointment, Pimple sided with Butt against a controversial city council resolution, which proved embarrassing to Jael Myrick and his three RPA colleagues. This resolution expressed solidarity with local residents who consider themselves to be “targeted individuals” (i.e., subjects of alleged government surveillance or mind-control efforts involving space-based military technology). Butt expressed exasperation with the council’s action and, after a flurry of media ridicule, Myrick publicly apologized for his role in it. Before the flap was over, even former mayor McLaughlin agreed that the space-weaponry resolution was “a mistake” and a distraction from other council business.
8. Redmond, “In Richmond.”
9. Quotes are from an RPA internal document dated April 8, 2015, titled “Restructuring Committee Analysis and Recommendations” and authored by Patsy Byers, Michelle Chan, Claudia Jimenez, Eli Moore, Jamin Pursell, Jeff Shoji, and Tamisha Walker. Copy in possession of the author.
10. No Chevron representative responded, in person, to the CSB presentation on January 28, 2015. Instead, the company issued a press statement objecting to the agency’s “inaccurate depiction of the Richmond refinery’s safety culture.” See Jennifer Baires, “Chevron Fire Safety Culture Is Faulted,” Contra Costa Times, January 29, 2015.
11. USW national vice president Gary Beeson as quoted in Steve Early, “Tony Mazzocchi’s Spirit Haunts Big Oil Again,” Beyond Chron, February 4, 2015.
12. B. K. White, USW Local 5 Bargaining Report on “local issues,” February 2, 2015. Document in possession of the author.
13. Some angry Local 5 members questioned why t
heir union still belonged to the CLC or allowed it to remain a tenant in the USW-owned Jeff Dodge Labor Center, a site used by several local labor organizations for office and meeting space.
14. See, for example, Paul Garver, “Striking Oil Workers Emerge Victorious, Thanks in Part to Green Group Solidarity,” Portside Labor, March 18, 2015.
15. Chevron estimates their “average national salary, not including benefits” to be $75,620. In Richmond, according to Local 5, base pay is actually about $90,000 a year. Working twelve-hour shifts with lots of overtime, forced or voluntary, its highly skilled members have no trouble generating six-figure incomes.
16. Kory Judd, “The Power of ‘Stop Work Authority,’” Richmond Standard, October 20, 2015, http://richmondstandard.com/2015/10/the-power-of-stop-work-authority/.
17. Smith chose to retire from the company, after thirteen years of service, rather than return to full-time work in the Richmond refinery. He remains on the staff of Local 5, where requests for extensions of union leave, in the past, have been routinely granted by local refiners, including Chevron. Smith’s former employer may have been additionally miffed by his labor solidarity tours of Australia, where he exchanged information and strategy advice with militant members of the Maritime Union, a local foe of nonunion outsourcing.
18. Malcolm Marshall, “Richmond Celebrates First Pride Family Day,” Richmond Pulse, June 15, 2015, http://richmondpulse.org/2015/06/15/richmond-celebrates-first-pride-family-day/.
19. Jeffrey M. Jones, “In US, Confidence in Police Lowest in 22 Years,” Gallup, June 19, 2015, http://www.gallup.com/poll/183704/confidence-police-lowest-years.aspx.
20. Richmond did not face this problem alone. At least thirty-five US cities reported increases in murders, violent crimes, or both after years of declines, and these “spikes” were “raising alarms among urban police chiefs.” See Monica Davey and Mitch Smith, “Murder Rates Rising Sharply in Many Cities,” New York Times, September 1, 2015.
21. For a moving profile of the deceased, see Corey Monroe, “Remembering Fontino Hardy Jr.,” Richmond Pulse, August 2015.
22. Quoted in Mike Aldax “Ongoing Unrest Between Richmond Gangs Coincides with Uptick in Shootings,” Richmond Standard, August 4, 2015, http://richmondstandard.com/2015/08/ongoing-unrest-between-richmond-gangs-coincides-with-uptick-in-shootings.
23. Ibid.
24. Chris Magnus, “Dear Community Residents,” July 26, 2015, Richmond Police Department, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/richmondpolicecali/posts/1107722502576715:0.
25. As quoted by Caitlin Schmidt, “Tucson Police Union Makes Recommendation for New Chief,” Arizona Daily Star, November 4, 2015.
CHAPTER 7: GENTRIFICATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS
1. As Matthew Desmond documents in his wrenching account of landlord-tenant problems in a low-income Milwaukee neighborhood, such housing insecurity is now a condition of daily life for millions of Americans. See Desmond, Eviction: Poverty and Profit in the American City (New York: Crown, 2016).
2. Margaretta Lin, Oakland Housing and Community Development Department, in a report titled Oakland Housing Equity Roadmap, quoted in Ken Epstein, “Oakland Is Losing Its Racial, Age, and Economic Diversity,” Oakland Post, June 14, 2015. In April 2016 these trends led the Oakland city council to impose a ninety-day moratorium on rent increases and create an “impact fee” system to encourage “developers to include affordable housing in their projects or pay a fee for every market rate unit they build so the city can build its own affordable housing.” See Rachel Swan, “Oakland Council OKs Impact Fees on New Housing,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 21, 2016.
3. Randy Shaw, “Is Richmond the Next Hipster Haven?,” Beyond Chron, August 5, 2014, http://www.beyondchron.org/oakland-hipster-haven-richmond-next.
4. As quoted in “Berkeley Global Campus: A New Bolder Vision for Richmond Bay,” press release, UC-Berkeley Public Affairs, October 30, 2014.
5. Roland Li, “UC Thinks Global, Builds Local,” San Francisco Business Times, April 3, 2015, http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print-edition/2015/04/03/uc-thinks-global-builds-local-uc-berkeley-s-global.html.
6. Eskenazi, “From the ‘Arm Pit of the Bay Area’ to a Progressive Utopia on Earth.”
7. For details on this trend, see AFSCME Local 3299 research report Working in the Shadows: How Outsourcing at the University of California Adds to the Ranks of California’s Working Poor, August 7, 2015. Archived at http://www.afscme3299.org/documents/reports/WorkingInShadows.pdf.
8. Ian Lovett, “University of California System Set to Raise Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour,” New York Times, July 23, 2015.
9. Dirks was reported to be developing proposals “for reducing staff, particularly in administration” and “using real estate and branding to bring in new revenue” to address a $156 million deficit in his $2.4 billion budget. See Anemona Hartocollis, “Growing Deficit Forces Berkeley Campus to Look for Cuts and New Revenue,” New York Times, February 11, 2016. In August 2016, Dirks also announced his resignation as chancellor, although he planned to remain in office until a successor was named.
10. After later picketing of another Richmond landlord, Butt didn’t swoop in, but other rent control foes did. They accused ACCE and the RPA protestors of using “intimidation to influence government policy,” thus meeting “one of the criteria used by the federal government to define domestic terrorism.” See Oscar Garcia, “ACCE and RPA Unfairly Target Elderly Latina Landlord,” Radio Free Richmond, June 20, 2016.
11. In a December 18, 2014, letter to her constituents about her dissenting vote, McLaughlin explained that she objected to how city hall staff handled the process of securing an amendment to the city’s General Plan, required for this project because of the developer’s proposed building height.
12. Soto’s rental problems are described in Rachel Swan, “Richmond Council to Vote on Contentious Rent Control Proposal,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 27, 2015.
13. Edgardo Cervano-Soto, “Black Families on Front Lines of Displacement in Richmond,” Richmond Pulse, April 10, 2015.
14. From a June 25, 2015, e-mail, “Update from Council Member McLaughlin.” Copy in possession of the author.
15. The RPA disputed both points, reminding the mayor that “part of balancing the budget is making sure the wealthy pay their fair share of the city’s income,” which the RPA has tried to do via its past campaigns to raise Chevron’s business license fees, utility user’s tax, and property taxes.
16. Gayle McLaughlin, e-mail message to RPA steering committee, August 25, 2015. Copy in possession of the author.
17. Karina Ioffee, “Richmond OKs Strict Protection for Tenants,” Contra Costa Times, July 23, 2015.
18. Randy Shaw, “Richmond 1, Gentrification 0,” Beyond Chron, July 23, 2015, http://www.beyondchron.org/richmond-moves-to-halt-gentrification/.
19. Chip Johnson, “Richmond Makes Right Call on Rent Control,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 7, 2015. Later New York Times coverage of multiple Bay Area rent control campaigns in 2016 confirmed Johnson’s observation that even middle-income renters were being squeezed, and responding in Richmond fashion. See Conor Dougherty, “In Towns That Tech Made Rich, Calls to Limit the Soaring Rents,” New York Times, June 12, 2016.
20. Quoted in Karina Ioffee, “Rent Control Is Under Fire,” Contra Costa Times, August 28, 2015.
21. Karina Ioffee, “Richmond Petition Drive Puts Spotlight on Industry with Little Oversight,” Contra Costa Times, December 25, 2015.
22. At the time of his death in 2012, former Black Panther Bobby Bowens served on the RPA steering committee and used the storefront office later named after him to lead a local study group on the writings of Martin Luther King Jr.
23. Like Choi and his favored presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, Willis also “pledged not to accept any political donations from corporations and businesses.” See Michelle Chan and Patsy Byers, “RPA Endorses Melvin Willis,” RPA Activist, August 2, 2016, http://richmondprogr
essivealliance.net/.
24. See “Jael Myrick: Nobody’s Bashing Police, My Response to Mayor Butt,” Radio Free Richmond, February 9, 2016, http://www.radiofreerichmond.com/jael_myrick_nobody_s_bashing_police_my_response_to_mayor_butt.
25. Quoted in Edgardo Cervano-Soto, “Latino Voting Power on the Rise,” Richmond Pulse, April, 2016.
26. Quoted in Sawant campaign press release, “Sawant Has Highest Number of Seattle Contributors,” October 5, 2015. For more on the labor and political organizing in Seattle that contributed to Sawant’s electoral success, see Jonathan Rosenblum’s “Socialist Win in Seattle: Anomaly or Harbinger?,” Alternet, January 8, 2016; Jonathan Rosenblum, Not by Wages Alone (Boston: Beacon Press, forthcoming).
27. Roots Action was also created by media critic Jeff Cohen. For more details on its valuable work, see http://rootsaction.org/about-rootsaction.
28. This was not an electoral outcome welcomed by Tom Butt. The mayor told me he would consider stepping down if the RPA achieved its first-ever four-member council majority, making cooperation and compromise with nonmembers on the council unnecessary, in his view. Butt questioned the RPA’s ability to make such gains in 2016, citing polling results earlier that year showing that he was the only council member with a current favorability rating over 50 percent, based on performance in office.
EPILOGUE: MAKING LOCAL PROGRESS
1. Michael Kazin, “Promises and Limits of Progressive Cities,” Dissent (Winter 2015): 26.
2. New York City provides a 6-to-1 match for individual donations of up to $175 for city council and mayoral candidates who agree to abide by the system’s overall expenditure limits and disclosure requirements. Most candidates now take advantage of this voluntary program.
3. For details, see Will Bredderman, “City Council Sounds Defiant While Bending to Pressure From Albany on Bag Fees,” Observer, June 6, 2016.
