A Small City's Big Lessons About Progressive Organizing
AARON MATÉ: It's The Real News. I'm Aaron Maté. Richmond, California,
is home to one of the largest oil refineries on the West Coast and
also a working-class
community that has seen many struggles. Chevron, the city's largest
employer, has been responsible for hundreds of industrial accidents in
the area, including
major fires, spills, explosions, and air contamination. At the same
time, for decades, it's maintained a controlling influence over the
city's electoral
politics. However, in recent years, the community at Richmond has
fought back, organizing to raise the local minimum wage and demand
fair taxation from
Big Oil.This fight is chronicled in the new book, Refinery Town: Big
Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City. Its author is
Steve Early, who,
for the past 45 years, has been an organizer, lawyer, and labor
activist. I recently sat down with Steve Early in our Baltimore
studio. Steve, hello.STEVE
EARLY: Thanks for having me on the show. AARON MATÉ: Thanks for being
here. Tell us about Richmond.STEVE EARLY: Richmond, California, is an
industrial
city, 80% non-white, largely poor and working class. It's located in
the East Bay, up the coast from the better-known Oakland and Berkeley.
For the last
century its largest employer, its biggest taxpayer, its dominant
political influencer has been the oil company known today as Chevron.
It's long been a
city shaped by Big Oil's pollution of the air, the water, and local
politics.AARON MATÉ: The central focus of your book is the community's
fight against
Chevron and their presence in the town. Can you break that down for
us?STEVE EARLY: Over the last 10 to 15 years we've seen the emergence
of a broad-based,
working-class oriented, multiracial progressive movement in Richmond
that has challenged Chevron's long-time dominance over municipal
affairs. Since 2004,
this group, the Richmond progressive Alliance, has won 10 out of 16
races for city council or mayor, currently has a progressive super
majority on the
city council, and for eight years actually made Richmond the largest
city in the country with a green mayor. We've had a tremendous
breakthrough for Bernie
Sanders-style progressives at the local level, implementing a
far-reaching program of municipal reform in a very unlikely place for
that, given its history
of Big Oil domination. AARON MATÉ: Well, before we get into the broad
reforms, let's get into the Chevron fight more. When you say that
Chevron has dominated
municipal affairs, what do you mean by that?STEVE EARLY: Well, when
you have one big major employer, they tend to have a lot of influence
on local politics.
Chevron opened the refinery in Richmond in 1905. The city grew up
around it. It had other manufacturing operations, the Kaiser Shipyard
during World War
II. It has a big railroad. It has a port, but Big Oil has long been
the biggest employer, the biggest taxpayer, the biggest manipulator of
local politics.
Only the last 10 or 15 years has a coalition of community and labor
groups and environmentalists come together and successfully contested
its influence
and its use of big money in local politics and run people for city
government who tried to hold the company accountable as opposed to
doing its business
for it. AARON MATÉ: Explain how that fight played out. Were these
progressive candidates running against politicians who were backed
heavily by Chevron?STEVE
EARLY: Chevron has been part of a larger ruling, conservative,
establishment group that included the Chamber of Commerce, the
Manufacturers' Association,
leading developers, and, sadly, conservative building trades' unions
and the police and the firefighters' unions. That's essentially been
their coalition,
and until 10 or 15 years ago, they were were able to control the
mayor's office, the city council, the affairs of the city. The
emergence of progressives
has changed the political landscape. Chevron has been forced to pay
more of its fair share of taxes. We have been able to enact rent
control in Richmond,
a major progressive reform benefiting thousands of low-income black
and Latino tenants. Progressives have been able to enact major reform
at the police
department, raise the minimum wage, declare Richmond to be a sanctuary
city, and take other initiatives at the local level to address the
pressing problem
of global warming. AARON MATÉ: There was a key election in 2014, and
it's said that Chevron spent more than $3 million on that race, more,
I believe, than
they spent on congressional races. STEVE EARLY: It was pretty
extraordinary. Richmond has a population of about 110,000, an active
electorate of 20 to
30,000 people. In 2014, Big Oil and its allies spent over $3 million
trying to elect a slate of conservative candidates for mayor and city
council and
trying to smear and defeat our progressive slate, and the company
failed. It was a very rare example of people power overcoming big
money in local politics,
and it was a testament to the work that Richmond progressives have
done building a strong grassroots movement, a volunteer army of
canvassers who go door-to-door,
talk to their neighbors, get out the vote and refuse to take corporate
contributions themselves.All of our progressive candidates in Richmond
are corporate-free.
They're up against Corporate Democrats who have steadily been losing
ground because they won't support rent control, they won't support an
increase in
the minimum wage, they won't force Chevron to be accountable, and they
don’t want to be a part of the serious effort to make the city cleaner
and greener
and healthier and more equitable for all its citizens.AARON MATÉ: A
lot of parallels there to the national struggle right now for the soul
of the Democratic
Party, but before we get into that, let's talk more about the Richmond
Progressive Alliance who you mention here, how they came together, who
they are.
STEVE EARLY: Well, we all have been frustrated, I think, in various
ways by the fragmentation of the US Left, the tendency of people to go
off in different
direction with a kind of single-issue focus. One of the early triumphs
of the Progressive Alliance when it came together was getting people
concerned about
diverse issues, to work together around a common agenda for municipal
reform. You had people 15 years ago in Richmond who wanted to deal
with the problem
of police brutality, who even then were concerned about housing
affordability, wanted to raise the minimum wage, and improve local
labor standards, wanted
to clean up the environment, wanted to get Chevron to pay more in
property taxes, but they were all kind of working in separate silos.
The genius of the
Progressive Alliance was getting them to come together, adopt a common
platform, start to run candidates, and candidates who would remain
accountable to
the constituencies that elected them, candidates who would use their
position as mayor or city council member to help mobilize the
community to counter
the enormous political influence of Chevron and other special interest
groups in the community. The Richmond Progressive Alliance is an
unusual hybrid
organization. It has dues-paying members. It has some labor and
community organizational partners. It doesn’t just pop up every two or
four years running
candidates. It organizes year round around a wide range of really
compelling community issues.AARON MATÉ: That’s interesting,
dues-paying members, modeled
on a labor union.STEVE EARLY: Very much so or a more traditional
European-style political party. Our political parties are pretty
hollow structures. They
exist mainly as banners for people to wave while they raise millions
of dollars for their own individual entrepreneurial campaigns as
candidates. The RPA
model is completely different. Our candidates are not endorsed.
They're a product of the progressive movement. They are leaders in the
Progressive Alliance.
They come out of the movements they represent, and, therefore, they
tend to be much more responsive to the people that elected them. We
have seen many
times people endorsed by labor or healthcare reform or community or
immigrant advocate groups get into elected office and disappoint in
various ways. One
of the real challenges is, how do you hold progressive elected
officials accountable to the agenda they campaigned on? I think the
Richmond track record
has been pretty good in that regard over the last 15 years. AARON
MATÉ: Speaking of challenges, I want to talk a bit more about this
coalition, this progressive
coalition that was assembled. One of the critiques of the Bernie
Sanders campaign, especially in the early stages of the primaries, was
that it didn’t
do enough to attract African-American voters. Is Richmond a case where
that divide between progressive groups and African-American voters, to
the extent
that that divide exists, was overcome?STEVE EARLY: It has been, but
it's been very difficult. This is a majority minority community, 80%
non-white, 40%
Latino, 30% black, 10% Asian, but Big Oil has often had a lock on the
African-American opinion-shapers and leaders, black churches. The
NAACP is a wholly-owned
subsidiary of Chevron. The company in its role as a major
philanthropist supports everything from children's breakfast programs
to Black History Month.
Chevron forged a strong alliance between conservative,
corporate-oriented African-American Democrats. The Progressive
Alliance only became successful in
challenging that connection to the black community when it was able to
develop younger black and Latino leaders who refused to take corporate
money and
were willing to take Big Oil on. Last fall, one of the Progressive
Alliance candidates who won was a 26-year-old tenant organizer, Melvin
Willis, Bernie
Sanders-inspired, first-time candidate for city council. He came first
in a field of nine up against seven Corporate Democrats, none of whom
supported
rent control. Melvin was the leading proponent of rent control in
Richmond. Rent control was on the ballot. It was adopted by a
two-to-one margin. He came
in 2000 votes ahead of a 40-year African-American Chevron-backed
council incumbent. The times are changing in Richmond, but it's only
because a younger
generation of black, Latino, and Asian activists from working-class
backgrounds have come to the fore and are willing to challenge the
relationships between
elders in their communities and the major corporate power in the
community. AARON MATÉ: Since you mentioned rent control, let's talk
about housing. It's
been a big issue in Richmond, and activists there have used a variety
of tools to advance a more progressive agenda, including eminent
domain.STEVE EARLY:
Well, during the foreclosure crisis of 2007, 2008, Richmond, like many
cities, had lots of struggling low-income homeowners losing their
homes. The city
council at the time, when there was not a progressive majority, came
up with the idea of using the threat of eminent domain to block
foreclosures, which,
of course, spread blight in communities as people were forced to
abandon their homes. This was a brave initiative. It was cutting-edge,
but the big banks,
the real estate industry counter-attacked very aggressively. No other
community would join the effort. We had enough votes on the city
council then to
adopt the idea in principle, but you needed more votes to actually
implement it. In the course of the canvassing and the campaigning that
was done, people
discovered that rent control was really what was needed. You have
thousands of tenants in Richmond facing huge rent increases as people
are displaced from
San Francisco and Berkeley and Oakland. They move into Richmond. The
landlords raise the rent and kick tenants out. Last fall, this measure
that was passed
by a two-to-one vote rolled rents back to the level of a year before,
holds landlords to future rent increases tied to the overall increase
in the Consumer
Price Index. They now cannot evict tenants unless there is just cause,
and we have a rent board that’s going to adjudicate landlord-tenant
disputes. First
city in California to be able to do this in 30 years. It only covers
40% of the tenants because of restrictions imposed by the state
legislature, but it's
a tremendous breakthrough, a real economic gain, and, again, a model
for what people can do in states where it is possible at the municipal
level to regulate
rents. AARON MATÉ: Okay, keeping this thread going in terms of the
city providing a model for what people can do, let's talk about
undocumented immigration,
a big issue, and the city took steps to protect its undocumented
residents.STEVE EARLY: When Gayle McLaughlin, a leader-AARON MATÉ:
That was the mayor-STEVE
EARLY: ... of the Progressive Alliance ... yeah ... was first elected
mayor in 2006, she declared Richmond to be a sanctuary city. Many
other cities are
doing that now. Richmond was among those leading the pack, and this
was very much tied into the effort launched around the same time to
reform the police
department.A new police chief was brought in, a fellow named Chris
Magnus, one of the leading police reformers in the country. He
understood right away
in a community like this with thousands of undocumented immigrant
residents that you could not rebuild relationships within the police
department and the
community if the police were seen as acting as an arm of any kind of
federal crackdown on undocumented immigrants. The city, sanctuary
city, has been recently
reiterated by our current mayor and the model of sanctuary city
activity really has spread quite widely in the Trump era, but Richmond
took the stand back
in the George Bush era.AARON MATÉ: Let me read to you from your book,
"If urban political insurgencies are going to succeed in more places,
they will need
models for civil engagement like Richmond provides. Our city's
emergency response lesson is this. When we take 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." STEVE EARLY: Well, I should probably explain
what shelter in place is. That’s a refinery town emergency protocol
that I wasn’t too
familiar with until moving to Richmond five years ago and becoming a
neighbor of Chevron. When there's a major refinery fire or explosion,
like we had
five years ago this August that sent 15,000 refinery neighbors
scrambling for medical assistance at local hospital emergency rooms
and clinics, we are
told to shelter in place, which means you go into your house, you tape
the windows and doors shut, you turn off the air conditioner, you kind
of hope for
the best. That really is, I think, a symbol of a fearful, isolated
individual kind of situation. Richmond provides a good example of
people leaving their
homes, coming together, organizing in public spaces, and taking on the
causes of problems like the ones created by Big Oil in our community
and throughout
the country and the world. I know it's counterintuitive when you have
global problems. Why is going local the best way to address them?
Well, actually,
you can have more of an impact in your own community, your own
neighborhood, working in a city of human scale of 100,000 like
Richmond.AARON MATÉ: Right,
but in terms of that scale being applicable to bigger cities, there
are limitations, especially the bigger a city gets, to redoing the
local model, say,
in a place like Baltimore or New York. Right?STEVE EARLY: Very
definitely, but some of the programs that Richmond has been able to
pioneer as an aspiring
laboratory for municipal public policy innovation are actually now
being copied in cities like Baltimore and Oakland. One of our programs
is the Office
of Neighborhood Safety, an adjunct to the reformed police department.
Richmond still has a very big problem with gun activity and gang
conflict and drug
trafficking. It leads to 20 or 30 homicides a year, mainly involving
young people of color between the ages of 15 and 30.The Office of
Neighborhood Safety
in Richmond hires formerly incarcerated, former gang members to go
out, work as peacemakers, try to de-escalate gang disputes. They have
a peacemaker fellowship
program. They’ve recruited scores of young gang members to be part of
it. They get a stipend. They get job training and counseling. They get
support for
taking a different path in life. It's a program that’s now being
reproduced in many other larger cities that have seen the failures of
a military-style
model of policing.Aggressive police tactics have not led to reductions
in homicides and gang activity and street crime, and so the Richmond
model of the
police relating differently to the community and civilians playing an
increased role in public safety, very key element of civilian
oversight of the police
department, civilian activity in neighborhoods, and this Office of
Neighborhood Safety. It's a pretty powerful package for real change in
the area of public
safety. AARON MATÉ: For those, though, who might look at Richmond and
say, "Okay, well look, it's easy for this California town to enact all
these progressive
measures, but it's just not possible for us to do here in our, say,
Midwestern town. Not every town has a police chief like the one in
Richmond who held
up a Black Lives Matter sign at a rally." What do you say to them?
STEVE EARLY: Well, we would never have had Chris Magnus as our police
chief in Richmond
if we hadn’t started to make some progress done 12 years ago in
electing more progressives to the city council, electing a green
mayor. They were the folks
who hired a new city manager, hired a new police chief. Chris Magnus
is one of the few gay police chiefs in the country. He came from
Fargo, North Dakota,
one of the whitest and safest communities in the country. A lot of
people didn’t want to hire him because they didn’t think, you know, he
would fit in
in a diverse urban environment like Richmond, but sometimes you need
an outsider, a change-maker, someone willing to really upend an
institution to bring
about real change in a city department as difficult to reform as the
police department. I think there's elements of the Richmond model that
are reproducible
in other parts of the country and in cities both larger and smaller.
AARON MATÉ: Finally, Steve, you’ve been involved in the labor movement
for many years,
and you saw how this movement in Richmond materialized and stayed
together, but, of course, organizing is tough and it's hard to
maintain coalitions. I'm
wondering if you could reflect on your observations about the
challenges of keeping coalitions together and organizing in general in
the society that we
live in. STEVE EARLY: Well, I think the reason the Progressive
Alliance has been distinctive to the extent that it has tried to rely
on membership dues,
membership contributions, small donor fundraising for its candidates
rather than being part of what people call the non-profit industrial
complex. It does
not take social change foundation money. It's not looking for big
sugar daddies. It's not top heavy with paid staff. That’s a hard path
to take, a largely
volunteer, member-driven organization, and it's a real testament to
people's staying power in Richmond that they’ve been able to sustain
it.One thing that’s
helped in the last couple of years, conscious effort by the founding
fathers and mothers to step back and create space for a younger
generation of black
and Latino activists, Asian, young people, to take leadership roles.
The Steering Committee of the RPA elected every year by the members is
now predominantly
people of color, predominantly female, and much younger than in the
past. We have too many institutions on the Left, from unions to
community organizations,
to churches, where older people don’t want to get out of the way and
let younger people take leadership roles. I think that’s an inspiring
part of the
story as well.That’s why we have now viable candidates running for
city council in their 20s or 30s with a strong movement behind them.
You know, as recently
as 10, 15, 20 years ago, they would have been dismissed as marginal,
and their chances of success would have been very minimal. AARON MATÉ:
Since this
is a progressive town with progressive elected officials, can we talk
a bit about the internal struggle right now in the Democratic Party?
Bernie Sanders
has an interesting history with your town. He came there during the
Chevron fight and said that it was actually ground zero against
Citizens United. STEVE
EARLY: Yeah, in 2014, when our green mayor was up for reelection as a
member of the council and she was running on a slate with two other
progressives
and Chevron spent more than $3 million trying to defeat them,
unsuccessfully, it really was an example of how the Supreme Court
decision in Citizens United
has unleashed these independent expenditures committee. You or I in
Richmond are limited to giving any single candidate $2500.00. Chevron
set up a committee
that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on its favorite
candidates, supposedly without any coordination with their campaigns
and hundreds of thousands
of dollars trying to smear and defeat progressive candidates who were
critical of its corporate behavior. So I think the only way we can
counter that kind
of big money in politics, as Bernie has argued, is to build stronger
grassroots movements. In Richmond, we also have a modest system of
public matching
funds. So if you have the ability, as the Progressive Alliance does,
to raise money from small donors Bernie Sanders style, you get city
matching funds.
Other cities have adopted that, New York, Portland, Oregon. I think
that’s a necessary election reform to kind of level the playing field
when you're up
against big corporate spenders on behalf of your opposition. The
lesson of 2014 was that if you build a strong base, if you have a
volunteer army, if you
have candidates who are corporate-free and known for that and
respected for that, they can overcome the smears and the negative ads
and the glossy mailers
and the billboards and win, even though they're outspent 30 to 1.AARON
MATÉ: Lessons that will be important as we head into 2018 and
2020.STEVE EARLY:
Very definitely. You know, the other thing that we've tried to do in
connection with Bernie, the Progressive Alliance is now part of the
Our Revolution
network that grew out of Bernie's campaign. There's other good groups
doing this kind of work or supporting it, the Working Families Party,
People's Action.
Democratic Socialists of America is now encouraging its members to run
for municipal office. Socialist Alternative, of course, in Seattle, a
great city
council member, Kshama Sawant. There's lots of networks to be part of
to get started down this path, lots of good models in cities of all
sizes and, of
course, the inspiration of the Sanders campaign.AARON MATÉ: And
Richmond. STEVE EARLY: And Richmond.AARON MATÉ: I want to thank my
guest, Steve Early,
author of Refinery Town: Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an
American City. Steve, thank you.STEVE EARLY: Thank you.AARON MATÉ: And
thank you for
joining us on The Real News.
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