advantage? i think what happened was. i think men like grant and need and those in the western theater i think they fully appreciated the talent they had within the army. the real question was did the professional engineers like james duane, you know, did they recognize and were they prepared to give full credit to these

upstarts? i think they felt very threatened and as you read the official reports in the campaign, you can see that as you read between the lines. thank you for coming out tonight.

if we are selling books and hosting events at the locations. in addition to the ones at the location you can order food and drink throughout the event but we are thankful for the relationship that we have going on here. i have a few housekeeping notes if you could silence any cell phones or devices. we will be doing the signing a t here at the advanced age. purchasing the book out in the bookstore is solved if you have and already we have a few here.

let me come to you with a microphone. it's one of the largest refineries with one typical company town dominated with the white working-class city of 100,000 a suburbs and property solutions and poorly funded public health service as it is one of the highest homicide rates in the country and jobless rate on a national average. they moved from new england to richmond.

and the unfair taxation. the views of the book is the specific tale of the government at the local level for the scholars before it was written by none other than senator bernie sanders and this book offers ideas of making change where it counts the most among friends, neighbors and communities. steve has been a an man organiz, union representatives and 72 and he was a boston-based staff member of the communications workers of america after serving as the administrative assistant.

tonight steve will be joined in conversation by the chair of the board and the past national president of the communications workers of america please join me in welcoming. [applause] >> thanks everybody. great to see so many friends. we will give some shout out to. it's great to be here. just to fix one thing. 25 years, you cut five years off his time. more than full-time at the cwa. i'm going to come back to him in a minute. so, a little different context about the book. i'm a big supporter of reading this book and getting steve to

sign the book. so, it fits directly into the frame up wit wood so many people here have done which is to try to figure out how can you do political work with some integrity in this country and get some results? so here we are in the last couple of weeks or months wear to a large extent on defense, resisting coming in for me that is a big word. so really what this book is about they got off of defense

and how they build the progressive alliance. just this past election then you will hear more about them they got elected to the city council and became the fourth and fifth member of the city council out of seven. so now instead of the political and electoral work being about resistance, now it is about governing. the other thing that's clear, every place has some elements. to spend a lot of time doing electrical work and not having some dream for most of us it

doesn't make any sense. when you don't have a dream it is always this one is worse than that one. any of you feel like that when you go to vote? no one has ever felt that way. even people here that live in washington, d.c.. we could do way better and we have to get the money out of politics even here in dc that example because even though they run a nonpartisan elections they have to take on the democratic

party which in the being activists and more volunteers in the dream that they can look after each other in a very diverse community mostly of the working class and most importantly to me, they believe that they can win and that is the inspiration in this book and that is the question on the revolution or anything else not just -- do we believe that we can win, do we believe that we can win, the working class people can win with allies, working class people that we can build governance in the cities

that reflects the aspirations and dreams of kids and parents and if we believe that we can win, we get inspired like 400 or 500 members to stand up and fight back not just going defense against chevron bought t recently as the will hear adopting rent control for the first time despite the real estate interest. it's a treat for me to talk about my friend at least 45 years teach-ins4 wants to correct my numbers. >> so do a lot of other people. >> organizing together, watching him work underrepresentation, doing organizing which he did most of the time and helping

bring huge groups of people come introducing me to bernie some 30 years ago. we believe that out of this introduction. he's an incredible mix. we first met up with before 1979 to 1980. stuff would appear in the newspaper in minutes and it's an amazing mix of someone who can do that and now crank out books, incredibly disciplined and this is his trademark. all the decades i know him he's got this in his list. he completes his lists.

i couldn't be more proud to introduce my friend, comrade, colleague, coworker. [applause] >> it is a treat to be here with my oldest and closest comrade, worker. i first met larry 37 years ago in an organizing storefront in trenton new jersey, came up from dc, he was directing and ambitious campaign to organize the state workers in new jersey a little bit outside of the communication workers of america jurisdiction, but the campaign built from the bottom up based on the concept of organizing the

committee and rank-and-file for the new leaders like for you may hear from later today or who may already be here. it's hard to see with the blinding lights from our good friends at c-span book tv. but he's been in charge of the public sector and he was a member of the organizing committee and worked closely with larry on the campaign. i want to thank a few other people when we get into the question and answer period very shortly in 15 minutes, there's many people here with labor, community organizing and political experience that we want to hear from this is interactive and not just speechmaking but people have been particularly helpful on this particular project and i want to recognize my old friend

to please stand up. [applause] a lot of background for the oil industry, parts of the book is one of the best that has appeared so far and there were other people that have been tremendously helpful. we had a number of generous sponsors and pathetic socialists of america, the national writers union, some folks at the jobs of justice and i want to recognize one of the most esteemed as here

in the room with us tonight the former congressman, also an author -- [applause] another one is forthcoming about the years on capitol hill. we will come back to recognizing the people that have been so helpful with the follo follow-un the richmond story. i moved out there about five years ago after spending more than three years as a rep in new england and i was inspired to write the book partly because of bernie. i did a story about the growing impact and electoral success in the progressive party which is the most successful third party in the entire country and one he

helped foster many of its second and third generation leaders that have been campaign volunteers and supporters. some of you may know the progressive party had a major breakthrough in a long time ally of thcould progressive party ler and state senator became the lieutenant governor of vermont the first time in 25 or 30 years a candidate other than bernie had been elected statewide. but the members of the house and the state senate dave zuckerman who is a ponytail organic farmer, pro- labor, pro- environmental week i to become the progressive governor of vermont.

that's great that we nee but wee case studies of successful political initiatives in the mainstream media. i told him when we talked about this a little bit when i started to meet people involved in the group called the richmond alliance. the big oil, the big banks and money in politics generally that he should come out at some point and check it out, which he reiterated that the meantime i was able t to line up the great publisher to decompress.

among those that are religiously inclined, the press has a history of publishing very important work in the civil rights movement, the labor movement, environmental issues, black history and down in north carolina the union friend bill fletcher and immediately understood the richmond story might have a lot of residents in company towns. they were particularly interested in having burning on the cover and doing the foreword and that is before he got

13 million. the only other time in the history that the senator is contributed was 1971 when i sadly his name on the book that was the all-time best seller actually the multivolume series called the pentagon papers you might remember that. i don't think that this book is going to sew quite as well as the pentagon papers but, we are doing our best. he was interested in the story because of what you might call the city's intersection audi and that is a term that is thrown around a lot. i don't use it a lot in the book. but this is a city where the grassroots organizing in recent years and electoral work had been addressing issues of race and immigration, the problems of

homophobia that exist in richmond, discrimination against the incarcerated housing affordability, environmental justice and workplace safety and one of the most hazardous industries in the country, oil refining, fair taxation of business com, in this case the largest chevron. the politics in our case local politics, raising labor standards because the minimum wage increases at the municipal level where it is often not possible to do that at the state or federal level at the moment and making sure the economic development -- how many people would've been to the area recently to see what is going on in san francisco and berkeley for years? that is why people move to richmond. richmond is a city that is largely working class poor.

they are now a playground for the privileged few. richmond people are free to a place like san francisco or low incomes have a hard time living there now so the fight in richmond for the housing affordability for rent control and economic development projects have been a big part of the struggle and the last 15 years. the rpa got started 15 years ago roughly as a coalition. some people banging on chevron about its pollution and

environmental hazards and carbon emissions through the coalition where there were people doing organizing and objecting to the police harassing the workers at random traffic stops and there were serious problems with police brutality and lots of lawsuits. there were people involved in homelessness and advocating even then for rent control and evolved into third-party politics supporting the campaigns when ralph nader ran. it took an effort to get these people to set aside their focus and learn how to come together in a broad political tent where

people's differences about the nature of socialism and capitalism and other big picture questions were set aside in the interest of pursuing a concrete agenda for local change and improvements and actually it was proof because of the persistence and patience of the group achievable the past 15 years. this was not a university town. we have examples in the 60s and 70 70s of people trying to take over the city government. those were different kinds of cities. richmond is not a university town but for many years, it was until quite recentl recently ith contested and dominated by the kind of alliance and the compa

company, building trade organizations and firefighters organizations. that's big coalition had virtually no counterweight for decades. a few good governance liberals and voices of integrity on the city council tried to impose the coalition but it was not until they collapsed from all these different socialist group green party, the prett third-party bad dissident latino and african-american independence came together and formed a different kind of de facto political party in town. there was one based on a business way of separating out. there's those you can count on them once they are elected to stand up to.

the other critical element was they always run as part of the teams late. it's not an entrepreneurial activity where someone gets it in their head i'm going to be on the city council and then i'm going to be the mayor up in sacramento and then it will be the congress person. they are not in this model of politics. they believe in the power collectively when we put people in the office holding them accountable. as they mentioned it's the members organizational that the members organizational affiliation representation on the steering committee from the local progressive unions and community groups and which doesn't just pop up that election time. the key to the success is the year-round program of community organizing around important

issues. and those issues 15 years ago were identified as the living wage rent control protection against evictions without just cause, police reform, getting the verge of bankruptcy and the industrial safety ordinance that would stop the contracting out, repealing the anti-homeless ordinance heavy taxation of chevron, reversing the public service cuts the cab then necessitated the mishandling of the city's finances. the progressive candidates could get matching money from the city so that was the initial program adopted in the people's convention of 200 2004 was the t year the mayor and city council woman won by a small margin and

the last 12 years since then but progressives have won ten out of 16 council races better than anywhere else in the country. the results have given for the first time a strong majority, supermajority five out of seven. up until now there've to be alliances between the progressives and democrats who are under corporate contro contf the counci council and sometimee coalition enabled the city to make progress and other times there've been divisions around rent control that have separated the democrats and progressives in much the same way there is a conflict in the primary and the other states but last fall they were stepping back creating space for the younger people and

the steering committee is now the majority people of color and women and younger people we ran a slate. it's for the community empowerment and he teamed up with a young environmentalist who works for the marine clean energy. the two of them ran together the strongest rent control supporters and most of the other folks in the field were democrats with a lot more enforcement. they were against rent control and our candidates came in at the top of that field and melvin lewis potentially the future defeated by 2,000 votes. then you get to know well as i

did see as a characte he is a ce book who for 40 years has been a pro-business force on the council financed by chevron indiana opponent of the rent control of course more than any other initiative in the city. they beat him by 2,000 votes. we need more of that not just in richmond but every city around the country. i will stop there and open up to questions, comments, statements. we will alternate between men and women to gender balance and everybody gets a chance to speak then we will go for a half-hour or so and people are welcome to stay around until closing time.

but we also think booktv for coming. they were on the scene to make this possible and we have a wonderful staff serving ui will be have the discussions. let's reword them well at each table. thanks so much. [applause] >> do you want to stand up for people way in the back that may not hear you.

>> what were we trying to correct and what should we do now? >> this is my new neighborhood in 2012 in what you might call a big oil bad hair day and thanks to the years of the maintenance practices, the company as mark can telhas markcan tell you hast production and profits ahead of the worker safety and community health and had a huge fire that sent 15,000 of the neighbors fleeing to hospital emergency rooms and seeking medical attention. as i described in the book, this latest accident which is no accident is part of a long

series of the behavior that has been highly contested by members and the community through the environmental justice organizations and going back to the early years by the workers themselves, and that's part of the history of the book he had posted a 50 year struggle to organize what was then the standard oil and came chevron in recent decades the union didn't succeed in the standard oil until 1951 after they scored big in basic industries and to this day, what is now the united steelworkers local five operates as a local shop. it shocks me when i discovered this in researching the book and as other people can tell you that makes it very challenging for the leadership to tangle

with their employer very powerful about the day-to-day bargaining issues, workplace safety and getting involved with the sierra club or the progressive alliance to create to hold the company accountable to provide a safe workplace. at the history of the environmental struggles involving the company wields influence by spending money on politics and not very hopeful ways and i think what's interesting is the environmental movement in a place like richmond hasn't been led by the typical. it's been people of color who are directly affected by the

failure of a major company like this to operate not only in its work force but the community at large. >> in the back. i can't see who that is. >> wondering if you have plans to bring the story there are more people of color that are being sent along. [inaudible] >> since the official publication date for the book,

the kickoff event in richmond and the east coast swing in gold cambridge mass., burlington vermont, troy new york, brooklyn over the weekend and here tonight. so yes, we are interested in telling the story in lots of places. there's the richmond progressive alliance that has an outreach task force and the former mayor has experience developing the finance walls and now making with people in other communiti communities. we voted a week ago for the revolution and supported the young african-american activist

who's now in stockton. and james kent was a wonderful progressive member of the san francisco board of supervisors running for the senate than planned so there's a lot of people with ties in northern california working with the office here and whether using the local structure like the richmond progressive alliance into berkeley alliance or something else. neither working families party could use any number of models but the point is we need organizations like this running them in a different way into the same time organizing day in and day out unable wide range of issues. where we have the most impact is inside the beltway. what we face the next few years

isn't going to be pretty and we won't get much done other than defensive fights. >> another female hand. >> there we go. blinded by the like lights of cn book tv. >> [inaudible] i just want to know how much you think that shift of the dialog

dialogue. >> i think that it's essential when we look at what was highlighted in the midwest, a lot of problems, it was a failure in my view to frame things in terms of work and working class people and that's what you get and so lots of examples i could give to the point where i spent a lot of time. it's not the white working class plant, 2,000 people. the plant in south chicago mostly black.

headquartered in the show suburbs of chicago, these stories i begged them to take the stories up and fought very hard to say no on the platform of the party and that is just me but the whole campaign and the failure to frame for decades the democratic leadership in terms of working people and what i call the culture of work and manufacturing is a key part of that as opposed to saying manufacturing has had it and we will see the last 8 million jobs go into the only one that doesn't care about working-class people, to me if we don't do that, we really have no chance but on the other hand as you heard from steve, as it is well

described in the book when you do if you can bring together not only of the working class people but other progressive people that moved to richmond for different reasons who identified with that kind of vision and i think that is really what this is about is we can unite and fight and it has to be a framework of people. >> other questions, comments, suggestions? >> let me make a suggestion >> beacon press which i

mentioned earlier was published in the works by a longtime channel-based organizer and a has been involved in the fight for 15. very good book which i started to read about both the organizing and political challenges and the city establishment and she has her own story about the political struggles coming out a little bit later this year. the thing that is similar when you elect people who are basically organizers they would use their job as the bully pulpit to put them in office and it totally transforms the relationship between their

officeholders. and certainly the counselor has been good at using the power of office to hold hearings and introduced legislatiointroduce d coalitions to support unions and not just play the inside game. we have insiders, outsiders in ways to not just address the direct action and community organizing. >> in seattle many of you know this off of that kind of work again very active in the revolution now and washington

state is about one of six states where that activism led to new leadership in the party with people coming in with pretty much this kind of a frame of mind and on saturday elected as the new chair. but that came about because at the local level they then came together and many years like richmond it was largely fueled or accelerated in the landslide by the caucus that set the sta

stage. we still have two senators there that voted no on being able to import pharmaceuticals from canada. marion cantwell voted no. the governor somewhere in that race as well so the story goes on. >> someone we haven't heard from. >> i'm an organizer [inaudible] [applause] i'm just curious to see and i hope i articulate this correctly -- how do they reconcile that

with working class going out. >> lots of different people are now coming towards richmond. it's one of the contradictions of a successful process of the progressive change. you make a city better. this bike paths, a water front of him and dominated in the industry and you have an activist city hall and are able to reform the police department,

the safety increases. it becomes a magnet for people that want to live where there's some commitment to social justice. richmond was a pioneering study by the current mayor. there is a strong commitment to defend as best as people in richmond and other similar cities can against the ravages of the trump era. it is a strong demonstration to make the city still affordable for the tenants that are working class people of color. i described in the book and the course of canvassing around that

the use of eminent domain and issues that need to be addressed in the crisis and that is when the effort began to make a push for the goal to become the first city in 30 years to introduce rent control. the measure that was passed last fall called back a year and now landlords have to have just cause before they can evict tenants. first passed in 2015 as an ordinance and then the california partner association spent 50 to $75,000 repeal the ordinance. basically nullified the decision of the council to introduce the regulation. so the rent control forces then had to go out and they just

didn't do petition signing. there'd been expeditions to visit the homes. a whole effort was made to register people that would be directly benefiting from this new form of city level protections. so i think that it is not a perfect solution if we have decent federal funding to build affordable housing that would be long term a better way to enable a diverse community to flourish. but in the meantime it is an important stopgap measure and we will see how it works out. already people are feeling empowered. they can't be evicted just because the landlord decided he can charge $500 more a month to a newcomer from wherever. >> we were driven out where they

were coming from. >> in the back and then the sister appear. >> speech o [inaudible] what have you been able to do with the problems [inaudible] >> some of the founders passed a punitive anti-camping thing of people being pushed around one place to another and the result of skirmishing about that but it

obviously didn't solve the problem. there's a couple shelters in richmond and a wonderful program that tries to help people get job training work. there'there's a lot of attemptsh privately funded and through the programs to alleviate the problem of homelessness. but as bad as it is in dc, it is a public disgrace ban at the berkeley you go down the intersection of the state 580 and there's people living under the underpass, hundreds of them. so it is more than a richmond problem and it's going to take a concerted effort by the

progressive leaders, the state doing more. in the meantime a lot of people are going to be suffering needlessly when more could be done with fewer resources but they don't seem to be available to get the people out from under tarps and all the other places in the weather like this. >> i'm the chair of 350 action. thank you very much. i want to ask right now i am hearing a lot of people talking

some are moving for the working families party and some are for a coalition but my question to both of you is if there are hundreds of new groups it's just incredible activity. they are intensely engaged. in reading your book this is one of those things. [inaudible] [laughter]

>> i may think it's to organize. that is the keyless envelope. it's about issues, not just candidates. in this moment that we are in, local issues, there's tons of fish using dc that are not getting addressed including those in richmond. but also tying into the broad narrative that we talked about earlier in the working class working people's narrative is about the nations and to network the groups together as much as possible in a simple way. people are open to collaborating witcollaboratingwithout having d out. we have to embrace messy. i think if needed a few of those things we would keep moving forward. what i like best about the march just personally with the inclusiveness of the crowd not

necessarily the podium. and the way in which women organized to bring hundreds of thousands here let alone an la cad and even more acting that is the kind of spirit we need to embrace that might be different than the organizing some of us have done in the union or somewhere else. it's a lot less conscious and much more spontaneous. but that's the kind of populism of the 21st century. my view is it's great. 20 or 25,000 people responded to the call last june contact my website if you want to run for mayor, the city council, supervisor 20 or 25,000 is a lot of people volunteering to run to become candidates or support candidates.

unlike the march is how do you deal with this influx of people with varying levels of experience who will need infrastructure in richmond there were 15 years spent on construction to get the kind of mentoring and get hooked up to the funding sources and the training and leadership development. so i think we should take an ecumenical approach just as they have done locally it is not any particular party or alliance or formation. we should be working together with as many like-minded groups as possible and i think there's more than enough free crews out there for everybody. if you look at the small towns there were unexpected turnouts in fort bragg in california, 2500 people in greenfield mass., a small town. and there's more places where we have our infrastructure to do

follow-up work the better we are going to be in the long-term movement. >> over here as part of the giant organizing committee i was amazed when she sent me a picture. he sent me a picture of packed overflow to say how are we going to bring our groups together. people might want to talk to him more but there is definitely something happening here. >> okay. david.

>> i want to follow up on the infrastructure [inaudible] change the campaign-finance law cacampaign finance lawcan you ed on that -- can you elaborate on that? >> it ranges from 30 to 40,000. the breakthrough that we made initially on the public financing without going into all the details was such that if you raise 30,000 usb of 25 matching

funds. so, most of the successful candidates that had a mix of the private public funding had raised in the range of 60 to 70,000 for their campaigns. if you were running a slate it is a couple hundred thousand. now this is in the years like 2012 when the combined spending of big soda and big oil was 3.7 million for the candidates for the tax that was defeated. two years ago, chevron by itself spent 3.1 million. and hundreds of thousands on the negative advertising gets the progressive slate who else spend 30 or 35 to one. the public match is not as

generous. >> [inaudible] >> due to the cities budget crunch it's been scaled back and now we have 25,000 in private donations to get it to roughly 12,000. it has become a political football and this is a weight on the treasury but i think people value it and it makes a small but important contribution to leveling the playing field. ..

i just want to say anyone who gets a chance for to talk to him , he's famous because of this last election. fourteen times your elected? >> 13. >> i know him pretty well. i get numbers close by not exactly). bernie sanders went there to sundays ago and talked about healthcare cuts along with nancy pelosi and chuck schumer. the swing in macomb county between 2012 and 2016 was 25000. >> obama won in 12 and a weight and he got beat, trump one and 2016 by 48000. >> once again my numbers are way off. >> clinton lost michigan by one

county. this one county, largely working-class, this notion of work and was on my side when i go to work, there's a guy who has amazing insight into what we are doing wrong as well as what we can do right. >> to we have time for one more question. >> one more? question, comment. >> can you hear me. >> i can. >> i want to tell you i think i was a member of cwa before you were. >> before i was born or before. [laughter]

i was an early member of cwa after i graduated from college and was doing an internship in san francisco. i worked for the president at that time. i do want to tell you i am proud of all the work that you are doing, and now that we have retired, some of us, we would like to ask what we can do at our age. we did put on our march on washington in the thomas circle and that's where we had signs which was something that i learned when i was with cwa in 1952. >> i was almost right. >> the mother is here.

[inaudible] i wanted to introduce her and say we are proud of what you do and we still want to be a part of it. [applause] >> i will skip over the cwa. thank you for your membership and service. not to make everything about our revolution, for one of the good things about it is any group of ten member and members anyone who comes to a meeting or donates a dime, and a group like your group, if you have ten, if you don't have ten, go find six more you can affiliate to our group and within d.c. we are trying to help encourage those groups to get together if you live in d.c. and that's the kind of thing bob is doing in maryland where there's dozens of group in maryland.