please buy books for sale. they will all be here to autograph books if you'd like to do so. thank you so much for coming. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> we are exceptionally excited to welcome steve early here tonight. the last time was done in a smaller space where we used to be years ago. steve is here to talk tonight about his book refinery talent, but richmond, california. it is really exciting to see good, well researched deep dives

into what worked in organizing. one of the problems with our media landscape is i could probably go find 1700 pieces on whenever the president shot on twitter yesterday. an actual helpful account of how to organize for community grassroots and power is asking too much. i know the richmond, california story, incredibly important doors has been told. i've seen a couple of articles about it and yet it's one of the real stories we should be learning from. especially atomic all tomorrow which shares with richmond, racism, poverty. one of the most important things is the lack of a luxury to kind of get hung up on not working together. like baltimore, richmond has the left that is simply too small to have too many sectarian divisions.

what i know about the richmond stories they found a way to get over those divisions, work together in a perfect alliance, but an alliance that's able to get stuff done including the lack and the only really significant green party mayor in the united states. really excited to talk tonight i'm really excited to learn. really excited in welcoming steve early. >> thank you for that great introduction. i apologize for the formality of arrangements. our good friends at c-span booktv are here. this is an opportunity for all of us to be on tv late night. some upcoming date yet to be determined if we make this one. i gather when people very soon get to come up and ask questions

and contribute to the discussion, it would be good if you came up for john was just now on that way the camera crew can capture what you have to say. i'm going to keep this real sure because i think these kind of events are most productive if they are conduct it as an exchange, as the discussion and i know from the folks that known for a long time in the room for adjustment like ian schleicher who ran for city council here last fall with the backing of the green party and democratic socialist america, socialist alternative. a lot of people in this city are tackling the problem of how progressives can get involved in electoral politics at the municipal level and run credibly and eventually successful campaign. great to see two old union comrade all in the sense of longtime union comrade speared

brother barry who i met many years ago as a stalwart. the endowment card rate who is the one person i know in the room has actually been to richmond, california and a visitor to our neighborhood. donna has not then they on days like this 35 years ago when big oil is having a very bad day and had a explosion instead of 15,000 of our richmond neighbors scrambling for medical attention in every hospital emergency room in the clinic in the area. anybody else that went to school in the bay area and worked in the bay area spent any time in the greek city of richmond or near it? did you ever go to richmond?

[inaudible] anybody else? [inaudible] the county seat where he had a sheriff we need to replace at the moment and a county da. we can talk later about the challenges of a progressive movement really gaining traction in one sitting and then coming up against the five in california property taxes are controlled at the county level. the county sheriff can be a friend of trump even why your own city police chief is on the sanctuary city program and the da when there's albums with police misconduct, watching this case after case after case. one of our object is in the richmond area and at this point

is to come up with credible candidates, martinez and across the district attorney. anybody else than a tourist of the bay area? i have only been a relative and diverse california for five years. prior to that i spent 30 years in the boston day communication workers, did some freelance writing on the side about labor issues. strikes organizing, union-based political action. when i moved to richmond five years ago after retiring from a full-time job with communication workers, i was really drawn to the richness of its colorful history, many current challenges and inspiring average and some last 10 or 15 years of one of the most successful city-based municipal reform movement.

led by a varied unusual coalition of green party members, socialist from two or three different groups. independents, dissidents, black and latino democrat and independent voters. we have a lot of fragmentation on the left than 12 years ago people overcame some of those differences, decided to rebrand, to run candidates, but not just run candidates for city council mayor, but to build a membership organization that now has 300 to 350 members in the city of 110,000, paid membership-based group that also has labor and community organization affiliates in organizers around a wide range of workers rights, immigrant rights issues year-round. it's a kind of hybrid

organization and the fact the political party when people started running for city council has progressives under the richmond progressive alliance banner in 2004. they had to learn from scratch how to set up phone banks and how it can best and how to build databases identified progressive voters, how to raise money and how to fill out the campaign finance and election law paperwork. over time they got real good at the nuts and bolts of electoral politics. since 2004, progressives have gone 10 out of 15 in races in a city that's 80% nonwhite, that is largely poor and working class, with a median income in the community from immediate family income is one of the lowest in the bay area, where 20% of the people are in

families living at or below the federally defined poverty level. not berkeley, not madison, wisconsin, not santa monica or any other places we associate with past efforts by progressives, by socialist, by greens to take over city hall in and try to turn municipal government into a laboratory for public policy initiatives. we now have a progressive supermajority of five out of seven council members in richmond in between 2006 in 2014, and peregrine mayor made richmond the largest city in the country and i'm proud to report still a member of her city

council and declared her for lieutenant governor of california. we also have been a fellow on the city council. wonderful woman running for state assembly. with a strong base in one of the larger cities, richmond progressives are trying to move up in politics. i may just say briefly a couple things about some of the elements of success. people got involved in municipal politics that wanted to. the nader campaign in 2000. peter command screen campaign for governor of california. people have been involved in the peace movement, the environmental movement. most people were direct action is. they didn't have much use for electoral politics and not much experience with it.

people were confronted with the kind of thought the face of baltimore. the police department is out of control, killed people, caused millions of dollars and brutalized black and latino youth. the city 10 to 12 years ago the city was nearly bankrupt at one point due to the incompetence of the series of not so professional city managers. landlords will are running amok. it had one of the largest energy countries in the world. polluting the air, water and politics of deceit for much of the last century until the progressive movement challenge control of the city. chevron dominated richmond

politics is part of a broader conservative coalition that included the chamber of commerce, major developers in adversary of progress in baltimore and i'm sad to say the conservative police and firefighter unions. people here have been up against a few adversaries unfortunately some of them are not allies as they would be, but that is the consolation of conservative deep-pocketed political forces that richmond progressives had to start tackling 10 or 12 years ago. in the last 10 or 12 years as progressive representation on the city council has grown and particularly the eight years that was our innovative mayor, we've been able to raise the minimum wage without a veto. we've been able to make chevron a little bit more with its fair

share of taxes. last fall in a great breakthrough that helped elect through the city council and the city council and the city council and give us our five-member supermajority, they voted two to one and in the city one of the first california cities in 30 years to adopt rent control. i talk about this and other places in the country. washington state, oregon, massachusetts. we can't adopt rent control. some people have never heard of it. in california, and overly limited extent can regulate rent and our ballot measure last year was incredibly popular among thousands of black and latino low-income tenants in richmond rollback rent to the year before. it established a much wider requirement that landlords have just cause before they can invade tenants in richmond, tiny increases to the overwrought annual increases in the consumer price index and was appointed

nonelected numbers on tribe members to do with landlord tenant. because our candidates came out of their rights movement, we are members of a progressive alliance that gave year-round organizing of affordability and accountability and economic justice issues campaigns. they placed first and second in a field of nine. the 26-year-old african-american movement leader in the first candidate came in 2000 votes ahead of an 85-year-old forty-year african-american council and come back by chevron in for the last four decades. bmj 2000 votes.

our second place candidate, korean-american environmentalists ben joya also a first-time candidate like melvin benefited from this huge absurd voter registration and turnout on the rent control issue. the other seven candidates in the field, some of them nice people, some of the neighbors of mine, none of them unlike her progressive candidates in richmond will take the pledge to refuse donations. the dividing line in politics over the last decade or more has been a candidate who ran together, part of a ticket, a slate, team committed to a common progressive platform which were then better able to hold them accountable to when they get elected to public office and everybody else is doing it in the usual way. entrepreneurial, hand out looking for corporate donations kind of campaigns, more about

personal career, ambition, sometimes doing good things for the people, but too often getting on the counsel to then become mayor to run for the state legislature to then run for congress or whatever. in richmond where both de facto political party, movement-based party, eight years and our counselors function very much like seattle. they used their elected position, whatever resources they have is a part-time or full-time public official in the case of the mayor to mobilize constituencies. the labor, community organization, environmental groups that put them into boxes. different relationship between insiders and outsiders. the other element that i personally contribute a little bit to at least do some long meaningfulness started when joe was first elected mayor in 2006. dozens of appointed positions

with all kinds of key city boards and commissions said was progressives in richmond over the last decade. parks and recreation, library commission. more important ones like the planning commission, housing commission. the police oversight commission is increasingly been strengthened. i have a labor activist and now an appointee to the personnel board and i get to hear this side of the numbers of police or firefighters or white collar workers represented by employees union in northern california. there's literally hundreds of people who not only how not only help out in election years as volunteers, door knockers, phone callers, contributors can assign folders, campaign volunteers to people who year-round support our elected officials with

staffing, with expertise, with their own occupational backgrounds and contribute has appointed city officials. it really helps make a difference to me a bureaucracy in a better direction when you have that kind of act to this in the best sense of the word infiltration of city government. it's not just relying on to people or one person are now five people in the city council to work wonders on our behalf with a whole larger layer of folks trying to help transform city government. the lessons of course of the richmond next. sorry that you can't do as much as you want to do in one city. property taxes have to be reformed a bubbling california. we've tried to do more networking in the wake of the campaign with other like-minded sanders campaign and local progressive groupings in the bay area. we recently had a meeting with

representatives from 10 groups in the next county over to san jose in several counties south and their strong groups in berkeley, for one emerging in oakland and people trying in one way or another to adopt this model to their own circumstances. trying to build membership organizations, train to run candidates, all of them accountable and bring people from an otherwise fractured left around a broader trend to organize around issues and run the fact dude campaigns. the progressive alliance a couple months ago affiliated with our revolution deposed sanders campaign not work of the rest of groups around the country. we also had discussions of people's action. oval bunch of networks out there trying to support the folks

running for local office. when bernie ended his campaign a year ago in june, he put out an appeal for his supporters to contact him if they're interested in running for city council, mayor, county supervisor. .. some of the relevance of the model and some of the differences, and some of your own ideas about how to move this nationwide movement of progressive municipal reform ahead. thank you very much for coming

and let's open this up. [applause] so the television can pick up your voice. and if you don't want to be on television you can shout your question out. >> cwa retired. as i understand it the rpa come one of the things that made it possible for the rpa to grow was richmond and perhaps the other municipality in california had not been part of election so you don't have to get into the question immediately at least the democratic party or not. it sounds to me like you guys are at a juncture now because you're moving up to the next level, to the county level and some people are running for state legislature.

do you have any sense of what that will mean differently for you now? >> the municipal elections in california officially nonpartisan in the sense people are not listed on the ballot as democrats, republican, green, peace and freedom party, socialist. but the process of building a progressive movement over the last ten or 12 years in the electoral arena in richmond is made elections highly partisan as they have always been. this nonpartisanship is kind of a disguise, a cloak. when you have candidates running with the benefit of hundreds of thousands of dollars in some election cycles, independent expenditures by energy giants, they are the personification of the term corporate democrat. richman is a city with 70%% registered democrats, probably

only two or 300, 400 greens. some independence and a smattering of republicans. the conservative role is played by conservative democrats backed by corporations. the emergence of the way it chose to brand itself in richmond, the dividing by running corporate free candidates versus candidates who are often small p progresses in the own mind, liberals, gay-rights activists, good people on a number of issues but that's a good fundamental economic working-class issues usually around the issue of who takes corporate money, who doesn't and the berni bernie sas style brand of being independent, being corporate free is really what people look for now when virtually all the democrats that germany against in this environment do take business donations.

things are getting a little blurrier as richmond progresses move up. our former mayor gayle mclaughlin, she went independent last year so she could vote for bernie in the primaries. she is running as a progressive independent, not as a green party candidate though she is seeking the green party support for lieutenant governor. the election loss of an change in california in a way that it really obliterated third parties we have what's called a jungle primary system. everybody is thrown into the same pot in legislative races and congressional races and senate races. there's one big primary, greens, peace and freedom, democrats, republicans, libertarians all

run in a june primary and the top to make it on the ballot in the fall. since this reform was introduced, thir third-party sen wiped out as on the ballot in the general election. that's why there's greater space to build an electoral force that has a different kind of brand and a different kind of platform and a different kind of identifiable program at the local level. where registrations are predominantly democrat, but party organizations actually fairly weak. when you build a membership base the fact of political party and do the kind of groundwork that progressives in richmond have been doing for more than a decade, even though the other site is outspending you 30 to one as they did in 2014 you could still win. >> other questions from people who have been involved in any

recent campaigning here in baltimore? >> if you get up to the microphone you are going to be hearing from people for months. i saw you. i was up at 2:00 in the morning and i turned on c-span's booktv and there you were. >> i'm interested in the leadership aliment in this 350 membership of the richmond progressive alliance. i'm interested in what were the base issues, you mention the tenant organizing and rent control. what were some of the other issues that brought people together over the period of the decade or the 15 years? and was there a platform? what does it look like? those kind of things. more about the organizing. >> the structure today, i will

pass up a little membership card actually that shows -- [inaudible] there's a website on there and you can find the organizations bylaws, and the weight it a structured right now, not overly rigid but formal enough to make membership and important thing, is that people join. they elect an annual membership election to elect 25-30 member steering committee. there's for quarterly membership meetings a year. you have to pay your dues to make decisions about candidates and campaigns. the steering committee meets monthly, and meetings are open to any members to observe. in the last couple of years as i tried to describe in the book the founding mothers and fathers

of the organization, people like gail made i think a very important decision to kind of step back and create space for younger black, latino, asian activists to move up into leadership positions. so the steering committee today, like in the past, is predominantly female, people of color and much younger people in the past. that required a change in the culture of the organization because it doesn't have paid staff, doesn't get big foundation grants, is volunteer run. the culture had become too much one of workaholic volunteers, older white retirees have a lot of time to spend on politics, and wouldn't mind a six-hour meeting making a decision by consensus about anything. younger people who have jobs, going to school, maybe two or three jobs, and families and working on a lot of different things want to be involved but

it's hard for them to plug into that old kind of political culture. that has been a big change. the issues that help the group coalesced range from environmental justice which people had been in the black community tangling with chevron as downwind neighbor since 1980s, as in baltimore, prior to 2005 the police department in richmond was unrepresentative of the committee, out of control, shooting people, killing them. costing billions in settlements, civil rights lawsuits. so reform the police department was a priority. already getting with housing affordability, trying to improve municipal labor relations raising local labor standards, making where possible chevron pay its fair share of taxes in different forms, developing and industrial safety ordinance that would limit its contracting out practices which were identified as one cause of refinery

accidents and explosions, so a range of labor immigrant rights environmental, hitting, neutralizing the influence of chevron money and politics. one reform that is been achieved that i would highly recommend people explore is local public matching funds. richmond candidates and party been successful because they developed a bernie sanders style base of small donors and richmond you can get matching funds when you had that fundraising capacity that matches not as stable as it should be. it's not the one -- six to one that has helped progressives run in new york city. portland just adopted a formula similar to that. it does help level the playing field and it's an important electoral reform. the other side does it needed. they are getting corporate super pac independent expenditures.

they got a few wealthy donor second max out at 2500 piece per candidate, but the grass is running grassroots campaigns with a bare-bones budgets and small donors, they need that injection of public money. i would recommend that as one goal to explore. >> can you say as little bit more about why the older white folks were willing to give up power and trade the space for younger black and latino -- >> because it's not happen in enough of our unions. it's not happen in the afl-cio which used to, i used to work with as national copresident of pride work. too many institutions are loaded on the geriatric side. well, you know, if you're going to tap into the idealism, the energy and enthusiasm of thousands people to get involved in the bernie campaign or jill stines brave campaign last fall,

you know, they have to have a seat at the table. they have to have a voice in the experience to play leadership roles. it was exceptional behavior, really exemplary, and it wasn't like people quit and snuck away and went home and salt. they still consoled, they still volunteer. they are still involved but they don't try to run things. that's something we need to learn how not always tried to do. everybody is always bemoaning why do we have more young people, new members, this or that? you make some basic structural changes record increase your chances of greater diversity, both racially and ethnically and age wise, and also the opposition was using relative lack of diversity at one point as a hook. don't vote for the candidates of

the richmond plantation alliance. how's that for subtle reverse thought whistle politics? you know, these white radical elitists that want to shut chevron down and voice all of the radical political experiments on our people, our community. they are not from here. we hear some of them are from berkeley, and then if you are not rooted in the community and you're not developing new young indigenous leadership, you are more easily painted as radical outside with an agenda that isn't in tune with the needs and wants of the majority of the population and the majority-minority city that is a affluent. it's poor and working-class. thank you. >> other folks?

>> i have a question actually. i was wondering if you would say a little bit about how progressive forces in richmond are thinking about gentrification? i know richmond is very poor right now but also given the tremendous pressures in the bay area that people have to see something coming down the pike. i'm wondering kind of how is he thinking about using what power they have at the city level to start building structural inclusions beyond say rent-controlled i can preserve communities? >> excellent question. there's a chapter in the book not originally titled gentrification and its discontents commented basically deals with a byproduct of relative success. if you make a city that's been pretty badly scarred by 110 years of dirty, polluting industry, cleaner and greener and healthier and more equitable, hey, the good is is

people want to move there. chevron used to associate with the three seas, crime, corruption, city hall dysfunction and chevron. now part of because people are being displaced due to housing prices and make increases, berkeley and oakland and san francisco, the next stop is richmond. that's good. it's not good though when landlords are free to raise rents a slice it would like entering people out, which is definitely led to a decline in the population, the african-american population in the city following the pattern of san francisco and oakland. some rent control was an important stopgap measure, not an ideal solution for it doesn't build new affordable housing but it holds the line. within the limits imposed by the state legislature in richmond applies to about 10,000 units, 20,000 people, people, 40% of the tenants in california, rent-controlled locally only applies to pre-1995 housing.

it's a bit of federal preemption interfering with what otherwise would be broader protection of tenants. affordable housing in richmond has to be funded and i think from talking to -- this was a debate in richmond, i mean a baltimore, big waterfront developer projects, people with a lot of money want to put pricey market rate housing in up-and-coming neighborhoods but they don't want to contribute much to the pot to build affordable housing at the don't want to build mixed income housing. so in richmond there's been very strict enforcement of what are in different places called linkage fees or in lieu of these, and the city council when you're have a strong progress majority can try much harder bargains with developers. we do want development. you want jobs. you want housing but if people

come in and i want to build market rate housing they will help fund affordable housing summer else in the city. i understand there's been some problems collecting those kinds of fees and the developers able to cut deals with the city council they give them a big break and accelerate the problem of the problem, the threat, the trend of gentrification. the tragedy is that gentrification, what we associate with this, cafés, restaurants, safer streets, decent food and local grocery stores, why shouldn't everybody have access to that? unfortunately it's associate with displacement come people can afford those things moving in, getting the benefit of them and the old residence in the same area, the same neighborhood, the same city being forced out. it's one of the challenges ahead in richmond as it becomes a more popular place for people to move, higher income, better

jobs, more education to maintain this incredible diversity, and to keep the city affordable for lower income and working-class people. one thing that's holding the city back a little bit, public schools still have i think unfairly from having done some work in one high school, a bad reputation. and that everybody wants to live next door to this. because you can try told chevron speak to the fire in terms of better corporate behavior, less pollution of air, water, and less contributions to global warming. but that is a full-time job in itself dealing with big oil as we know in the larger debates going on right now. deregulation of companies like this under the trump administration. one of the things that we benefited from nearly five years ago is an unbelievably detailed

investigation by the u.s. chemical safety board federal agency, the causes of this far became the basis for ongoing litigation filed by the city, i damage suit against chevron became the basis for health and safety fines and civil penalties. the u.s. chemical safety board is a toothless federal agency can only costs the taxpayers $11 million a year for whenever there's a major chemical plant or oil refinery disaster or fire or explosion, they are in their doing a detailed report. in the budget proposal trump wants to eliminate the chemical safety board. part of the broader undermining of osha, epa, but the notion that there's too much regulation of big oil, it's overregulated, is a joke. and pos pose the biggest financs and chevron for this mess in august 2012 that nearly killed

19 workers and said 15,000 residents to seek medical attention. a million-dollar fine, it's really impressive. in 2012 chevron had $250 billion in worldwide revenue and its profits were 26 billion that year. a $1 million fine which which i still haven't paid, they are appealing it five years later, is the proverbial slap on the wrist. when you're tangling with a company like this you have to go at them from every direction all the time around workplace safety, about its carbon emissions, around its pollution of the air, pollution of the water, and the hazards of living downwind from her refinery, richmond has 25% rate of childhood asthma, much higher than other parts of the bay area, people pay a heavy price for having this kind of company for nearly a century dominate

the industrial landscape of the city. yes. >> wili live in new york, i wisi knew more about rent control but what i do know about it, section income when of the dinner i was a section eight inspector. one thing that i think a lot of issue with was with landlords was the willingness to invest in their property, considering that come really section eight landlords are the market rate. how do you without inspections, if you don't have inspectors when it's rent control how do you ensure landlords are still investing in the properties come investing in their unit? >> very, very good question. of course not just the california apartment owners association last fall in

richmond and other cities where it was on the ballot in some form kind of made that argument, that if you regulate rents, landlords one less incentive to invest in maintenance and upkeep and repairs. there are some who are already commercial landlords in richmond not well known for their maintenance or repairs. i think when tenants are in power and they have rights and they can only be evicted with some showing of just cause, helps to organize their it's like workers getting the protection of a union. they will be more willing to stand up and make demands without fear of a retaliatory rent hike above the level that's now been established as the annual cap, or fear of eviction for no cost at all. we will see who is right, how it plays out. >> ultimate for the most part

the way it is working is there protecprotecting me evicted andn really they have to rely on themselves to have the backbone to ask the landlords themselves. >> i mean, when the campaign for winningest ballot measure strength and ten organization. so now there were several rent strikes in the course of the 18 month campaign. it wasn't just a boat. there was a lot of direct action targeting particular bad landlords, organizing tennessee, speak out about the problems. the pre-rent control situation was where if you had a problem landlord and you wanted repairs and you want to file a complaint, you were in danger of being evicted in fairly short order in retaliatory fashion or the landlord telling you hey, you either take the condition as

they are ongoing to kick you out. so i think people feel empowered. they feel more protected. there was certainly problem while this whole thing was bending of retaliatory rate hikes which is why method will back to least the year before. so landlords who tried to benefit from the impending passage of rent control didn't get to profit unnecessarily found that. we will see. i think for many landlords renting will still be profitable. there's a lot of landlords have a good reputation, and, but you know, there's no doubt about it that proponents of rent control, why single out housing? why should other basic expenses that people have, they are not regulated so why pick on us? hey, it would be a lot better if we had hundreds of millions, billions of dollars being spent

by the federal government, by the state government, california on building affordable housing, public housing and of the kinds of housing. there might be less scrapping about rent control but that's not about to happen under trump and in the meantime this is the best kind of band-aid solution that richmond housing advocates and tenant movement organizers could come up with based on and not perfect experience in neighboring cities like san francisco and oakland and berkeley where berkeley has had rent control for 30 or 35 years. it is to become a very expensive place to live but there are people in all those cities that are in their apartments only because at this point there is rent control. if there wasn't a would have been out long ago. i guess that's the best answer i give. in a year or two we will seek to give landlords one strike,, disinvest, housing stock

deteriorates, people will be trying to campaign for repeal of rent control based on that sort of market response. >> thank you for all of your success stories. because you've given a lot of success story and we all want to take them back to our community. i from albuquerque new mexico, and so we are learning from you i can albuquerque. but would you share in mistake she made or share some of your -- >> you can find in the book, and we talked about last night in philadelphia. interesting meeting, because it was quite a committee wide debate recently about the adoption of a soda tax to raise money for preschool program. our friend bernie sanders when his run in the pennsylvania primary came out against that tax, redoing it was a regressive tax on poor and working-class people.

if you want expand public education programs, it ought to be done to some form of prose progressive taxation. probably the biggest mistakes progressive and made with bobby in 2012 putting a penny per ounce tax on sugar drinks on the ballot. this was a project of a progressive city counselor, great guy, and longtime cardiologist at kaiser richmond who had seen in his daily medical practice the effects of what's really an epidemic of obesity, now childhood obesity, people with all kinds of chronic health conditions due to poor diet and too much consumption of sugary drinks. kind of the head of the curve, ahead of mexico and berkeley and san francisco and philadelphia and oakland, richmond stuck its head out of the change in 2012 and put this soda tax on the ballot. in addition to a million worth of chevron spent candidates that your the american beverage association came in and as i

describe in the book created an astroturf campaign that made this the race class wedge issue from hell. they mobilized small latino grocery store owners. they hired paid canvassers kind young people of color. they brought in former mayor of san francisco willie brown to mobilize african-american ministers against this tax. the richmond plantation alliance was accused of hoisting a nanny state scheme of people of color telling them what to eat and drink, depriving them of the pleasures of a cheap ice cold coke. to the credit there were a few black ministers and lack public health workers is said sugar slavery. with some historical connections, shouldn't we be looking at this in a broader context? the thing went down like three e to one and that's the only election cycle since 2004 were

no progressive candidates one. both were defeated because of all the extra $3 million worth of just big soda money. you put big soda together with big oil, all the things i talked about, the people done to overcome the influence of big money in politics, it was just too much. people did anticipate the degree to which it is going to be kind of a grassroots backlash against what they felt was a much-needed public health measure to fund sports programs, health education, parks and recreation. so other city sense in a broken the ice. they had beaten a big soda. philadelphia got it through i guess as a city council action, not a ballot measure, and it was just presume or as a revenue enhancer but it's not something people, progresses in richmond are going to touch with a ten-foot pole anytime soon because it backfired so valid. people learn from it and i think realized hey, if you put a

ballot measure like rent control on, and it meets peoples needs and provides concrete economic benefit, hopefully won't backfire later on, people are going to vote for it, not turn against you. that was not the case in 2012. >> one of the toughest things for union people is appealing to workers while attacking their employers. i would think that in the case of chevron, that would be particularly enhanced in richmond. i'd be curious to know how you handle that. i know people always have ambivalent feelings about their employers and some things you think you can split but there's also the fear you think your job will go away. >> i think richmond really is ground zero also in this

challenge of how to create so-called blue-green alliances, bring blue-collar workers of different types together with fi mental activists, who have a shared concern hopefully about workplace safety, environmental protection, slowing down the process of global warming for where i live in richmond, it's a beautiful spot but it's surrounded by the port of richmond which imports about a quarter of a million japanese and korean cars every year, longshore workers do that work. we have a huge burlington northern santa fe rail yard between the port and the refinery. and till the oil prices drop, as was the eye could see that was filled with black tank cars per week to call them mr. buffets bomb trains, warren buffett owns his railroad, filled with crude, and then you've got two to 3000 people, white-collar, blue-collar who depend for the

light is on working directly or indirectly for chevron. you are like surrounded with examples of workers, or employment involving extraction or transportation or refine our use of fossil fuel. one of the things that i describe in the book is the difficulty that the environment of movement faces, making this idea of a just transition to green jobs, to cool the wages, benefits, job security, union protection real for people in the oil industry, tony who many people may remember as a pioneering labor and five mentos when is a leader in oil chemical was one of the first people to try to build these coalitions between environmentalists and chemical plant workers and refinery workers, and as i describe in the book two years

ago when the steelworkers, which is what oil chemical and atomic workers are now part of had a nationwide oil workers strike and contract campaign, the first one in 30 years in the bay area. there was a really aspiring expression of solidarity by 350.org, greenpeace, the sierra club, asia-pacific and five is a network and communities for better if i do, they all went to the picket line and supported the strikers, and the steelworkers were able to rally public support because the demands they raised about limiting contract, giving workers refinery operators the right to shut down unsafe work, refused to do it come better staffing, shorter hours, limits on force overtime, all of that was designed to make their workplace safer pick in the process reduced the risk of refinery fires and explosions and accidents that will

obviously affect refinery neighbors. people really found common ground. the problem as i describe in the book is there's a historic split within the refinery labor force between the old industrial union representative it by the steelworkers, and the workers building trades who do contracted out refinery maintenance work. the building trade sadly are like a company you need. they are like a fifth column. they participate in chevron is political action committee, i like the and the firefighters, they have been part of the opposition to progressive politics in richmond. they show up at hearings, support the companies position. they won't fight for stronger safety rules and have no interest in blue-green alliances. for leadership believe it is the generalization to talk or individual members and unions with hundreds of thousands of members. the steelworkers have a real challenge. richmond chevron refinery, 67

years after after was organized in 1950 is an open shot. i was shocked to discover this coming from the phone company, other industrial unions have always had the ability until recently except in the right to work states to collect either dues or agency fees for the representation, the bargaining services. this refinery worker unit has been whittled away by contracting out to the building trades, and the leadership has to be very careful how far they push the envelope of getting involved with environmental groups. and richmond neighbors. because the company immediately then threw it supervisors goes out on the shop floor and encourage members to drop out which they have the opportunity to do periodically because there's no union secret language in the contract. and, of course, the leaders of this local representing workers at three '04 refiners have to run for reelection.

there have been cases in the past where supporters of the great tony were voted out of office in the local because management ran a campaign against them and turned their own members against them. one of the heroes of the book is guy named mike smith, a safety rep for steelworkers local five. he comes out of the richmond refinery, 12 years experience as an operator. one of the leaders of the campaign run safety issues during the strike and contract campaign in 2015 he was involved in local bargaining with chevron. they refused to allow the company safety-related demands. two weeks after the local and national settlement he got a notice on the company canceling his jangly telling him he had to come back to work. he was forced to basically quit the company without full pension coverage. purely retaliatory. he traveled to australia three times to consult with oil workers and maritime workers who were up against chevron in a big

fight over its offshore liquid natural gas operations. blue-collar workers who are union militants and it open shop environment in a fossil fuel-based industry take real risks when they embrace environmental causes. it's great to see the california nurses, the service employs, lots of other unions take the risk of progressive stance on global warming and governmental protection. it's a lot easier to do it when their members to have same kind of skin and again. i have quite a bit of sympathy as some of his sort out in the labor movement working for the united mine workers for this dilemma. we saw how discarded coal miners voted saturday last year in west virginia, western pennsylvania, parts of ohio and southern illinois. ernie say sanders was on the ba, a beatty would fit more choices but to many of them went to trump and his false claims is going to revive the coal

industry because there was no just transition for them. they are at risk of losing to pensions, the retiree healthcare coverage, their disability benefits. they took it out on poor hapless hillary and voted for the charlatan. but when oil workers here about just transition and super funds for workers and how green jobs are the future, they look and see what happened to coal miners. it's not a pretty picture. we've got to beat up our concrete plans for that kind of transition if we're going to build a stronger, broader blue-green movement, i think, based on their experience locally. >> thank you very much. now that unfortunately last week the folks down in washington have withdrawn the united states

from participation in the paris agreement, as far as environmental role, what can we do as citizens to be able to come for lack of a better term, talking climate justice, concerns and all that, what can we do, if we can come get our own congress, get congresspeople who actually still the minority party at this point as far as voting to try to get something together? there's a lot of concerns, the environment, the free air and that type of thing. just what's being done? i want to ask them what we do? >> our current mayor who said liberal democrat, -- went to the paris climate talks, was part of an international meeting of mayors and he has been a very big supporter of something within the bay area called community choice aggregation. about 85% of the customers of the pacific gas & electric, a

private investor owned utility serving northern california, in richmond, get their electricity from renewable energy sources provided by a nonprofit, a co-p type outfit. so there are things minnis bows can do to a people as individual consumers reduce our dependence on electricity generated, through burning fossil fuel, solar station is something that richmond has tried to promote as part of the committee benefits agreement with about $90 million that was negotiated several years ago as a quid pro quo for city approval for refinery modernization project that is still going on. the city gained some funding for a program to build a big solar farm, employ two or 300 people and unionize green jobs and

eventually provide direct solar generated electricity to four or 5000 union homes in richmond. again, municipal level of initiative that is more cities took similar steps, as much damage as trump is going to do for as long as he is in there, there's still the possibility of local progress on many environmental fronts. there's a lot of is going on in california. big oil still has a lot of influence with the jerry brown and the state legislature as a point out in the book, but the growth of energy from renewable sources has really become critical, pretty practical and achievable and widespread program for cities to adopt. >> if there are no more questions, i want to remind you we do have books for sale.

it's great to support authors. it's great to support fantastic presses that put this book up. it's great to support independent bookstores. buy another book. if you buy this one we are selling it for full price, unless you are union member which case you get a 10% union discount like on all of our books. because we have a toehold of the progressive president in the baltimore city council as of the last election, if you want to buy this book for one of our new city council people and give it to them w will give you an even bigger discount. 30% off. >> we need more independent bookstores. i just want to say that this is a creative marketing, very author friendly. >> thank you, steve, for coming. >> thanks for hosting.

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