Red Emma’s

Home to one of the largest oil refineries in the state, Richmond, California, was once a typical company town dominated by Chevron, the global energy giant. This largely nonwhite, working-class city of a hundred thousand suffered from poverty, pollution, street crime, police misconduct, and dysfunctional city government. It had one of the highest homicide rates, per capita, in the country and a jobless rate often twice the national average.But in 2012, when labor activist Steve Early moved from Boston to Richmond, he witnessed a surprising transformation. In Refinery Town, Early chronicles the fifteen years of successful community organizing that raised the minimum wage, promoted green jobs, enacted rent control and challenged home foreclosures, reduced crime through community policing, turned Richmond into a sanctuary city, and pressured Chevron to pay its fair share of taxes.Leading these fights was the Richmond Progressive Alliance, a multi-racial, working class oriented community-labor coalition that has won 10 out of 16 campaigns for mayor or city council since 2004. As Senator Bernie Sanders writes in his Foreword to the book, this compelling story of a city remade provides a model for independent political action and policy innovation in urban communities everywhere.