How a town shadowed by Chevron built a vibrant movement to challenge corporate power

[marmar]

A Company Town Becomes Our Town
How a town shadowed by Chevron built a vibrant movement to challenge corporate power.

BY REBECCA BURNS


[font size="1"]On July 13, the Richmond chapter of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment sponsored a bus tour of foreclosed and blighted properties. Forty-six percent of Richmond mortgages are underwater. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)[/font]


Richmond, Calif., is a company town in revolt. On August 3, more than 200 people were arrested at a sit-in at the gates of the Chevron oil refinery, the town’s largest employer, to mark the one-year anniversary of a disastrous refinery fire and protest the corporation’s ongoing role in climate change. The day before, city officials had announced that Richmond would sue Chevron for damages related to the fire, which landed more than 15,000 area residents in the hospital with injuries like smoke inhalation. Such a lawsuit would’ve been unthinkable 10 years ago, given Chevron’s stranglehold over local politics.

The city of 100,000 has grown up around the Chevron refinery, which is older than Richmond itself. Until 2005, the corporation was allowed to appoint its own inspectors, and last year’s fire was the third major accident to occur at the refinery since 1999. Seventy percent of Richmond’s residents are black, Latino or Asian American, and residents of North Richmond, where several public housing projects are located, bear the brunt of the health burden resulting from ongoing toxic exposure. Though it’s difficult to prove that high rates of asthma, cancer and heart disease among Richmond residents are linked to industrial pollutants—something community groups have long argued—people of color in Richmond have a life expectancy 10 years shorter than whites in other parts of the country, according to the city’s Health Equity Partnership.

Many who grew up in the shadow of the 3,000-acre refinery say they remember times when Chevron would send a few hundred dollars to their families after a spill occurred, paying hospital bills in exchange for families’ silence.

But over the past decade, Richmond’s residents have been building a vibrant movement to challenge corporate power. In 2006 voters ousted Mayor Irma Anderson, the pro-Chevron incumbent, and elected environmental activist Gayle McLaughlin. McLaughlin is fond of comparing the groundswell that brought her to office to anti-Chevron resistance movements in countries such as Nigeria and Ecuador, where the company maintains a heavy presence. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15597/a_company_town_becomes_our_town1/

[xchrom]

1. du rec.

[roody]

2. McLaughlin is a Green. nt

[malaise]

3. Get thee to the Greatest Page

Rec

[FreakinDJ]

4. Town full of CrackHeads lined up for Corp Welfare

Highest rate of unemployment, criminal activity, drug addiction and poverty.

The city council would like to think they've done good by these people but in reality they've done more to drive jobs out of Richmond then anything else

[marmar]

5. Town full of crackheafs?

[FreakinDJ]

6. I'm in Richmond now

You don't even stop gas in this town.

But at least they stopped robbing motorist at the stop lights which used to be very common