Account on how to organize with community guess that is grassroots and corporate power, asking too much. I know the richmond, california story is an incredibly important story, has really been told, i have seen a couple articles about it but it is one of the real stories we should be learning especially in baltimore, in terms of deindustrialization, racism, poverty and one of the most important things is lack of luxury to get hung up on not working together, like baltimore, richmond too small to have too many sectarian divisions and what is exciting about the richmond story is a found a way to get over those divisions, Work Together in an alliance that is able to get stuff done, significant Green Party Mayor in the united states. Really excited to learn. Join me in welcoming steve early. Thank you very much for that great introduction. The privilege to be here tonight. I apologize for the formality of the arrangements. Good friends at cspan booktv are here so this is an opportunity for all of us to be on tv, late night, at a date yes to be determined, if we make this event a lively one. I gather when people very soon get to come up and ask questions, contributing to the discussion, it would be good the camera crew can capture what you have to say. I will keep this real short because these eventss are most productive if they are conducted as an exchange, as a discussion and i know from folks i have known for a long time in the room or just met like ian shellac man who ran for city council last fall, with the backing of the green party and democratic socialists alternative. A lot of people in the city are tackling the problem of how progressives can get involved in electoral politics at the municipal level and run credible and eventually successful campaigns. Two old union comrades, old in the sense of long time union comrades, brother barry who i met many years ago, united electrical workers throughout the northeast and my long time newspaper gil comrade, coworker and friend Donna Cartwright who is the one person i know in the room who has been to richmond, california. A visitor to our neighborhood. Donna has not been there on days like this, when big oil was having a very bad, fair day and had fire and explosion, 15,000 of our richmond neighbors grambling for medical attention in every hospital emergency room and clinic in the area. Anybody else went to school in the bay area, worked in the bay area, spent any time in richmond . You went to berkeley. Ever go to richmond at berkeley . I have been back. Different organizing good lets come back and talk about them . Anybody else . Okay. The county seat where we have the sheriff we need to replace and the county da but we could talk later about the challenges of the Progressive Movement gaining traction in one city and coming up against the fact that in California Property taxes are controlled, county level, county sheriff, your own city police chief is on the sanctuary city program, the da when there are problems with police his conduct whitewash this case after case, one of our objectives in the richmond area at this point is to come up with credible candidates to challenge the county sheriff and the district attorney. I get ahead of myself. Anyone else in the bay area . I have only been a resident of richmond, california, for five years. Prior to that, i spent 30 years as a National Union representative for communication workers, did some freelance writing on the side about labor issues, strikes, organizing, bargaining, union based Political Action. When i moved to richmond after retiring from my fulltime job with communication workers, i was drawn to the richness of the city, its colorful history and many current challenges, inspiring emergence over the last 10 or 15 years, one of the most successful city based municipal reform movements led, as john said, by a very Unusual Coalition of green party members, socialists from two or three groups, independents, dissident, black and latino democrats, independent voters. In richmond 10 or 12 years ago people overcame political differences, decided to rebrand as the Progressive Alliance to run candidates but not just run candidates for the Council Mayor but to build a Membership Organization has 300 to 350 members in a city of 110,000. Dues paying membershipbased group that has labor and Community Organization affiliate and organizes around a wide range, and Environmental Issues, yearround. It was a hybrid organization, defect a political party, when people started running for city council, after the richmond Progressive Alliance in 2004 they were pretty new to local politics, they had to learn from scratch how to set up phone banks and canvas and the database of progressive voters, how to raise money and fill out the Campaign Finance and election law, paperwork, overtime got real good at the nuts and bolts of electoral politics and since 2004, progressives in richmond have won 10 of 16 city council and mayoral races, it is 80 nonwhite, which is largely poor and workingclass where the Median Income in the community the lowest in the bay area for 20 of the people in Family Living at or below the federally defined poverty level. Not a university talents, not berkeley, not madison, wisconsin, not burlington, vermont, not santa monica or any of the other places in many parts of the country when you associate with past efforts, to take over city hall to turn municipal government into a laboratory for progressive Public Policy initiatives. We now have a progressive supermajority, 5 of 7 councilmembers in richmond and so i mentioned between 2006, and 2014, our green mayor, gil laughlin, made richmond the largest city in the country as mayor, i am proud to report she is still a member of city council and on one day declared her independent progressive candidacy for Lieutenant Governor of california, we also have a fellow progressive on city council, wonderful woman who is running for state assembly. With a strong base in one of the larger cities, richmond progressive are trying to move off of politics. Something about the elements of success. People got involved in municipal politics in richmond not because they particularly wanted to. People were involved in the nader campaign, the Green Campaign from california, people were involved in the peace movement, the Environmental Movement, most people were direct action is. They did not have much use for electoral politics or experience with it. Practical experience but people are confronted with the kinds of problems you face in baltimore, Police Department was out of control, killed people, cost the city millions in civil rights case damage settlements that brutalized black and latino youth. The city 10 or 12 years ago was faced with a corrupt and dysfunctional city hall administration, the city was nearly bankrupt at one point due to the incompetence of a series of not so professional city managers. It had landlords that were running amok. It had one of the Largest Energy companies in the world, chevron, largest employer polluting the air and water and politics of the city for much of the last century until the Progressive Movement challenged his control of the city. Chevron previously known as standard oil dominated richmond politics as part of a broader conservative coalition that included the chamber of commerce, the manufacturers association, and progress in baltimore, and sad to say the Building Trade Union and police and Firefighter Union so people have been up against a few of those adversaries, some of them are not allies as they would be in a better world but that is the consolation of conservative deep pocketed political sources that richmond progressives had to start tackling 10 or 12 years ago. In the last 10 or 12 years, progressive representation on city council has grown particularly during eight years when mclaughlin was the innovative mayor we have been able to raise the minimum wage without mayoral veto. We have been able to make chevron pay a little bit more of its fair share of taxes. Last fall and a breakthrough that elected two more progressives to city council and gave us a 5member supermajority, richmond voters made the city one of the first california cities in 30 years for rent control. I talk about this and other places in the country, washington state, oregon, massachusetts, we cant adopt that control, some people never heard of it. California, through a limited extent, municipalities can regulate rents and our ballot measure last year that was incredibly popular among thousands of black and latino low income tenants in richmond rolled back rends to the level of the year before. Established a much wider requirement landlords had just cause to convict tenants in richmond, tie future rent increases to the overall annual increases in the Consumer Price index and created rent buoy appointed not elected members but rent board to deal with landlordtenant disputes and because our candidates came out of the tenant rights movement, were members of a progressive alignment that did yearround organizing around how the portability and accountability and Economic Justice issues and Environmental Justice campaigns. They placed first and second in a field of 9, a 26yearold africanamerican Tenant Movement leader, melvin willis, bernie inspired firsttime candidate, 2000 votes ahead of an 85yearold, 40 year, africanamerican council incumbent backed by chevron for the last four decades, beaten by 2000 votes. Secondplace candidate, a koreanamerican environmentalist, ben joy, benefited from this huge upsurge of Voter Registration in the rent control issue. The other seven candidates, some of them nice people, some are neighbors of mine, all corporate democrats, none of them like candidates in richmond will take the pledge to refuse corporate donations so the dividing line in richmond politics over the last decade or more has been the candidates who run together as part of a team committed to common progressive platforms which are then better able to hold them accountable when they get elected to Public Office and everybody else is doing it in the usual way. Individual, entrepreneurial, handout looking for corporate donations kind of campaigns, more about personal career and ambition and sometimes doing good for the people but too often about getting on councils and become mayor to run for state legislature and run for congress or whatever. In richmond we have built they facto political party, Movement Based party. Functioning very much like seattle. Using the elected position, whatever resources they have as parttime or fulltime public official in the case of the mayor to mobilize the constituencies, labor, Community Organization, very different relationship between insiders and outsiders. The other elements of the richmond model i contributed a little bit to to some long meetings, this started when bill was first elected mayor in 2006, dozens of appointed positions to all kinds of key city boards and commission committees that have been seeded with progressives in richmond over the last decade, parks and recreation, more important ones like the planning commission, housing commission, civilian Police Oversight commission whose powers in richmond have been strengthened. I as a labor activist am appointing the richmond Personnel Board and i get to hear grievances. Police, firefighters, bluecollar workers represented by Service Employees and Public Employee unit in Northern California. Hundreds of people who not only help out an Election Year as volunteers, phone callers, contributors, sign holders, campaign volunteers, people who yearround support our elected officials with staffing, expertise, with their own occupational background and contribute as appointed city officials and it makes a difference to move the city bureaucracy in a better direction. In the best sense, infiltration of city government. And city council, to work wonders on our behalf, a larger layer of folks involved in trying to transform city government. And you cant do as much as you want to do in one city, property taxes have to be reformed, statelevel, tried to do more networking in the wake of the Bernie Campaign with other likeminded Sanders Campaign who fired local progressive groupings in the bay area. A meeting with representatives from ten groups, the next county over from san jose, civil county south, and strong groups in berkeley, one emerging in oakland, people trying one way or another, one to another to the larger city circumstances. Trying to build Membership Organizations, trying to run candidates in a programmatic way, hold them accountable and try to bring people from an otherwise fractured left together around a broader tent, organized around issues and run effective, credible, winning electoral campaigns. The Progressive Alliance a couple months ago affiliated with our revolution post Sanders Campaign network of progressive groups around the country, we have also had discussions with the working families party, peoples action a whole bunch of networks out there trying to support people running for local office. When bernie ended is campaign a year ago in june he put out an appeal for his supporters to contact him if they are interested in running for city council, mayor, school board, county supervisor for state legislature, 25,000 inquiries. Im ready to run, what do i do next, how can you help me. An enormous number of people out there thinking seriously about going local in politics, trying to contest for power, state, county, most often at the city level and there are daunting challenges as you know in your recent campaign experiences in Baltimore City, six times bigger than richmond but they can be overcome and i hope we have explored the relevance of the model, some of the differences and some of your own ideas how to move this progressive reform ahead. Thank you for coming. Lets open this up. [applause] coming up here so everybody can hear you and the television can pick up your voice. And if you dont want to be on television, you can shout your question out. Donna cartwright, cwa retired. As i understand it, the rpa, one of the things that made it possible for the rpa to grow is richmond municipalities in california have nonpartisan elections so you dont have to get into it immediately but the Democratic Party or not. It sounds to me like you are at a juncture now because you are moving to the next level, the county level and 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 are officially nonpartisan in the sense that people are not listed on the ballot as democrat, republican, green, peace and freedom party, socialist alternative but the process of building a Progressive Movement over the last 10 or 12 years in the arena in richmond made the elections highly partisan as they have always been because nonpartisanship is a cloak and when you have candidates running with the benefit of hundreds of thousands of dollars in some election cycles and independent expenditures by Renewable Energy giant, they are as a personification of the term corporate democrat. Richard is the city was 70 registered democrats, probably only 300 or 400 greens at this point and some independents and republicans, the conservative role is played by conservative democrats backed by corporations. Emergence of a Progressive Movement, the way it chose to branded selfenrichment, the dividing line it created by running corporate free candidates versus candidates who were often small progressives in their own minds, liberals, gayrights activists, good people on a number of issues, but not so good on fundamental economic workingclass issues, around the issue of who takes corporate money, who doesnt, the Bernie Sanders style brand of being independent, corporate free is what people look for now. When virtually all the democrats you are running against in this environment to take business donations. Things are getting a little blurrier as richmond progresses, moves up, former mayor bill mclaughlin, 100 roles coming independent last june to vote for bernie in the primary, she is running as a progressive independence, not a Green Party Candidate but is seeking green Party Support for Lieutenant Governor. And the status of receipt in the area surrounding richmond, has only been a registered democrat though part of the Progressive Alliance, running as a democrat, election laws have been changed in california in a way that has obl