Refinery Town
Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City
The People vs. Big Oil—how a working-class company town harnessed the power of local politics to reclaim their community
With a foreword by Bernie Sanders
Home to one of the largest oil refineries in the state, Richmond, California, was once a typical company town, dominated by Chevron. This largely nonwhite, working-class city of 100,000 suffered from poverty, pollution, and poorly funded public services. It had one of the highest homicide rates per capita in the country and a jobless rate twice the national average.
But when veteran labor reporter Steve Early moved from New England to Richmond in 2012, he discovered a city struggling to remake itself. In Refinery Town, Early chronicles the 15 years of successful community organizing that raised…