In These Times recently interviewed Gayle McLaughlin, Green Party member and Mayor of Richmond, California, for an article entitled “The Progressive City on the Bay (and it’s not Berkeley or S.F.). From In These Times:
When we sat down to talk with 60-year old Gayle McLaughlin, the mayor of Richmond, Calif., she had just been through a summer media whirlwind. Policy innovation and political controversies landed McLaughlin and her East Bay city of 100,000 on the front page of The New York Times, on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, and on Democracy Now with Juan González and Amy Goodman. Even Fox News recently hosted a debate between two Richmond city council members about the merits of a new “ban the box” ordinance passed to ease the re-entry of former prisoners into the community.
The national media’s rediscovery of Richmond began last fall when the Times informed an unsuspecting world that McLaughlin’s “small, blue-collar city best known for its Chevron refinery has become the unlikely vanguard for anticorporate, left-wing activism in recent years, having seized the mantle from places like Berkeley, just south of here, or San Francisco, across the Bay.”
Since 2007, Richmond has approved a business tax increase and defeated a casino development scheme; opposed Immigration & Customs Enforcement raids in the city and created a municipal ID card to aid the undocumented; sought fair property taxation of Chevron and sued the giant oil company over the damage done by a huge refinery fire and explosion last year; and supported “community policing” initiatives introduced by Richmond Police Chief Chris Magnus, which have helped reduce violence. Continue Reading →