Upstarts . I think they felt very threatened and as you read the official reports in the campaign, you can see that as you read between the lines. Thank you for coming out tonight. If we are selling books and hosting events at the locations. In addition to the ones at the location you can order food and drink throughout the event but we are thankful for the relationship that we have going on here. I have a few housekeeping notes if you could silence any cell phones or devices. We will be doing the signing a t here at the advanced age. Purchasing the book out in the bookstore is solved if you have and already we have a few here. Let me come to you with a microphone. Its one of the largest refineries with one Typical Company town dominated with the white workingclass city of 100,000 a suburbs and Property Solutions and poorly funded Public Health service as it is one of the highest homicide rates in the country and jobless rate on a national average. They moved from new england to richmond. And the unfair taxation. The views of the book is the specific tale of the government at the local level for the scholars before it was written by none other than senator Bernie Sanders and this book offers ideas of making change where it counts the most among friends, neighbors and communities. Steve has been a an man organiz, Union Representatives and 72 and he was a bostonbased staff member of the Communications Workers of america after serving as the administrative assistant. Tonight steve will be joined in conversation by the chair of the board and the past National President of the Communications Workers of america please join me in welcoming. [applause] thanks everybody. Great to see so many friends. We will give some shout out to. Its great to be here. Just to fix one thing. 25 years, you cut five years off his time. More than fulltime at the cwa. Im going to come back to him in a minute. So, a little different context about the book. Im a big supporter of reading this book and getting steve to sign the book. So, it fits directly into the frame up wit wood so many people here have done which is to try to figure out how can you do political work with some integrity in this country and get some results . So here we are in the last couple of weeks or months wear to a large extent on defense, resisting coming in for me that is a big word. So really what this book is about they got off of defense and how they build the Progressive Alliance. Just this past election then you will hear more about them they got elected to the city council and became the fourth and fifth member of the city council out of seven. So now instead of the political and electoral work being about resistance, now it is about governing. The other thing thats clear, every place has some elements. To spend a lot of time doing Electrical Work and not having some dream for most of us it doesnt make any sense. When you dont have a dream it is always this one is worse than that one. Any of you feel like that when you go to vote . No one has ever felt that way. Even people here that live in washington, d. C. We could do way better and we have to get the money out of politics even here in dc that example because even though they run a nonpartisan elections they have to take on the Democratic Party which in the being activists and more volunteers in the dream that they can look after each other in a very Diverse Community mostly of the working class and most importantly to me, they believe that they can win and that is the inspiration in this book and that is the question on the revolution or anything else not just do we believe that we can win, do we believe that we can win, the working class people can win with allies, working class people that we can build governance in the cities that reflects the aspirations and dreams of kids and parents and if we believe that we can win, we get inspired like 400 or 500 members to stand up and fight back not just going defense against chevron bought t recently as the will hear adopting rent control for the first time despite the real estate interest. Its a treat for me to talk about my friend at least 45 years teachins4 wants to correct my numbers. So do a lot of other people. Organizing together, watching him work underrepresentation, doing organizing which he did most of the time and helping bring huge groups of people come introducing me to bernie some 30 years ago. We believe that out of this introduction. Hes an incredible mix. We first met up with before 1979 to 1980. Stuff would appear in the newspaper in minutes and its an amazing mix of someone who can do that and now crank out books, incredibly disciplined and this is his trademark. All the decades i know him hes got this in his list. He completes his lists. I couldnt be more proud to introduce my friend, comrade, colleague, coworker. [applause] it is a treat to be here with my oldest and closest comrade, worker. I first met larry 37 years ago in an organizing storefront in trenton new jersey, came up from dc, he was directing and Ambitious Campaign to organize the state workers in new jersey a little bit outside of the communication workers of america jurisdiction, but the campaign built from the bottom up based on the concept of organizing the committee and rankandfile for the new leaders like for you may hear from later today or who may already be here. Its hard to see with the blinding lights from our good friends at cspan book tv. But hes been in charge of the Public Sector and he was a member of the organizing committee and worked closely with larry on the campaign. I want to thank a few other people when we get into the question and answer period very shortly in 15 minutes, theres many people here with labor, Community Organizing and political experience that we want to hear from this is interactive and not just speechmaking but people have been particularly helpful on this particular project and i want to recognize my old friend to please stand up. [applause] a lot of background for the oil industry, parts of the book is one of the best that has appeared so far and there were other people that have been tremendously helpful. We had a number of generous sponsors and pathetic socialists of america, the National Writers union, some folks at the jobs of justice and i want to recognize one of the most esteemed as here in the room with us tonight the former congressman, also an author [applause] another one is forthcoming about the years on capitol hill. We will come back to recognizing the people that have been so helpful with the follo followun the richmond story. I moved out there about five years ago after spending more than three years as a rep in new england and i was inspired to write the book partly because of bernie. I did a story about the growing impact and electoral success in the Progressive Party which is the most successful third party in the entire country and one he helped foster many of its second and Third Generation leaders that have been Campaign Volunteers and supporters. Some of you may know the Progressive Party had a major breakthrough in a long time ally of thcould Progressive Party ler and state senator became the Lieutenant Governor of vermont the first time in 25 or 30 years a candidate other than bernie had been elected statewide. But the members of the house and the state senate Dave Zuckerman who is a ponytail organic farmer, pro labor, Pro Environmental week i to become the progressive governor of vermont. Thats great that we nee but wee case studies of successful political initiatives in the mainstream media. I told him when we talked about this a little bit when i started to meet people involved in the group called the richmond alliance. The big oil, the big banks and money in politics generally that he should come out at some point and check it out, which he reiterated that the meantime i was able t to line up the great publisher to decompress. Among those that are religiously inclined, the press has a history of publishing very important work in the civil rights movement, the labor movement, environmental issues, black history and down in North Carolina the union friend bill fletcher and immediately understood the richmond story might have a lot of residents in company towns. They were particularly interested in having burning on the cover and doing the foreword and that is before he got 13 million. The only other time in the history that the senator is contributed was 1971 when i sadly his name on the book that was the alltime best seller actually the multivolume series called the pentagon papers you might remember that. I dont think that this book is going to sew quite as well as the pentagon papers but, we are doing our best. He was interested in the story because of what you might call the citys intersection audi and that is a term that is thrown around a lot. I dont use it a lot in the book. But this is a city where the grassroots organizing in recent years and electoral work had been addressing issues of race and immigration, the problems of homophobia that exist in richmond, discrimination against the incarcerated Housing Affordability, Environmental Justice and Workplace Safety and one of the most Hazardous Industries in the country, oil refining, fair taxation of business com, in this case the largest chevron. The politics in our case local politics, raising labor standards because the minimum wage increases at the municipal level where it is often not possible to do that at the state or federal level at the moment and making sure the Economic Development how many people wouldve been to the area recently to see what is going on in San Francisco and berkeley for years . That is why people move to richmond. Richmond is a city that is largely working class poor. They are now a playground for the privileged few. Richmond people are free to a place like San Francisco or low incomes have a hard time living there now so the fight in richmond for the Housing Affordability for rent control and Economic Development projects have been a big part of the struggle and the last 15 years. The rpa got started 15 years ago roughly as a coalition. Some people banging on chevron about its pollution and environmental hazards and Carbon Emissions through the coalition where there were people doing organizing and objecting to the Police Harassing the workers at random traffic stops and there were Serious Problems with Police Brutality and lots of lawsuits. There were people involved in homelessness and advocating even then for rent control and evolved into thirdparty politics supporting the campaigns when ralph nader ran. It took an effort to get these people to set aside their focus and learn how to come together in a broad political tent where peoples differences about the nature of socialism and capitalism and other big picture questions were set aside in the interest of pursuing a concrete agenda for local change and improvements and actually it was proof because of the persistence and patience of the group achievable the past 15 years. This was not a University Town. We have examples in the 60s and 70 70s of people trying to take over the city government. Those were different kinds of cities. Richmond is not a University Town but for many years, it was until quite recentl recently ith contested and dominated by the kind of alliance and the compa company, building trade organizations and firefighters organizations. Thats Big Coalition had virtually no counterweight for decades. A few Good Governance liberals and voices of integrity on the city council tried to impose the coalition but it was not until they collapsed from all these different socialist group green party, the prett thirdparty bad dissident latino and africanamerican independence came together and formed a different kind of de facto Political Party in town. There was one based on a business way of separating out. Theres those you can count on them once they are elected to stand up to. The other critical element was they always run as part of the teams late. Its not an entrepreneurial activity where someone gets it in their head im going to be on the city council and then im going to be the mayor up in sacramento and then it will be the congress person. They are not in this model of politics. They believe in the power collectively when we put people in the Office Holding them accountable. As they mentioned its the members organizational that the members organizational affiliation representation on the Steering Committee from the local progressive unions and Community Groups and which doesnt just pop up that election time. The key to the success is the yearround program of Community Organizing around important issues. And those issues 15 years ago were identified as the living wage rent control protection against evictions without just cause, police reform, getting the verge of bankruptcy and the industrial safety ordinance that would stop the contracting out, repealing the antihomeless ordinance heavy taxation of chevron, reversing the Public Service cuts the cab then necessitated the mishandling of the citys finances. The progressive candidates could get matching money from the city so that was the initial program adopted in the Peoples Convention of 200 2004 was the t year the mayor and City Council Woman won by a small margin and the last 12 years since then but progressives have won ten out of 16 Council Races better than anywhere else in the country. The results have given for the first time a strong majority, supermajority five out of seven. Up until now thereve to be alliances between the progressives and democrats who are under corporate contro contf the counci council and sometimee coalition enabled the city to make progress and other times thereve been divisions around rent control that have separated the democrats and progressives in much the same way there is a conflict in the primary and the other states but last fall they were stepping back creating space for the younger people and the Steering Committee is now the majority people of color and women and younger people we ran a slate. Its for the Community Empowerment and he teamed up with a young environmentalist who works for the marine clean energy. The two of them ran together the strongest rent control supporters and most of the other folks in the field were democrats with a lot more enforcement. They were against rent control and our candidates came in at the top of that field and melvin lewis potentially the future defeated by 2,000 votes. Then you get to know well as i did see as a characte he is a ce book who for 40 years has been a probusiness force on the council financed by chevron indiana opponent of the rent control of course more than any other initiative in the city. They beat him by 2,000 votes. We need more of that not just in richmond but every city around the country. I will stop there and open up to questions, comments, statements. We will alternate between men and women to gender balance and everybody gets a chance to speak then we will go for a halfhour or so and people are welcome to stay around until closing time. But we also think booktv for coming. They were on the scene to make this possible and we have a wonderful staff serving ui will be have the discussions. Lets reword them well at each table. Thanks so much. [applause] do you want to stand up for people way in the back that may not hear you. What were we trying to correct and what should we do now . This is my new neighborhood in 2012 in what you might call a big oil bad hair day and thanks to the years of the maintenance practices, the company as mark can telhas markcan tell you hast production and profits ahead of the worker safety and Community Health and had a huge fire that sent 15,000 of the neighbors fleeing to hospital Emergency Rooms and seeking medical attention. As i described in the book, this latest accident which is no accident is part of a long series of the behavior that has been highly contested by members and the community through the Environmental Justice organizations and going back to the early years by the workers themselves, and thats part of the history of the book he had posted a 50 year struggle to organize what was then the standard oil and came chevron in recent decades the union didnt succeed in the standard oil until 1951 after they scored big in basic industries and to this day, what is now the united steelworkers local five operates as a local shop. It shocks me when i discovered this in researching the book and as other people can tell you that makes it very