Refinery Town : Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City (Hardcover)

from wdwilson3

Refinery Town is a detailed look at local politics in Richmond, California, home of a massive Chevron refinery that gives the volume its title. Most of the book focuses on the 21st century and the efforts by progressives to make Richmond less of a company town and more of a livable, equitable hom...

from Illiniguy71

Richmond, California is a blue-collar, industrial town of about 110,000 people on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay north of Oakland and Berkeley. Non-whites make up a majority of its population. In World War II, Henry J. Kaiser built his Liberty and Victory ships there-hundreds of them. Toda...

from etheredge

The title "Refinery Town" caught my attention right away. The early years of my career were spent in Port Arthur, Texas, a quintessential refinery town. However, decades later things have changed, and not all for the better. This book is about how a group of ordinary citizens rose up and fought "...

from arelenriel

If you want to know how to combat the plutocracy this book is it. It tells the story of a city that decided they were going to take their government back from big oil. In today's world of corporate ownership and involvement in our government understanding how they did this has become increasingly...

from mitchellray

Anyone contemplating freeing local government from the control of big business would do well to read this book. The author, Steve Early, does not provide a how-to manual. Rather, he chronicles the fight in Richmond, California, against Chevron's dominant influence over the city's government. The ...