Portside

In America’s ‘hottest housing market’, one woman’s fight to keep her home has become a rallying cry against the displacement of communities of color.

A soon-to-be-published book by a longtime labor organizer chronicles how a grass-roots democracy movement overcame corporate money.

Unfortunately, Chevron has taken no vacation from its longstanding, deep-pocketed work of rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies, often with greater success than in Richmond. A coalition of environmental, consumer protection, labor, and political groups released a damning report last week entitled The Chevron Way: Polluting California and Degrading Democracy. (available on line at: http://www.chevrontax.info/the-chevron-way).

Recently Richmond CA a majority "minority" city has been in the news with an innovative plan to take on the banks and fight blight and the banks have declared war on the city. Richmond is also the community that has taken on Chevron, and the soda industry, has passed "Ban the Box" and municipal IDs. This article describes the organizing that was critical to making all of this possible.

Scarcely touched by the nation’s housing recovery and tired of waiting for federal help, Richmond is about to become the first city in the nation to try eminent domain as a way to stop foreclosures.