Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) Erupted in Richmond, California, and the City Would Never Be the Same
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How did the RPA get started? By Juan Reardon Between the fall of 2003 and the fall of 2004 the Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) erupted in Richmond, California, and the city would never be the same. Here are a few notes about the years 2003-2004 and why, how and who got the Richmond Progressive Alliance started that year. Why was it started? The short answer: to make our lives better, healthier, happier starting right here, in our city and communities. Many organizations existed already in our city before the RPA, and they continue, fortunately, to exist today. Charitable groups, churches, educational centers, and activists struggling for the environment, for equality, for justice, against police brutality, for immigrant rights and many other great causes. The good people involved in so many struggles were already transforming Richmond into a better place one struggle at a time, one stand at a time, one embrace at a time. Why add one more? As in the case of many other cities, the individuals and organizations doing good work to educate the community and improve the lives of residents were absent from the tables where the key decisions were being made. The vast majority of city council members, and the mayor, were individuals who were either placed in office by the corporate forces ruling our city (Chevron, developers, Police & Firefighters Union, and others), or were people who emerged with good intentions to improve our lives, but soon enough were convinced that to keep their seats and career prospects they had to bow to the mighty corporate dollar that ruled local politics. These local elected officials, often isolated from the community, ended acquiescing to corporate money and the strings that it always has attached. Richmond residents, on their part, also had come to believe that our political system had been overtaken by the power of corporate money, and most folks also assumed that it was the only system possible. Nevertheless, there have always been in Richmond, and elsewhere, people who saw with clarity that corporations and their fronts are the enemies of democracy. They realized that unregulated greed brings us poverty, and rooted in poverty are crime, violence, self-destruction and community-destruction by drugs, repressive violence by police, lack of good schools, institutional racism, and a lack of job opportunities to advance. Globally, the results are a permanent state of world war, and the systematic, and possibly irreversible, destruction of the people’s planet. Over the decades, there were many examples of Richmond activists fighting for a better world and against the different expressions of corporate domination. In the years immediately preceding the formation of the Richmond Progressive Alliance, several important struggles and centers of activism were alive and impacting Richmond. Here are a few of them: In 2001, the Richmond Greens were formed as a local chapter of the Green Party of Contra Costa; the “Richmond Alliance for Green Public Power and Environmental Justice” was created between the West County Toxics Coalition, Green Action, the Richmond Greens and others to stop construction of a polluting power plant at the Chevron refinery (It was stopped in June); The “Globalize Justice, Not War” march on the Chevron refinery took place on November10th; the “North Richmond Open Space Shoreline Alliance” was formed under Whitney Dotson’s leadership; The “Sister –Friendship City” relationship was established between Richmond and Regla, Cuba. In 2002-2003: The “Homelessness Is Not A Crime Coalition” fought the criminalization of the homeless by the City of Richmond with its “anti-camping ordinance” passed on December 2001. The Mobilization against the Richmond Police Brutalization of Latinos on Cinco de Mayo took place. In 2003: Anti-war demonstrations took place at Chevron; the community forced the City Council to pass resolution 29-03 defending the U.S. Constitution and opposing the Patriot Act; the Association of Richmond Day Laborers was created and a 10 point agreement of rights and mutual respect was signed by the Association and Richmond Police Acting Chief, Chuck Bennett; Citizens Against Casino Expansion came together to oppose San Pablo Casino and other such centers (Pt. Molate); the No Fines for High Fences Mobilization of hundreds of Latino homeowners against proposed penalization for high fences erected to defend themselves from crime took place. In 2003 and 2004 a diverse group of Richmond residents emerging from these and other previous local and global struggles came together to continue the local fight in the new century, and in electoral politics, an area which until then completely lacked progressive organizing in Richmond. Each person participating in the efforts of the founding and of the first year of the Richmond Progressive Alliance brought forward many different experiences, backgrounds and skills, and that common understanding was expressed as, “We will think globally and we will act locally!” We lost the Feds. All power to the locals! Many had already realized that no possible solution of our collective national and global problems would come from the federal government, the presidency, the congress and other federal institutions. The people of our country have lost those institutions to the corporations, and there is no possible hope of getting anything significant from them. The corporations hold them tight and the corporations will keep them for the long haul. Many of those converging into the Richmond Progressive Alliance believed, to different degrees, that our only hope for survival, and for a national transformation, was to develop local political power through the organizing of our families, our friends and our neighbors, and the winning of local seats on the City Council. Here at the city level we have the possibility to impact our lives to some extent and, perhaps more importantly, to learn by this experience, and show to others, that it is possible for people with common sense to prevail and for democracy to work in the people’s interests. If we can improve our lives locally through the democratic process, then why can’t we do it at the macro level? If we learn to successfully fight the corporations locally, why can’t we apply those lessons to a national and global movement? The RPA starters were, nevertheless, relatively aware that even the most successful local effort would still leave the local community imprisoned in a matrix of regional, state and federal laws limiting our ability to fulfill needs and dreams. Years later it would eventually became clearer. Only through the emergence of a broad progressive movement that recaptures local power in a thousand cities and communities could enough strength be gathered to significantly change the direction of our lives and the country. And so, the embryonic Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) was conceived as an answer to that absence of true people’s representatives on the local boards of power, be it city council, school boards, board of supervisors or other local elected positions. All the progressives doing great work in the City must have on the council representatives that respond to the progressives and the interests of the regular residents. The Richmond Progressive Alliance brought people together to show the community that it is possible to stand free of the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics and that honest people coming together for the common good can defeat corporate money. Since its inception, the basic dichotomies of the Richmond Progressive Alliance have been: “People not Corporations”, “People Power not Corporate Money”. The Richmond Progressive Alliance coalesced some of the many dedicated activists who were in Richmond at the time into a group that clearly challenged the local political establishment. The emergent group denounced the corrupting influence of corporate money in our democracy by supporting candidates who pledged not to take corporate money for their campaigns, demonstrating their true independence from the corporations. Every voter had heard before from every politician in the land the statement that taking corporate money does not influence his or her votes. It was clear however that the people were tired of noticing how much influence the campaign contributions had in the decisions made by the same elected officials. It was time to say that true progressives simply rejected the acceptance of contributions from large corporations, as a concrete example of our independence. Some candidates rejected all corporate donations, some rejected contributions from large corporations. This initial policy of the RPA evolved years later into a higher bar which required that candidates to office pledge not to accept any corporate donations at all, not even from small corporations. This policy was hopeful music to the tired and frustrated ears of the skeptical voters. It was a grass-roots defense of democracy and it became part of the RPA DNA. Challenging the local political power to get progressive candidates elected with independence from corporate money was the first and central act of the emerging Richmond Progressive Alliance. The RPA also understood that winning elected positions was difficult. Being new to the process, the RPA activists did not have much electoral experience. Most RPA members came from the protest world or the social services world, and our candidates did not have a lot of name recognition. On the other hand, we knew that the electoral work was only part of the work to be done; that the electoral work would help to create the organization and teach the skills needed for the political transformation of the city. The RPA was not only doing the electoral work to win the seats and denounce the corrupt influence of corporate money. The RPA was also raising people’s issues of concern, educating, starting a community thinking process and bringing together all willing progressives already activating in the city.