Richmond, California is a city in the northeast of the San Francisco Bay Area, with a mostly working-class Black and Brown population. The city’s main employer is the Chevron oil refinery. Thousands of workers and contractors are employed at the massive sprawling complex that refines an estimated 240,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Over the years there have been explosions, dumping thick clouds of smoke into the air and poisoning the population in the region, with big fires in 1989, 1999, and 2012. Following the 2012 fire, over 15,000 people were hospitalized for respiratory problems.
Even when there aren’t fires, the normal functioning of the refinery has meant disastrous health consequences for the residents. For example, in 2023, there were 315 occurrences of clean air violations at the refinery. Flaring is a fairly regular occurrence. Children living close to the refinery have rates of asthma three times as much as the average child in California. It is estimated that there are 5 to 11 premature deaths each year of Richmond residents due to emissions from the Chevron refinery!
While the community continues to be poisoned, wealth for Chevron is produced at their expense. As a corporation, Chevron reported $21.3 billion in profits in 2023. Of the Contra Costa County revenue, Chevron reportedly pays only 1.34%. Meanwhile, over 14% of residents live below the poverty line, according to the 2022 census and the city faces an anticipated $34 million budget deficit for this fiscal year.
It is in this context that a range of community activists and non-governmental organizations have been organizing against Chevron’s disregard for the community. One of the initiatives was the “Make Polluters Pay” campaign, which was fighting to put a direct initiative on the November ballot to decide whether Chevron should pay between $60 million and $90 million in additional taxes over the next 50 years. This would have resulted in $3 billion – $4.5 billion over 50 years going into the city’s coffers. This would more than double how much Chevron pays in taxes to Richmond.
Proponents of the ballot initiative argued that not only does Chevron owe a city like Richmond that could desperately benefit from public investment for past crimes, but Chevron should also be financially accountable for cleaning up the land if they were to ever shut down the refinery. When the PES refinery (half the size of Chevron) in Philadelphia shut down following the fire in 2019, cleanup of that site was in the billions of dollars.
However, when the city council put this measure on the ballot in June, they were immediately sued by a group linked to Chevron, arguing that the question asked to voters was unfairly biased. A judge released a preliminary decision that cautioned the city against further lawsuits. Richmond city council members pointed to a similar scenario in Carson, California, where its city government levied a tax on their refinery but hasn’t seen a dime of that money because they are still stuck in the courts.
Seeing their weakness in court relative to a huge company like Chevron, the city council decided to meet with Chevron behind closed doors to come up with some settlement. At the end of this process, they agreed to $550 million over the next 10 years, with $50 million for the first 5 years and $60 million for the next 5 years. All of the city council members, the self-styled “progressive” members or otherwise, unanimously agreed to this settlement. This settlement would be $2.45 billion short of what the city would have received in the long run. The allure of immediate money for a city government facing a deficit versus the threats of major lawsuits led the politicians to make this concession.
Ultimately, no amount of money can compensate for the lives cut short or the lives damaged by the destructive practices of a company like Chevron. Obviously, $550 million over 10 years is better than nothing, but this is pennies to a company like Chevron which boasted $21.3 billion in profits last year. This is chump change compared to the amount of damage that has been done to the Richmond community over the years. This is a slap in the face.
This whole episode with Chevron is how “justice” and “democracy” works in a capitalist system. Companies like Chevron have the deep pockets to blackmail communities and city governments with endless lawsuits, buy off politicians, buy off “social peace,” create front groups, and more. So long as we play by the rules of their game, we will always lose.
But while they may have the numbers in their bank accounts, we have our numbers.
What if rather than looking to stand up to a company like Chevron in the courts or meetings behind closed doors, the perspective was to look to the power of the working-class community of Richmond and the surrounding region? What if there was a real dedicated effort to get the rank-and-file Chevron workers, who likely know that they are being poisoned every day, on board with the struggle?
A real “people’s referendum” would have ultimately meant a struggle that goes far beyond a single vote in November. The people SHOULD decide!
Regardless of the Richmond city council losing whatever confidence it might have had to stand up to Chevron, the power to fight back hasn’t gone anywhere, not just on our immediate problems but also against the system that puts profits above all else. We just need to get ourselves organized. Whether it’s the day-to-day poisoning of our communities or the looming threat of climate change due to the dependence on the fossil fuel economy, our lives depend on it!
