The People vs. Big Oil how a working-class company town harnessed the power of local politics to reclaim their community Home to one of the largest oil refineries in the state, Richmond, California, was once a typical company town bankrolled by Chevron. This largely nonwhite, working-class city of a hundred thousand had experienced the by-products of decades worth of poverty, substandard housing, and poorly funded public education. It had one of the highest homicide rates, per capita, in the country and a jobless rate often twice the national average. But in 2012, when veteran labor reporter Steve Early moved from New England to Richmond, he witnessed a surprising transformation.