Jaquan Smith, 12, likes the Los Angeles Lakers and afternoons filled with video games.

But his face has aged just a bit beyond his years. He wears a look of concerned solemnity more often than most.

Like thousands of Richmond children, Smith has lost his parents to crime and incarceration.

“I wish my mom could be with me every day,” Smith said while coolly thumbing a videogame controller at a community center in Parchester Village, where he lives with family friends. “But I know that’s not going to happen.”

Earlier this year, in May, Jaquan took a bus to San Leandro, where he linked up with three siblings who stay with family in San Francisco. They boarded another bus in the pre-dawn light, then trekked though more than 100 miles of Central  Valley haze to see their mom.

It was their Mother’s Day. They spent it in Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla.

At least 200,000 children in California – including Jaquan and his three sisters, 14-year-old Tajanae Jacobs and two 10-year-old twins – have a parent serving time in state prison, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). The children are scattered across the state, often living with relatives, friends or foster families.

California’s overall inmate population has reached 175,000 – larger than the population of Hayward. The number of female prisoners has nearly tripled, to 10,200, since 1987, according to CDCR, which estimates the number of children of incarcerated parents at 200,000; some experts believe the figure is higher.

Almost none of the state’s $8 billion prison budget is dedicated to the children of prisoners or helping them maintain contact with their parents. A 2005 study published in the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice found that maintaining the relationship between an inmate and child significantly reduces recidivism. According to a 2009 CDCR estimate, 42 percent of California’s female inmates commit crimes within two years of their release.

Jaquan’s mother was sent to prison six years ago, convicted of robbery and drug possession in Richmond. Jaquan was 6-years-old at the time and his father was also in-and-out of jail. The boy bounced between relatives in Los Angeles and, most recently, a family friend in Richmond. He said he’s changed schools at least three times.

Jaquan hopes he can stay in Richmond until his mom’s release in December 2015.

During the two-hour bus trip in May, Jaquan chatted with other children and scrawled in coloring books. This was the fourth year he rode a Mother’s Day bus – funded by a nonprofit program – to the Valley State Prison for Women.

“The hardest part is having to go, having to say goodbye to your mom,” Jaquan said.

Upon arrival at the prison, a complex of drab structures jutting out from the central California plains, and Jaquan and dozens of other children filed down a line of seated corrections officers who checked IDs and birth certificates. They then walked through the metal detectors and passed through the buzz and clang of the mechanized gates buttressed with razor wire. Guard towers loomed overhead.

Jaquan and his three sisters were led to a large multipurpose room with dozens of other visitors where they waited for their mother.

A few hours earlier their mother, Saprina Fletcher, 38, had risen from her bed in the cell she shares with more than a half-dozen inmates. Fletcher’s eyelids were heavy; she hadn’t slept. “I stayed up all night thinking about this visit,” she said. “I was overwhelmed, wondering what I’m going to say to my kids.”

Now, Fletcher, still weary, emerged from a hallway.

“Mama! Mama!” the twins shrieked as they bolted towards Fletcher, joined by Tajanae and Jaquan, who initially held back.

“I couldn’t move for a second,” Jaquan recalled later, at the community center in Parchester. “I was so excited to see her.”

For the next four hours, Fletcher played games with her kids. The twins got their faces painted. Tajanae bought sugary and salty snacks for the briefly re-united family. Jaquan talked about his favorite subjects in school.

When the day was nearly done, Fletcher walked a few paces away from the outdoor table where they had been sitting. In her prison blues, she looked older than her 38 years. She stared at her children.

“I’m afraid,” she said, her normally commanding voice much softer. “My fear is that I will never bond with them.”

Fletcher paused. She looked down, then up again.

“My fear is being forgotten.”

Fletcher’s absence weighs heavy on her children’s lives, particularly for Jaquan, who finds himself alone, repeatedly uprooted and uncertain of the future.

Weeks after visiting his mom, Jaquan was hanging out at the community center in Parchester Village, and said he knows there will probably be more changes to his already uprooted life. “It’s hard,” he said. “You make friends, then you got to go and you might not see them again.”

When his mother is released in 5 years, Jaquan will be 17.

“Sometimes I dream about me and my mom,” Jaquan said. “We still be living together, we were never separated, and I don’t have to be living in all kinds of different houses and places.”

In an effort to build community and prevent crime, the City of Richmond celebrated the 27th annual National Night Out Tuesday with block parties throughout the city. The city joined 35 million citizens around the country in celebration.

Police officers and firefighters visited 24 different neighborhoods across Richmond that were holding block parties. City officials including Police Chief Chris Magnus, Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, City Manager Bill Lindsay and Fire Chief Michael Banks attended the kick-off ceremony and party held at the Target Store on Macdonald Avenue.

The event offered music performances by The East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, free hot dogs and hamburgers, and an appearance by the Richmond Fire Department’s demo unit, which showed kids what to do in case of a fire. A bounce house and the free face-painting clowns were also very popular.

“What a pleasure it is to know that our crime prevention is working in the city of Richmond. This is a tribute to a collective effort in the city,” said Mayor McLaughlin, referring to the city’s decreasing crime rate. “People are working together and the city needs more of that.”

For Chief Chris Magnus, the event was a great opportunity for residents to connect with the police, because “really we solve crimes through relationship-building,” he said. Magnus also mentioned the importance of neighbors working together to help prevent crime. “The police can’t be everywhere all the time, so it pays to have in the neighborhood folks that are looking out for each other.”

Additionally, Fire Chief Banks said, “National Night out gives us an opportunity to send our message of fire safety throughout the city.”

Other community organizations and business were also represented at the Target parking lot block party. For instance, nonprofit Building Blocks for Kids, the Contra Costa County Conflict Resolution Program and Target all had tables at the event, where people were giving out information about their organizations and handing out trinkets.

City officials were also available to talk with residents. The elected officials left, however, to go on a community caravan along with police officers and firefighters to tour some of the other neighborhood block parties throughout the city. The tour gave the police officers an opportunity to get reacquainted with the residents of their beat. As residents heard the sirens of police cars and fire engines approaching their party, they clapped in excitement.

Each neighborhood found its own way to connect with the community, and each party had its own feel. The Marina Bay block party at 1 Marina Lakes Drive set out tables hosted by the different condominium committees from the complex and encouraged residents to visit so people could walk around and get information on the different committees. They had cookies, coffee and fliers with information.

The Richmond Heights block party at Tiller Park organized a potluck with music, hot dogs and kids’ attractions such as a face-painting fairy and residents dressed up as cartoon characters Winnie the Pooh, Gossamer and Belle (from The Beauty and the Beast.)

“It’s good to see everyone in the community getting together and having a good time and see the police and fire department too,” said Belle, played by neighborhood resident Elizabeth Thompson. “It is a lot of fun.”

“Anytime you bring people together is important,” said Michael Rogers, a Richmond Heights resident. “When police get to talk with the neighbors, I think it’s great.”

The scene sparkled with shades of a veritable human rainbow. Under a picture-perfect California sky, people of all colors and backgrounds danced and laughed, smiled and listened to music.

But many of them had seen a darker place, a place where races are separated by lines so rigid, breaching them could be deadly.

“You have gangs behind the walls in prison,” said Jesse Reed, a smiling, effusive Richmond resident who spent 25 years in California prisons before his 2009 parole. “And you just can’t cell with people of other races, can’t live with them.”

Reed spoke between singing songs. His band, Redemption Gospel Group, was founded by a handful of prisoners in San Quentin in the early 1990s.

For decades, California corrections officials have forced inmates to bunk together based on racial categories. The theory behind the protocol was to reduce racial violence among race-based prison gangs. As the law evolved over the years to expressly prohibit racial segregation in public accommodations, prisons in California and a handful of other states remained glaring exceptions, throwbacks to an earlier time when judgment on the color of one’s skin enjoyed government sanction.

Then in 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court remanded the issue back to lower courts with directions to apply due “scrutiny” to any race-based policies.

But, just as integrating schools took years to implement after the Supreme Court repudiated segregation in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, California’s prisons look set for a slow transformation.

At the outdoor festival in Richmond’s Nevin Park in early June, former inmates and volunteers with some experience with the prison system spoke openly about race, segregation and the prospects of integrating a system that has been divided along racial lines.

Kellis Love, who has volunteered at San Quentin State Prison as a Christian services provider, noted that there are rare occasions when various races mix harmoniously behind the prison walls.

“In chapel, you see people of all races in prayer together,” Love said. “Afterward, they go back to their own cliques, but while worship they are one.”

Kevin Kemp spent 1984 to 2003 in California’s segregated prisons, the majority of the time in San Quentin. Kemp, 50, was convicted of second-degree murder in a drug-related shooting in the early 1980s. Kemp, who is African American, believes that segregation has intensified racial hatred and empowered gangs while not reducing violence.

“I think the idea of integration is great, absolutely,” Kemp said. “There may be some difficulties early on, but over time you’re going to see the divisions and the frictions go down, because most guys who come into prison don’t feel this racism personally, they just adapt to a racist system on the inside.”

California has implemented integrated housing in three of its 30 men’s prisons, according to California Department of Corrections spokeswoman Terry Thornton. A fourth facility, Folsom State Prison, is in the process of integrating its housing units this year.

A big Brazilian flag can be seen from the intersection of San Pablo and MacDonald avenues in Richmond. Smart BR Coffee, a Brazilian restaurant-coffee house at 4820 Bissell Avenue, has the flag painted covering the front of its building. During World Cup matches, the restaurant’s parking lot fills up and cheers can be heard from the street in the middle of the day.

In addition to a Brazilian flag outside, the café flies fabric flags of the U.S., Mexico, Honduras and South Africa both inside and outside the building. “Welcome,” reads one big sign hanging on the interior. There’s a wall covered with flyers, postcards and cards advertising the many Brazilian events and businesses all over the Bay Area.

A crowd watches the Brazil vs Chile game at the Smart BR Coffee in Richmond. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

“I come here to eat typical Brazilian food, find friends and community and watch the game,” said Cesar Menezes, a Richmond resident and Brazilian immigrant whose work maintaining soccer fields is flexible enough that he can come and watch the World Cup at Smart BR Coffee.

Menezes was one of about 60 people who showed up at the restaurant to watch Brazil’s national soccer team play Chile at 11:30 a.m. on Monday. Most of the spectators were Brazilian and were wearing the team’s T-shirt, caps or some item that represented their country.

Opened just eight months ago, Smart BR Coffee is a spot where Brazilians who live in or near Richmond come to have a little taste of home. Richmond has only three Brazilian restaurants, but different Brazilian communities organize events to make sure they gather together with their compatriots.

The Brazilian Consulate in San Francisco estimates that there are 40,000 Brazilians living in the Bay Area. “We don’t really know because we don’t have them registered,” said Rosana Sa, Assistant for Cultural Affairs from of the Brazilian Consulate.

The high rents in the Bay Area have led many Brazilian immigrants to choose to live in Richmond because housing is more affordable. Menezes said that’s the case for his friends and himself. “I found a cheap place in Richmond and it’s a nice place,” he said.

Two printed Brazilian newspapers — Brasil Best and Brazil Today — circulate in the Bay Area. Three of Richmond’s Christian churches — the Bay Area Brazilian Church, The First Presbyterian Church and the Church of the Living God — offer Portuguese-speaking ministries.

Olavo Dourado, owner of Smart BR Coffee, happy to show World Cup matches at his restaurant. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

William Silva, or “Pastor William,” as his parishioners from the Bay Area Brazilian Church know him, said that Brazilian immigrants usually work in construction, as baby sitters, drivers, delivering newspapers and in the hauling business. “They work hard,” he said.

Olavo Dourado, owner of Smart BR Coffee, said that he was one of the first Brazilians to move to Richmond 23 years ago, and that during the past 20 years the population grew. However, “about 30 percent had left in the past two or three years,” Dourado estimated, saying that the recent economy here had pushed some immigrants to go back to their home country.

Eddy Delima immigrated from Brazil 24 years ago. He’s seen the growth and decline of the Brazilian population, too. Delima is member of Saint John the Baptist, a Catholic church in El Cerrito. On Sundays his church offers mass in Portuguese. According to Delima, about 140 Brazilians are members of this church, and half of them are Richmond residents, including himself.

Delima was one of the organizers of Festa Junina, a traditional Brazilian June Festival related to St. John the Baptist’s holy day. The festival took place June 5 at Richmond’s Veteran’s Hall, where more than 500 people showed up to enjoy the Brazilian food, live music, costumes, and a play. Delima said that events like these are important because, “We want to celebrate our culture and keep it alive.”

Acording to Delima, Brazilian immigrants work too hard and don’t have much of a social life, so his hope is that, “if they are feeling homesick, they can come to the event and have fun for one day,” he said.

Maria Rodman watches the World Cup and cheers for Brazil at Smart BR Coffee. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

“We get together to celebrate because we are lonely,” said Thais Silva, owner of Pikanha’s steak house, a Brazilian family-owned restaurant in Point Richmond. She said that Brazilians like to hear happy music and to feel at home with one another because, “We miss our country.”

Pastor William says that most Brazilian immigrants in Richmond are young people in their twenties who left their families behind. “They work so hard that they don’t have a life anymore,” said the pastor.

Like Delima’s church, Pastor William’s Bay Area Brazilian Church also organizes events, like a Brazilian celebration this past Saturday that included capoeira, food and music. “People started to came at eight in the morning until eight at night,” he said. His church has a TV screen where parishioners can watch the World Cup games — they had one last Sunday, when Brazil was played the Ivory Coast, which was followed by a barbeque.

Maria Rodman, who was born in Brazil and is now a U.S. citizen, has lived in the country for 38 years. She came from Berkeley to the Smart BR Coffee to watch the match against Chile together with other Brazilians, “We are patriots, we like soccer games and we like to cheer up together,” she said. Brazil beat Chile 3-0.

There are now two weeks and thousands of miles separating Kathy Sheetz from the melee that she found herself involved in on May 31, when the Israeli navy raided a humanitarian flotilla of boats trying to deliver aid to Gaza, capturing Sheetz and 677 other activists and killing nine people. But it isn’t totally behind her yet.

“When I got back to the United States, I realized that everything had been confiscated from me on the boat,” Sheetz, 63, said. “I found out that my credit card had been stolen there [and since used]. So in a way, I felt like it wasn’t over. … That violation and that idea of having no security. …  There’s something about that that made me bring it home with me.”

Sheetz was one of two Richmond residents present at the Richmond City Council meeting Tuesday who were taken prisoner by Israeli forces two weeks ago when the Freedom Flotilla, which was carrying aid supplies to Gaza, was stopped in international waters. Paul Larudee, the other Richmond resident aboard the ships, also returned home this week. The two were on hand at Tuesday’s meeting to hear the council discuss the adoption of a resolution condemning the Israeli raid, but following a tense and vociforous standoff on the council, the issue was referred to the city’s Human Rights Commission instead.

Allen King, a Richmond business owner, holds up an image of the Israeli flag during Tuesday's council meeting in response to several pro-Palestinian members of the crowd. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

The tabled resolution, which would have supported a U.N. condemnation of Israel’s actions taken during the flotilla raid, quickly turned into a suprisingly divisive issue for the council. Several members of a packed crowd at Tuesday’s meeting held up pieces of paper displaying the Palestinian flag and cheered as Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, who heads the Human Rights Commission, said, “This is so clearly a human rights issue with so much pain. I know the Human Rights Commission will do it justice.”

Two councilmembers, Maria Viramontes and Nat Bates, each questioned why the mayor would introduce such a resolution, arguing that the city council had no business weighing in on international politics.

“This is something we have no control over,” Bates said. “Israel and Palestine don’t give a damn what Richmond thinks.”

His statement was met with a mixture of cheers and boos from the crowd. Once the issue was tabled, the crowd thinned out considerably.

The flotilla, organized by a Cyprus-based group called the Free Gaza Movement, was to deliver food, medical supplies and construction supplies to Gaza City, where the group says that 1.5 million people live in virtual isolation and are denied basic supplies by the Israeli government. The flotilla was stopped before it reached Gaza and boarded by armed Israeli forces, who killed nine of the activists. The incident has drawn international outrage and led to terse relations between the U.S. and Israel, a longtime ally.

Israel and Egypt have blocked maritime access to the Gaza strip since 2007, when the militant Islamist group Hamas took control of Palestine.

After the raid, Sheetz was taken to an Israeli prison, and eventually transported by Turkish officials to Istanbul, and then to New York. She returned to the Bay Area late Saturday night before arriving at Tuesday’s council meeting.

Sheetz, a retired nurse and mother of three grown children, moved to Richmond about a year ago from Marin with her partner, Steve Greaves, a preschool teacher. Greaves expressed frustration with not only the Israeli response to the flotilla, but with the lack of response from the U.S. government.

“My own government did not rescue my wife — it was up to the Turks to rescue her,” Greaves said. “They gave her a hotel room and a plane ticket to come back to the United States. My government completely failed it its duties to protect my wife. It’s shameful.”

Sheetz, who has taken part in two other similar humanitarian trips to Gaza — one successful and one that was stopped by Israeli forces — said that despite the violence this trip, the awareness it raised made the ordeal at least partly a success.

Betty Larudee holds a photograph of herself with husband Paul Larudee earlier this month. Paul Larudee was one of two Richmond residents aboard the beseiged Gaza flotilla. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

“It’s always dangerous to do this,” she said of trying to break the blockade. “But if that keeps us from doing it — and I think our government is too weak to do it — then this [oppression] will just go on forever. This was an awful tragedy, but we’re going to go back. This has just increased the amount of people interested in participating in this non-violent effort to end the blockade.”

Larudee, the other Richmond resident aboard the flotilla, had been taken to Greece after the stand-off, where he recuperated from injuries he suffered during the raid, before flying home. Larudee says he was beaten and tased by Israeli forces while in prison. An Israeli ambassador in San Francisco has since confirmed that Larudee required medical care, but did not say how he suffered the injuries.

An Associated Press photograph of Larudee arriving in Greece showed severe bruising on his arms.

Lindsey Baggette, a family friend who has been living with the Larudees in their home in the Richmond hills, said in an email that he is still recovering.  “You can still see a lot of his bruises, but he’s healing OK,” she wrote. “I guess he still has joint pain, but hopefully that will go away soon.”

McLaughlin, who has already personally condemned the Israeli attacks, and Vice Mayor Jeff Ritterman sponsored the proposed council resolution. McLaughlin said during the council dust-up Tuesday that the Human Rights Commission would report back to the council to discuss the resolution, although she said it may be several months before that happens.

As an up-and-coming young politician, Mister Phillips should be spending the weeks following last Tuesday’s failed bid to replace John Gioia on the County Board of Supervisors plotting his next political move. But first things first: He’s got a wedding to get to.

“Yeah, that’s the next big thing on my plate,” said Phillips, whose first name is, indeed, Mister, and who will tie the knot with his fiancée Saturday in Oakland. “I told people during the election that whether it turns out good for me or not, next week I have something big to look forward to.”

But after Phillips and his bride-to-be, Angela McClain, whom he met while the two were campaigning together for President Obama in 2008, get back from the honeymoon, Phillips will have to re-assess his near future, and whether he holds any more political aspirations. For now, though, the Richmond High alumnus says his mind can’t stray too far into the future.

“Anything’s possible,” he said of another bid for office. “Right now, I’m just focused on my wedding. I’m still going to be active in my community — I still live here, and it’s still a place I’d like to help. You don’t necessarily have to be an elected official to do that.”

John Gioia

Phillips, a Richmond-born attorney and political newcomer, spent much of his childhood in Richmond and now lives in unincorporated Montalvin. Despite his political novice, Phillips, a fourth-generation West County resident, brought an impressive resume into the County Supervisor race: He received his J.D. from Hastings, lobbied Congress on consumer advocacy issues as an Esther Peterson fellow, worked at the National Low-Income Housing Coalition in Washington, and is a Navy Reserve Lieutenant. But he made his biggest mark in Contra Costa in 2009 when he represented five claimants in suing the county over drainage issues on Lettia Road that flooded several homes in Montalvin Manor. The county and a private developer ultimately paid out $45,000 in damages to each of the claimants.

Following the lawsuit, Phillips ran a yearlong campaign to win Gioia’s District 1 seat on the Board of Supervisors. Gioia won Tuesday’s direct primary election with close to 80 percent of the vote.

District 1 includes the cities of Richmond, Kensington, El Cerrito, El Sobrante and San Pablo.

But with little money — he was out-fundraised 20-to-1 — and a popular 12-year incumbent in front of him, Phillips faced long odds from the get-go. A last-minute attack ad mailer detailing Phillips’ 2009 arrest for crossing a police line at the scene of a murder-suicide didn’t help, either. Phillips later pointed out that he was never prosecuted, and that the Sheriff’s Office ultimately found that the arresting deputy committed “unbecoming conduct.”

“I was encouraged,” he said of the final poll numbers. “… And we did it with a nasty hit piece going out right before the election, which, unfortunately, we didn’t have the resources to respond to. But there were definitely some positive sides to this.”

Phillips’ campaign raised and spent close to $5,000, according to campaign finance records, while Gioia’s team raised nearly $100,000 (not including the ad, which was produced by an independent expenditure committee). Phillips’ campaign focused on how the quality of life for West County residents has not improved since Gioia took office in 1998, and he also pledged to protect commercial and renter-occupied real estate from being seized by the county and handed over to large developers under Prop. 99. That measure, which was approved by state voters in 2008, protects owner-occupied residences from eminent-domain seizures, but not other types of property.

“People who actually sat down and really listened to what we had to say were able to see that what we were talking about was reasonable, practical, and something I could put into effect,” Phillips said. “The platform we were putting forth was something that not only could our campaign stand on, but the community at large could stand on, too, and was something they would benefit from.”

Should Phillips decide to throw his hat back into the political ring – particularly for state- or county-wide office — he may have to look hard for a suitable position to open up. Because Richmond is on the border of the county, as well as the state assembly and senate district lines, it tends to produce fewer regional politicians than places like Berkeley and Oakland in Alameda County, or Martinez and Concord in Contra Costa.

“I don’t have my eye on any particular office,” Phillips said. “I’m just going to focus on my wedding for now, and continue with my community advocacy. If sometime down the road there’s a position … we’ll see.”

For now, Phillips says he’ll return to his law practice in Pinole, where he specializes in civil rights issues and personal injury cases. But at least one of his supporters fully expects to see him back on the political scene sooner or later.

“I think [Phillips’] political future is bright,” said the Rev. Andre Shumake, the president of the Richmond Improvement Association and one of the most influential figures in Richmond politics. “I’m sure at some point [Gioia] will ascend to the assembly or even the state senate, and how encouraging it is, particularly as an African-American man, to see someone like Mister Phillips coming up through the ranks and willing to serve his community.

“[Phillips] was an inspiration, particularly to young African-Americans in Richmond, who saw in him a sense of hope in that he has been successful in life, and he was willing to make that civic commitment to serve the citizenry of Richmond,” he said.

Shumake said he believed Gioia and other politicians like Congressman George Miller (District 7) and Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (AD-14) would do well to invite Phillips into their inner circles.

“That’s the kind of nurturing that needs to come out of West County,” Shumake said. “We need to nurture these young men and women to take on that kind of leadership. So yes, I’m sure he’ll be on the scene for some time.”

Richmond mayor Gayle McLaughlin isn’t the untested commodity she was four years ago, when she drew national headlines by becoming the nation’s only big-city Green Party mayor.

She’s more careful with her words and just a shade more conservative in her aims, if not her hopes. Her platform this year now includes more stock-in-trade pledges made by municipal politicians, including a vow to beef up the police force to about 200 sworn officers. She also hopes to expand some of her flagship green-jobs training and youth employment programs, even if it requires funds siphoned from her own office’s budget, as it did earlier this year.

The journey from rabble-rousing candidate to sometimes-embattled municipal leader has been a learning experience, and sometimes a bruising one, she acknowledged during a wide-ranging interview at the downtown offices of the Richmond Progressive Alliance, a local political group she co-founded.

“The mistake that I would say I made is that I overestimated the willingness of the full council to engage productively, in a productive and principled debate of divergent ideas,” said McLaughlin.  “I really didn’t expect so much blocking of good ideas, blocking of good policy.”

As a challenger in 2006, McLaughlin proved a political rarity — a candidate who campaigned on raising taxes, at least for large corporations. She also pledged to re-hire laid off city workers and launch jobs programs for local youths.

Amazingly to some City Hall watchers, it clicked. Thanks to a three-way race, McLaughlin squeaked into office with just over one-third of the vote, giving her the victory over two-term incumbent Irma Anderson. The Richmond Globe newspaper ran a headline declaring that Anderson’s “Legacy yields to McLaughlin’s progressive ideals.”

As America’s first Green Party mayor of a city of more than 100,000 residents, McLaughlin was instantly a national figure. Weeks later, she would share the stage with Green Party goliath Ralph Nader at an event bristling with progressive luminaries in San Francisco.

McLaughlin speaking with local youth outreach worker Jesse Reed during a June 5 event at Nevin Park.

McLaughlin’s 2006 victory was in part the product of demographic change. Like other Bay Area cities, Richmond’s African American population has declined while the number of Latino residents rises.

At the beginning of the decade, the City Council included six African Americans, but councilman Nate Bates is the lone black councilman today.  To some political observers, McLaughlin’s victory signaled not just a shift to the left and a backlash against Chevron Corp., the city’s largest taxpayer, but a decline in African American dominance over political affairs in Richmond.

To others, it was merely an aberration, made possible by a three-way race in which another African American candidate siphoned votes from Anderson’s base.

Four years after her razor-thin victory over Anderson, McLaughlin is humbled but no less determined to keep her seat. No challenger has officially declared intentions to replace McLaughlin in this November’s election, but many residents and officials at City Hall expect longtime Councilman Nat Bates to run. Bates remains noncommittal about his mayoral aspirations.

“I haven’t ruled anything out,” Bates said.

McLaughlin one-on-one is the same blend of quixotic activist and politician that council observers have seen in public for years. During a nearly 40-minute interview, she acknowledged some missteps and legislative gridlock, but was adamant that a second-term was vital to ensure the city continues to overcome the high unemployment, pollution and crime that has marred its post-WWII history.

As she recalled her four years in office, she ticked off her undelivered ideas — some thwarted by council colleagues and some shelved in the face of waning support — like installing energy-saving windows at the civic center and the establishment of an environmental task force to help plot green development policies.

But, she said, the disappointments had silver linings.

“Just shifting the dialogue of the city to include discussions of social justice, environmental issues,” McLaughlin said. “This wasn’t part of the discussion here before.”

McLaughlin has a mixed record on what voters across ethnic lines see as the city’s foremost issue: crime. One of her stated goals during her run for mayor four years ago was to reduce the violence that has roiled the city for years. At the time, the city had suffered several years of 40-plus homicides annually and the highest or second-highest crime rate in the Bay Area.

“We have had violence reduction over recent years. That’s something that the citizens of Richmond want to see more of,” she said.

Crime was down slightly overall in 2009, but the city saw a spike in homicides. After much-heralded progress in 2008, the first in years when the city saw fewer than 30 killings, 47 people were slain in 2009. 

An FBI report released in May ranked Richmond the second most dangerous city in America, behind only Baltimore.

McLaughlin has clashed on occasion with law enforcement leadership. In 2008, Police Chief Chris Magnus joined a chorus of critics when McLaughlin skipped a news conference hailing a series of raids aimed at gang strongholds and drug sources in the city.

At the time, Magnus told local newspapers he was “disappointed” in the “lack of support.”

McLaughlin has maintained that she is concerned about the potential effects on children and other innocents who could be exposed to raids, which often target homes where children may be present.

She has also cast several minority opposition votes against police-supported measures, including equipment purchases and driver’s license checkpoints, which have since been discontinued in Richmond.

While public tensions with the Police Department have cooled — McLaughlin has not criticized Magnus for an ongoing discrimination lawsuit filed against him by African American members of his command staff — she continues to be less than solidly-aligned with her police chief.

During her State of the City address in January, she cast a harsh light on local crime. “When unemployment rates double as they did in 2009, it is not surprising that violent crime and homicide also skyrocketed,” she said. The comments were a stark contrast to Magnus’ own public comments weeks before, when he focused on drops in overall crime.

Unlike potential rival Bates, McLaughlin opposes the casino project proposed for Point Molate, a former Naval fuel depot on the city’s shoreline. A Napa-based developer and its Native American tribal partners have been given exclusive rights by the city to draw up plans for a project, rights given over McLaughlin’s minority opposition.

She said project developer Upstream LLC’s promises of economic growth and local jobs are a mirage.

“Clearly urban casinos are associated with a great deal of social ills,” including increases in crime, alcohol and drug abuse and poverty, she said.

“They just take money from the have-nots and put it in the hands of the haves. Local residents will be the ones who lose their money,” she said

McLaughlin contends that the project should be opened to other developers to propose plans for a resort-type facility, sans the casino, although whether any others would take advantage of the opportunity is unclear.

It’s when she talks about energy-saving technology that McLaughlin sounds most impassioned.

“It’s no longer just the emerging green economy, it is now the green economy transforming the entire economy,” McLaughlin said. “We believe that we need more stimulus funding to advance it further and provide those green jobs that our residents are waiting to receive and are fully trained for.”

She pointed to Solar Richmond — a local nonprofit she co-founded that works with the city to provide training in green jobs — as one of her greatest achievements in office. 

“Solar Richmond has really put us in the forefront and become a model training program,” McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin is adamant that she holds the same values she did four years ago, and that she has not engaged in what was once the norm for local politicians: Being a beneficiary of the city’s heavy industries, led by Chevron Corp., which operates its largest West Coast refinery in Richmond.

“I take not a penny of corporate funding,” she said, adding later that, “Particularly Richmond has been under the thumb of corporations for decades.”

McLaughlin does accept donations from unions, environmental groups, Planned Parenthood and individual donors.  When asked to explain why she was willing to accept these donations, but not those from corporations, she said it comes down to the organizations’ goals. 

“We consider unions as … actually the opposite of corporations. Unions are people coming together to fight for their rights, ordinary people coming together to fight for their rights,” she said. “When it comes to organizations that stand for the public good … that’s a different thing than a corporation whose purpose is to gain profit.”

McLaughlin has always had an activist streak. She grew up in Chicago, the third of five daughters to working-class parents. She recalls that the clashes between demonstrators and police outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago left an imprint on her at a young age.

As a young woman, she would go on to work as a local organizer for Chicago-based Operation PUSH, and ultimately join the Green Party.

During public remarks, whether in council chambers or a small community center in North Richmond, McLaughlin is fond of paraphrasing civil rights icon Jesse Jackson; she worked during his 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns as an organizer for his Rainbow Coalition, a multiethnic political organization.

During the 1980s, she also volunteered for the Chicago Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), a grassroots group opposing U.S. military intervention in the southern hemisphere.

“I also did volunteer work with other Central American solidarity groups during that period, focusing on Nicaragua and Guatemala,” she said.

She later enrolled in graduate studies, taught pre-school, first grade, and special-needs children for several years.

Unlike some of her local political adversaries, McLaughlin is relatively new to Richmond, having moved to the city in the late 1990s, around the time she joined the Green Party. She is married to Paul Kilkenny, a local activist for social and environmental justice.

In 2004, on her first attempt, McLaughlin was elected to the City Council, where she quickly burnished her environmental credentials, leading a successful opposition to a proposed crematorium project in North Richmond. During her mayoral run in 2006, she was narrowly elected on her first try.

Today, McLaughlin speaks of herself more as a piece of a larger movement than its leader.

“Me as an individual, as a candidate, as mayor, matters less than me as a member of a collective movement that has been working hard for several years now to build a better Richmond,” she said.

An unassuming woman with dark-rimmed glasses and a careful gait, McLaughlin looks more like a reassuring schoolteacher or a human resources manager than a vanguard of a national party. Her public speech, while clearly influenced by the lofty oration of Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama and others, can be eloquent and emphatic, but isn’t likely to whip a crowd into a frenzy.

But the 58-year-old leader has given every indication that she is prepared to battle to keep her spot atop local government.

“We need to continue to work hard to show that the key efforts and priorities of the city need to be focused on reversing decades of injustices,” McLaughlin said. “Decades of lack of opportunity, decades of pollution that has created health impacts on our community, and decades of economic inequity – and we have brought forward policy efforts” to address them.

In April, her campaign re-election announcement rally drew prominent — and divisive — national figures to the city. Anthony “Van” Jones, a former member of the Obama Administration’s environmental team whose controversial public statements drew the attention of conservative pundits and ultimately led to his resignation, called the Richmond mayoral race the most important in the country for the “green movement.”

Los Angeles-based immigration advocate Nativo Lopez hailed McLaughlin as the rare contemporary politician who is “uniting people, supporting immigrants, and restoring good jobs to local communities.”

But to her critics — and potential opponents in the November election — McLaughlin is an ineffective politician whose extreme rhetoric and national affiliations with the Green Party act as distractions that hold back a city poised to prosper.  

McLaughlin has never been shy about publicly weighing in on national matters. She has criticized war policy in the Middle East, derided Arizona’s immigration policy as a “hate law” and, last week, issued a statement condemning the military action that killed several people on a humanitarian flotilla in which she called Gaza a “virtual prison.”

McLaughlin addresses supporters during her campaign kickoff event in April.

Her adversaries assert that she has not built beyond the narrow base that vaulted her into office, is personally insincere and that financial shenanigans have occurred in her own office during her watch.

In 2008, one of her aids was charged with stealing more than $60,000 from the city through a scheme involving fraudulent invoices for services never rendered. The aide later admitted the wrongdoing. At the time, McLaughlin called the scheme an inexcusable “abuse” of the community’s trust, as well as her own. The news shook McLaughlin’s credibility in the eyes of many, given her campaign commitments to probity and fair-dealing.

Critics say her hostility toward corporations has stifled progress for the city.

Bates has made no secret of his distaste for McLaughlin’s governing philosophy.

“She hates Chevron,” Bates said. “And that hatred causes her to refuse to negotiate with this important entity in the community or even to accept a check from them on behalf of the community.”

McLaughlin has spotty support among area merchants.

“We need jobs and we need to better educate our children, and I am convinced that McLaughlin is doing a terrible job of getting those things done,” said Joe Fisher, a local businessman and neighborhood council president. “She says and does things for political reasons, not necessarily for what’s best for the community.”

Fisher also noted the rise in homicides last year, and criticized McLaughlin for what he characterized as minimizing that grim statistic.

“It is a fact that the homicides, the killings, are way up (in 2009),” Fisher said. “But she is not genuine about that, instead she brags about crime being down.”

But McLaughlin’s supporters, a group that includes council colleagues Tom Butt and Jeff Ritterman, are adamant that it is crucial for her to earn another term. Her record over the last four years may be mixed, but within a context of a city essentially founded a century ago on oil refining and heavy industries, the rate of positive change McLaughlin has helped usher in has been swift, they say.

“Although she has only one vote like other council members, she has the bully pulpit and can set a tone for the city,” Butt said. “Compared to most cities, Richmond is pretty well off in these tough economic times. We have had to make no layoffs.”

Add to that the stark difference between her and her most likely challenger, Bates, and City Hall observers think her base of supporters will be sufficiently energized.

McLaughlin during her State of the City speech in January.

“From the viewpoint of the progressive community, Nat Bates as mayor would be disaster for Richmond,” said Tony Sustak, a member of the Richmond Greens Steering Committee. “If you like McMansions on the shoreline, casinos, contempt for the environment, attacks on the undocumented community … Bates is your guy.”

Anthony Adams, an African American neighborhood leader in the city’s Iron Triangle, said McLaughlin has the support of many, if not most, of the city’s African American voters.

“Folks here know that the color of your skin alone doesn’t mean you’re going to be good for the community or that you deserve the vote,” he said.

Unlike her upset win in 2006, McLaughlin knows that she is the marked incumbent this time around. Whether she has built on the narrow base that vaulted her into office with just 37 percent of the vote can only be determined by the ballot box in November.

But she still rings the clarion tones of an outsider straining to unsettle the establishment. She talks about her cadre of a few hundred loyal volunteers who will begin walking door-to-door with her this month.

When she gets impassioned, which happens often, especially when she speaks about Upstream LLC or Chevron — her multinational, seemingly inexhaustible foe — McLaughlin’s high, almost girlish voice lowers into a slow, drawn-out cadence. It’s as though she strains to make her listener feel — rather than merely hear — each aching syllable.

She still portrays herself as the underdog. Whether she is comes down to who you’re asking.

“I expect to be greatly outspent,” she said. “But we’ll oppose the power of money with the power of ideas.”

Pineapple upside-down cake, potato salad, homemade hummus and more decorated the table for a potluck organized by the Richmond Heights Neighborhood Council this past Monday.

Community members gathered at the Humboldt play lot, where neighbors mingled with members of the fire department and enjoyed a canine demonstration presented by some police officers. Children and grown ups were in awe at how well trained the officers’ Belgian Malinois dog was. Old friends got to socialize as well as connect with neighbors that they hadn’t met before.

Among the faces at the potluck was council member Ludmyrna Lopez, who lives close by the play lot.

County supervisor John Gioia, who would be re-elected for office the next day and who used to live in Richmond Heights, showed up and got together with friends and supporters.

Neighborhood council members took the opportunity to collect names and e-mails for the newsletter and inform residents about the neighborhood watch program.

The gathering stated at 6:30 pm, but at 9:00 pm the cold wind at Richmond Heights pushed the families back to their houses.

“It was very successful,” said Owen Martin, the president of the Neighborhood Council, when the potluck was over.

Betty Larudee has experienced her entire range of emotions this week: From the shock she felt after learning on Monday that the fleet of humanitarian aid boats her husband Paul was aboard had been raided by Israeli troops in the Mediterranean Sea, to the massive relief she felt upon finally hearing her husband’s voice on the phone Wednesday, telling her he is OK.

“You have no idea,” Larudee, who lives in Richmond, said. “When I heard his voice, I kept asking him, ‘Are you OK? You sound tired.’ He said, yes, he’s tired, but he’s OK. And it was so nice — so, so nice. I didn’t even know what other questions to ask. Nothing came into my mind except just that he’s alive, and he’s OK. I wanted to know when I’m going to see him. His children are waiting to see him. I can’t wait to take care of him.”

Paul Larudee, a former linguistics professor who now makes his living tuning pianos, was aboard a fleet of boats called the Freedom Flotilla seeking to deliver food and other supplies including wheelchairs, cement and children’s toys, to Gaza when Israeli forces stopped and then boarded his ship. According to his wife, Larudee initially escaped capture by jumping overboard. Friends say he remained in the water for close to an hour before being pulled out and taken to a detention facility, where, according to multiple news reports, he says he was beaten and tased by Israeli authorities.

According to a report in Thursday’s San Francisco Chronicle, a spokesman at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco acknowledged that Larudee required medical attention, but would not say how he suffered his injuries.

At least nine members of the flotilla were killed, and some are still missing. Many of the humanitarian workers also suffered injuries during the melee, although according to news reports, they were not as serious as Larudee’s.

Betty Larudee holds a photograph of herself with husband Paul Larudee at their home in the Richmond Hills. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

Some among the 678 volunteers were taken to Istanbul by Israeli troops, and will return home over the coming days. Richmond resident Kathy Sheetz, a retired nurse, was aboard the flotilla and is presumed to be in Istanbul, said Henry Norr, a member of the Free Palestine Movement that both Sheetz and Larudee belonged to, although Sheetz’ husband hadn’t heard word from her as of Thursday.

Larudee is now at an Army base in Greece, where his wife says he may stay until June 11 to recuperate, although she’d like him to come home as soon as he’s able.

“I saw his picture is in the paper today,” Betty Larudee said. “He looks skinny and tired, and he’s very bruised. I was shocked when I saw the picture. I’m worried about him. I spoke to him yesterday, and he sounded OK over the phone. So I’m trying to figure out if he can stand coming home right away, or if he needs to stay in Greece for a few days.

“I just want to cry,” she said at her home in the Richmond hills, holding a newspaper report about the incident that featured an Associated Press photo of Larudee, clearly bruised. “I want to hug him. … Even when I see photos of him like this, I’m so proud of him.”

The Larudees have two adult sons, who also live in Richmond.

This was Paul Larudee’s second mission to deliver aid to Gaza by sea. He is one of two founders of the Free Palestine Movement, a local humanitarian nonprofit group, and had been to Palestine several times.

Israel has blocked maritime aid shipments to the Gaza strip since 2007, when the Islamist Hamas movement came to power there. While the Israeli government does allow some food and aid materials to reach Gaza, groups like the Free Palestine Movement insist that the region that is home to 1.5 million people is still sorely lacking for even basic medical and construction equipment.

Larudee was part of a mission in August 2008 that successfully broke through the blockade and delivered food, clothing and medical equipment to Gaza. According to his wife, few thought Monday’s mission, though dangerous, would become violent.

“They all understood that there was some element [of risk] in this, but nobody expected that kind of risk,” she said. “They all expected that the [Israeli] boats would surround them and take them captive to Israel and they’d be put in prison, and then everyone would be released to their country of origin. Nobody though or expected this type of raid from the Israelis.”

Norr, of the Free Palestine Movement, said that while he was horrified at the news, he wasn’t completely surprised. “Of course it’s horrible,” he said. “But those of us who’ve experienced the way they treat the Palestinians are not entirely surprised by this, because we know they’re capable of being very vicious — and I say that as a Jewish person. It seems monumentally stupid even from their point of view, but we all know they’re capable of such things.”

Lindsey Baggette, a family friend of the Larudees, holds a newspaper report of Paul Larudee's arrival in Greece. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

Lindsey Baggette, a family friend of Larudee’s who has been living with the family for a few weeks, said the past few days have been a blur. “We definitely discussed [the dangers of the trip], and we were scared the whole time,” Baggette said. “But we weren’t expecting anyone to actually die. I didn’t know it’d get that violent, so when we first heard that, it was a real shock. I’ve pretty much been in shock since then. We’re all exhausted. People have been calling off the hook.”

Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin put out a press release Wednesday condemning the Israeli attack, which has led to international protest. “I have worked with Paul Larudee on local housing issues in Richmond, and I know his track record of commitment to nonviolence in standing up against the oppression of Palestinians,” McLaughlin said in the press release. “It is unconscionable that he was brutalized by his captors while he was resisting peacefully following the tradition of Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

According to the press release, Congressman George Miller received word from the U.S. State Department that both Sheetz and Larudee were alive and were set to leave Israel Wednesday night.

(For video of Larudee speaking to a group of protesters in Turkey, click here.)

For the teens and young adults who gathered on a rainy day last week in North Richmond, life has been a succession of struggles and temptations.

Jobs are nearly nonexistent in this forgotten neighborhood, which straddles city and county dividing lines. But violence and crime are omnipresent. Shootings occur almost daily. A local market’s wall serves as a makeshift memorial to those who have been felled by local violence.

But on this day, the future seemed a little brighter.

“One decision can be the wrong decision anytime in life out here, and that’s it,” said Darvone Crenshaw, who has lived all of his twenty years in North Richmond. “But right now I am feeling like I can get through the obstacles in my life.”

Crenshaw was one of about 15 local students honored May 17 for completing a three-month  life skills course taught by instructors from Project IMPACT, an empowerment group was launched by ex-inmates of California penitentiaries in the late 1990s. The program is funded by the Operation of Neighborhood Safety, a city agency established in 2007. Its curriculum ranges from human nature and ethics to violence prevention, addiction and healthy relationships, said Project IMPACT staff member Leonard Neal.

Inside a small community center in the 1600 block of N. Jade Street, youths sat around tables adorned with paper hats and decorations congratulating grads.

Several of the instructors for Project IMPACT, which stands for “Incarcerated Men Putting Away Childish Things,” addressed the graduates. “We are here to give back, and the first place you go to give back is in your home community,” Neal told the graduates. “This is where we can make a difference.”

Mayor Gayle McLaughlin was also on hand, and addressed the program graduates before certificates were handed out. McLaughlin talked about when she lived in Chicago and Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH, a social justice and jobs program, rose to national prominence in the 1970s and 1980s.

“I remember when Rev. Jesse Jackson said to the crowd ‘I am somebody! We are somebody!’” McLaughlin said. “And that’s what we in Richmond have to remember. We are somebody … we together are somebody, and we’re somebody special.”

North Richmond is one of the most depressed and crime-plagued sections of the Richmond, which in 2009 FBI records revealed was the nation’s second-most dangerous city. On the day of the graduation, a curbside memorial for 23-year-old Sharanda Thomas, a pregnant mother of two who was shot and killed in February, still stood on Seventh Streets, a few blocks south of the ceremony.

But at the event, Gary Griffin, 21, was as happy as he could remember, he said. A high school dropout and father of an infant daughter, Griffin said the program had given him new optimism. He has lived in North Richmond all his life.

“This program has helped my confidence,” Griffin said. “It’s made me want to do something more than what I have been doing, and that’s a big change for me.”