Like many African American families, Mary “Peace” Head and her brood migrated to the Bay Area from Louisiana just before WWII in search of work and opportunity.

She would go on to work as a welder in the Richmond shipyards during the war. Head, who is now 83, later became one of the early residents of Parchester Village.  She’s been a leader in this small housing development since the 1950s, playing an instrumental role in securing funding for a neighborhood community center and acting as a quasi-guardian to generations of local kids.

She is called “Mary Peace” by neighbors and others throughout the city, a name she earned by flashing her customary “peace sign” with her right index and middle fingers.

In 1950, Parchester Village, named for wealthy developer Fred Parr, opened on land beyond the border of northwest Richmond.

It was billed as a community for “All Americans,” but the idea was ahead of its time.

Few whites wanted to live in integrated communities, and Parchester Village quickly was a de facto African American enclave. Houses sold for $35 down and $95 a month, Head remembered.

“We thought it was so beautiful, it was like a dream,” said Head, who moved with her family from Berkeley to the new housing tract. “And I remember I couldn’t believe it was for us after we had been pushed off from so many other places. It was there for our people, for black people.”

Head stressed that the segregation wasn’t on a civic code, but it was real.

“I suppose white folks could have lived here if they wanted to, but neighborhoods weren’t integrated then like they are now,” Head said.

Parchester Village was annexed in Richmond in 1962.

Today, Parchester remains thought of as an African American community, but new immigrants, especially Latinos, now comprise about a third neighborhood’s population. Many original owners rent their properties to other families.

Head remains one of Richmond’s most beloved and revered figures, said Corky Booze, a candidate for City Council and longtime community advocate for Parchester Village. Booze said Parchester Village – a development initially erected outside the city to serve the housing demand of thousands of new black residents drawn by wartime industry – embodies the African American experience in Richmond.

“Mary has been a leader in that community, a community that was underserved and forgotten from its beginning, for decades,” Booze said. “She’s a local icon.”

Head still takes frequent walks in the small neighborhood, which is circled by railroad tracks and sits against the bay just north of Chevron Corp. She still walks well, and wears colorful bandanas and a consistent smile.

She often stops and chats with men and women who were once children playing in front of her house.

“I’ll never leave my Parchester Village,” she said.

After two years of tireless fundraising, intensive construction and nearly $8 million in costs, the 324,000-gallon Richmond Plunge swimming pool is now open to all.

No one has a richer perspective on the pool, originally built in 1926, than June Albonico. She first visited the Plunge with her father during the early years of the Great Depression, later becoming a lifeguard in 1956.

Albonico, 83, frequently visited the site during its re-construction, and shared her memories during a video interview with Richmond Confidential in April.

“I have waited for the day for so long,” Albonico then said of the Plunge’s re-opening. “When it comes, I’ll know that I’ll never have to be without it again, and so many others will be able to enjoy it like I have.”

While the pool is a throwback to an era when huge, urban public swimming pools were hailed as major social and economic benefits to American communities, it is also outfitted with modern technology.

Solar panels will generate heat to keep the water warm, provide lighting and power operable windows and pumps.

The pool’s long hiatus was precipitated by the Loma Prieta quake of 1989, which heavily damaged the Plunge. Inspectors recommended closure, and a ballot measure to fund repairs was nixed by voters.

The pool closed in 2001.

The Save the Richmond Plunge Trust and other resident fundraising efforts helped revive hope for the pool and drew additional public and private funds. The 60-by-160-foot pool re-opened to the public on August 14, 2010.

Since 1874, the Victorian lighthouse at East Brother Island has continued to be a landmark for sailors.

“The light has to be on. If it’s not we have to tell the Coast Guard and there’s a back-up that comes on,” said Anne Witts, who together with her husband Ed, is the innkeeper at the lighthouse.

As the innkeepers, the Witts have to take care of much more than just the light. Around 26 years ago, the East Brother Light Station became a bed and breakfast destination that receives guests from Thursday through Sunday; its earnings are used to maintain the facilities. For the last year and a half, the Witts have been working around the clock, keeping the light station alive.

In 1971, the station was placed on the National Register of Historic Places—that saved it from being demolished and replaced by a light on a tower. It was falling apart from lack of funding to restore it, until the East Brother Light Station, Inc., a nonprofit corporation group, was formed 1979.

Today, the restored structures at the station are still standing, but because they are more than 100 years old, they need constant attention and care. “We fix things every day,” said Ed Witts. Volunteers come on the second Saturday of every month and work on projects around the island. The volunteer board that meets once a month is constantly doing work, too.

The bed and breakfast is a small and cozy place. Guests stay the night in one of the four bedrooms located in the lighthouse building, or at the one in the fog signal building. To get there, customers must make reservations in advance and are picked up by boat from Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor. From the harbor it takes ten minutes to get to the light station, and passengers can enjoy the marvelous views of the San Francisco skyline, Mount Tamalpais, and the Marin coastline.

The experience at the bed and breakfast is definitely a unique getaway. Guests enjoy the views, the food, and get to know the other guests and innkeepers. They also get a tour of the island and the restored lighthouse and foghorn buildings. The original, 136-year-old foghorn is demonstrated for the guests every morning. However there’s an electric modern one inside the building that goes on all winter long.

The only water at the island is rainwater collected on a cistern, and the island has its own sewer treatment plant. Only guests who are staying longer than one night are allowed to take showers. “If all guests were taking showers we would have to close,” said Anne. “We don’t have enough water.”

Anne is the cook at the lighthouse. “When people are fed well, they are really happy and Anne feeds them really well,” said her husband fondly.

Lighthouse guests are usually couples that are celebrating birthdays or anniversaries. “We do a romantic theme,” said Ed. “That’s what the lighthouse is known for.”

As innkeepers, the Witts have Coast Guard licenses to be able to pilot a boat, and they have to do a lot of boating to keep the lighthouse running since everything has to be taken on and off the island. “We try to take all of the laundry and propane and garbage off at the end of our week and bring it all back at the beginning,” said Ed Witts. They also have to transport enough food for the guests and themselves. “We try not to make many extra trips because is very time consuming and expensive,” he said.

The Witts have Tuesdays off, which they spend at their home in Pittsburg; the rest of the week the couple has their plate full innkeeping at the light station. When asked what happens if one of them gets sick, Anne said laughing, “We keep going—there is no ‘stop.’”

The couple has loved their time at the light station. Anne, originally from Belgium, and Ed, from the Bay Area, actually met sailing in Italy.  When they moved from Europe they applied for the job as innkeepers. They said that the job was a perfect fit for them, but they are ready to pass it on in four months when their contract expires. “If you keep doing it for too long, you can burn out,” Ed said.

The Witts aren’t tired of the beautiful views and the ocean, though—when they are done with their work at the light station, said Anne, “We are going to take care of our house and then we’re going sailing for a few months.”

Dogs of all sizes and breeds run unleashed, fetch balls, meet other dogs, swim and enjoy Point Isabel Park in Richmond. Afterwards, dogs and their owners can stop by the only businesses at Point Isabel: Mudpuppy’s Tub and Scrub, where the dogs can get baths, and the Sit and Stay Café, where their people can get coffee and food.

These two businesses, run by the same owners, are located one next to another in a small, one level rectangular building. The café is a walk-up counter with seating at a nearby patio. Mudpuppy’s is a pet store that has lots of dog toys, treats and supplies with bathtubs where the dogs get washed.

“You came here, you take your dog for a walk, it gets all dirty, then you wash your dog and then you go home. It’s a great location,” said Diane Blake who has been coming for a couple years to Point Isabel to walk her dog, Zoe.

“I love being in the East Bay, I love this community, I love dogs,” said Daniel Bergerac, one of the businesses’ three partners and owners. Bergerac, his husband Eddie Lundeen and long-time friend Todd Ahlberg run Mudpuppy’s and the café in cooperation with the East Bay Regional Park District.

Jay Villamor, an employee that has been there for five years, at the front counter of Mudpuppy’s Tub and Scrub. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

Mudpuppy’s began about 15 years ago at Point Isabel, but it was much different back then. Original owners Cynthia Sloan and Holly Stockton started washing dogs in a small RV with one tub. A year later they got a 12 by 28 feet “mobile modular” with four tubs, a little sales counter and a ramp so that the dogs could come inside. Lundeen worked as their employee in 1997; soon after that the two original owners decided to move to the country and open a pet wash and a pet store.

Lundeen and Bergerac took over the business in 2000. Since then, they worked with the East Bay Regional Park District to build a permanent building for the dog wash. The park district also wanted to add a café; that became the building where Mudpuppy’s and Sit and Stay Café are now. A percentage of every sale goes to the park district and the building is owned by the East Bay Regional Park District.

“I loved this park even before we got the business. We were coming here with our dogs,” said Bergerac.

Before running Mudpuppy’s, Bergerac was an executive recruiter, and not thrilled to be sitting in an office for ten hours a day, he said. “It was good money but I wasn’t loving it. I just felt that I needed a job that I could love,” said Bergerac. “Finally I quit my recruiting job and started doing this full time and never looked back.”

Ahlberg joined the partnership more than a year ago. “I joined to help the company grow,” he said.

Ashley Gonzales gives a full service bath. Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

And the company has grown a lot over the last 15 years. Mudpuppy’s and the Sit and Stay Café now have 10 employees; seven work full-time. Mudpuppy’s sell toys, leashes, collars, training supplies, treats and nearly everything for dogs except food. The dog wash service is very popular. The washer will ask each new customer about their dog — if they have any skin or shedding problems or nail issues, for example. They make sure to pick the right shampoo. They do hair conditioning, nail trims and a flea dip if necessary. Weekends can get busy at the dog wash, so they recommend that people book online or walk in to make appointments.

The dog washers get to know their canine clients very well. Jay Villamor , who has been working at Mudpuppy’s and at the café for five years, said that when you have a regular customer, “the dogs tend to bond with you. It’s fun that way.” Villamor started working at the café and after two years was trained to work at the dog wash. “I fell in love with it, because working with a variety of different dogs is not the same as serving the same cup of coffee every day,” he said.

Bergerac said that there have been situations where bathers have spotted a dog’s health problem, like when Claudio Eleccion, a employee that had been working there for seven years, found a small tumor on a dog. “When the owner’s took him to the vet, they cut it out on time and the dog is still with us,” said Bergerac.

Ahlberg said that he knows the dogs’ names better than their owners’ names —“When we book the dogs for washes, we put the dog’s name, not the person’s name,” he said. He’ll address people by saying, “Hey, Fido’s dad!” Ahlberg thinks that the dog owners enjoy it. “They like that we are all about the dogs,” he said.

The Sit and Stay Café does have some treats for humans — a full espresso menu plus chili, soups, deli sandwiches, hot dogs, ice cream, smoothies, and bagels. “Boy, do we sell bagels,” said Bergerac.

“I think it’s the best job I’ve ever had,” said Simone Granada, who has worked at the café for five years. She started working at the café because she liked the dogs, and found that her employers helped her go to college by giving her flexible work hours. Granada describes the work environment as being like a family, and a good place to network because business is always good and different people are always coming into the café.

“Having the café is like when you have a party and people congregate in the kitchen. It gives them some place to eat and have a good time,” Lundeen agreed. Bergerac said that people bring family and friends that are visiting from out of town “to see Mudpuppy’s, to see the café and to see how incredible this park is.”

Dog and owner stop their walk to pose for a picture at Point Isabel. The view in the background is the Golden Gate Bridge . Photo by Veronica Moscoso.

Point Isabel is a 23-acre park at the west end of Central Avenue in Richmond. Visitors get a wide view of San Francisco, the Golden Gate and Marin County from the park. Its attractions include bird watching, fishing, jogging, running, bicycling, kite flying and picnicking— but the main attraction for locals is that it’s a place where dogs are allowed to run off-leash. (However, owners are expected to have a leash with them and have their dog under voice control and within their sight.)

People come to the park all the time, even during weekdays and the winter, but the place is filled up on sunny days, specially Sundays. On weekends people start arriving at 8 am. People drive in from as far as Walnut Creek and Concord; Mudpuppy’s owners say they have seen people come from Sacramento when it’s too hot down there during the summer.

Tameka Beaudreaux, who’s been coming to the park for about two years, didn’t know about Point Isabel until she got a dog. She drives from West Oakland to Point Isabel three times a week. She likes Mudpuppy’s services. “They seem to have a good rapport with all the dogs and take good care of them,” she said.

There is a community of dog owners who keep coming week after week. “We’ve seen people that have met at the park, then they start showing up at the park together, then they get married, then we see their kids, then we see their second dog and then their third dog,” said Bergerac.

The dog walkers have become a community of friends for Mudpuppy’s owners. “After we got married, we kept it very quiet”, said Bergerac referring to his wedding to Lundeen. “A couple park users found out about it and they threw a wedding party for us at their home,” he said.

Next week they are going to the 90^th birthday party of one of the park’s users. “It’s an honor to be that much part of someone’s life that they want to share with us,” said Bergerac.

Mudpuppy’s become so successful that the partners are now expanding their business to other parks. “Suddenly the company started to grow without expecting it or planning it,” said Ahlberg. They opened two cafés with regional parks, Lake Anza Beach Club last year and Contra Loma Beach Club this year. “It’s a fun job and we think we add a lot to the ambiance of the parks,” Ahlberg said.

Almost two years after workers broke ground on an ambitious renovation effort at the 84-year-old Richmond Municipal Natatorium, better known as The Plunge, the giant Point Richmond swimming pool is nearly finished.

Workers were mostly relegated to touch-up work Thursday, as the pool prepares for its August 14 grand opening. The interior of the building is nearly complete, with only a few fixes left to go. The pool is filled with 320,000 gallons of water, and the giant mural that covers the western wall appears complete. Save for some landscaping work that is yet to be done in the pool’s front yard, the construction appears to be a success.

“It’s just little stuff now,” lead architect Todd Jersey said of the ongoing work. “We’re putting in the floors, installing the heaters. Then it’s just a lot of clean-up.”

Opening Day for the renovated pool is set for August 14, when members of the trust that helped fundraise to pay for the construction work will give tours of the building and, for the first time since 2001, let folks take a dip in the 9,600-square-foot pool. “We’re starting to see, ‘Oh wow, it’s really coming together,’” Jersey said.

The Plunge, originally opened in 1926, was the largest indoor swimming pool in the state until it was closed in 2001 because of its deteriorating condition. Voters in Richmond originally turned down a ballot measure that would have paid for its reconstruction, but ultimately the city was able to front the majority of the $7.5 million bill through redevelopment funds and small donations.

The renovation has largely remained true to the pool’s historic design – the row of windows above the second-story observation deck is original, as is much of the tile on the mushroom-shaped fountain that has been moved from inside the pool to outside the building. Workers installed a raised “doghouse”-style roof above the pool that more closely resembles the original and are getting ready to hoist a giant sign above the building in the style of the original which read “Municipal Natatorium.”

For more information about the Plunge’s grand opening, visit www.richmondplunge.org.

After six years of planning, months of negotiating and a recent attempt at mediation, it appears that the Rosie the Riveter visitor’s center is now closer than ever to securing a new home at the historic Ford Assembly Plant near the Richmond Port.

Talks between the Ford Building’s developer, Orton Development, and the National Parks Service, which operates the Rosie center, have been going on for nearly a year over where, and how, to house a new Rosie the Riveter visitor’s center at the renovated factory. Under the original terms of Orton’s 2004 contract with the city, the visitor’s center was to be housed, rent-free, inside the 40,000-foot Craneway Pavilion building, although that plan was later scrapped after both sides agreed that an adjacent, stand-alone building, called the Oil House, would be a better fit.

Richmond is already home to a Rosie the Riveter memorial at Marina Bay, which includes several sculptures and informational placards about women’s contributions to the war effort. The visitor’s center at the Ford Building would be a museum of sorts dedicated to the role of women in the manufacturing industry during World War II.

The Oil House's interior is still being renovated. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

A sticking point in the new center’s lease negotiations centered on who would have to pay for renovations to the Oil House before the National Parks Service could move in. While the building’s shell appears to be in good shape, its interior is still being worked on.

Once an important World War II-era production center for Jeeps and armored tanks, the 561,000-foot Ford Assembly plant fell into disrepair as Richmond’s postwar economy ravaged the local manufacturing industry. The building suffered further damages in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and sat vacant until 2004, when Orton agreed to purchase and redevelop the factory for mixed commercial use.

Today, the old factory houses a number of businesses, including SunPower Corp., Mountain Hardware, and the BoilerHouse Restaurant, which opened last July. Getting the Rosie center moved in remains one of the final steps of the project.

“We’ve been discussing this for a number of years now,” said Tom Leatherman, an assistant superintendent for the National Parks Service, of the move to the Ford facility. “In the last few months we’ve narrowed down exactly what we’re looking at, and in the last three or four months there’s been some more real serious negotiations of the lease.”

According to Richmond City Councilman Tom Butt, who sits on the Rosie the Riveter Trust’s board of directors, both sides have agreed in principle – through mediation – to a proposed settlement under which the developer would receive tax credits to retrofit the Oil House. He did not know whether any investors had been lined up yet to provide the tax credits, or when a deal may be officially struck.

“As far as I know, everybody’s on board, and that’s the direction they’re going,” Butt said of the proposed resolution. “The plan is to have it open sometime in 2011.”

The center should still come rent-free, Butt said, although the parks service will have to pay for some tenant improvements inside the building, as well as make some contribution to upkeep of the parking lot and utility bills.

Eddie Orton, the president of Orton Development, remained tight-lipped in an email to Richmond Confidential about the status of the negotiations. “All parties are working hard to bring Rosie to fruition,” he wrote.

Butt acknowledged that while the negotiations with the developers finally seem to be paying off, it’s been a difficult and at times nasty process. Last December, City Attorney Randy Riddle’s office sent Orton a series of letters insisting that the developer resolve the visitor’s center issue or risk losing its building permit with the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, which regulates building along the coast. According to the letters, the developers were also out of compliance with their BCDC permit because a locked fence surrounding the building restricted access to the Bay Trail, which cuts through the property.

The Oil House, right, sits in the shadow of the massive Craneway Pavilion at the historic Ford Assembly Plant in Richmond. Photo by Ian A. Stewart.

“It was sort of a veiled threat that the city would take the steps it needed to ensure compliance,” Butt said of the city attorney’s letters. “Maybe it wasn’t so veiled.”

The fence has since been removed, and the developer is in the process of applying for an amended permit, Butt said.

Alan Wolken, the city’s redevelopment director, seemed convinced that the Rosie deal would be in place within the next 60 to 90 days. “We’re making headway,” he said. “That’s the best I can say.”

The Ford Assembly Building has been a central redevelopment project for the city for several years. Marcie Wong Associates, the renovated factory’s architects, were recently awarded the Merit Award for historic preservation and innovation in rehabilitation from the American Institute of Architects’ San Francisco bureau.

The Ford Point site is also a key component of the Bay Trail – an ongoing project that, once completed, will circle 500 miles around the San Francisco and San Pablo bays with a paved cycling trail. Richmond’s city limits include 32 miles of coastline, and with the Ford Point portion of the trail now finished, the trail runs, uninterrupted, from Golden Gate Fields in Albany north to Point Richmond and the Miller/Knox Regional Shoreline.

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.”

The story goes that back in the early 1900s, when workers were being paid with gold and signed warrants by marking an X, the railroad station agent in Pinole would go on a day-long, dangerous trip to Martinez to get their payment. That station agent was E. M. Downer, who created the Bank of Pinole. In 1907, he merged it with a financial institution in Richmond that soon was called the Mechanics Bank.

“He wasn’t wealthy, but he was an entrepreneur and a charismatic man,” said Rauly Butler, the bank’s current senior vice president.

E.M. Downer, the Mechanics Bank founder.

Today, four generations later, Downer’s enterprise remains locally owned and a family majority-owned business. It kept its original name and it’s still a community bank. It’s Richmond’s oldest bank and the only one currently headquartered in Richmond, although it now has branches all around the Contra Costa County and in seven neighboring counties in northern California.

At the end of last year, the Mechanics Bank had 670 employees; 42,977 personal banking clients and 9,664 business banking clients.

The life, survival and success of the Mechanics Bank is closely tied to the history of Richmond, its hometown. During its early years, the Mechanics Bank was a place for local railroad workers in West Contra Costa County to cash their paychecks. These workers were called “mechanics” and that’s the reason for the bank’s name.

The bank lent money so people could buy appliances such as refrigerators and freezers. “At that time, banks were not for the regular person,” said Butler. “Banks were known for lending money to businesses.” The Mechanics Bank was the first bank in the region to give personal loans. “Starting a bank for the mechanics — are you kidding? That was very unusual,” said Butler.

But the bank served local businesses, too. During the 1920s, Richmond was a West Coast industrial center, home to major facilities for Standard Oil, the Santa Fe Railroad and the Ford Motor Company. The bank provided financial services for the corporations and their employees.

Butler said that during the Great Depression, the bank survived a time of massive bank failures around the nation because of the support of Standard Oil, the City of Richmond and Richmond’s newspaper. The leaders of these organizations let the community know that they had full faith in the Mechanics Bank and were keeping their money in it, which  encouraged people to trust the bank, said Butler.

Drive-through banking window at Mechanics Bank. The first in Northern California, 1940's.

In the 1940s, World War II brought local prosperity to Richmond. The city became the home of Kaiser Shipbuilding and with the shipyards 70,000 new residents arrived. The Mechanics Bank’s assets quadrupled from 1941 to 1945, becoming a major financial force in the East Bay.

But once the war ended, the shipyard workers were no longer needed, leaving tens of thousands unemployed. According to Butler, the bank made public through the newspaper that no homeowner would lose his house, and worked with borrowers to avoid foreclosure. The community helped the bank during the Depression years, so “the bank returned the favor,” Butler said.

During the 1990s, the bank expanded beyond West Contra Costa County for the first time, opening offices in Alameda, Marin, Napa, San Francisco and Sacramento counties.

Today, after the 2008 financial crisis, the Mechanics Bank is still in business. “We didn’t need to take TARP money,” Butler said, but acknowledged that the recession had an impact on the bank. “Interest rates are low and that affects every bank.”

As a community bank, the Mechanics Bank focuses on loaning money to local individuals and businesses. According to Butler, it didn’t need follow the trend of securitization of real estate mortgages to remain competitive in the stock market  “If we would have done that, we would be out of business today,” he said.

Even the charitable donations Mechanics Bank makes stay in the community. “They volunteer in our special events, and help us with fundraising. They are significant financial sponsors and provide a myriad of bank services,” said Rev. John Anderson, President of the Bay Area Rescue Mission, a non-profit that helps the homeless and impoverished in Richmond. Anderson said that the Mechanics Bank was involved helping the non-profit since it began 45 years ago.

Decisions on how to manage the bank are still controlled by the Downer family. Early this month, E.M. Downer’s great-granddaughter, Dianne Daiss Felton, began serving as chairman of the board. Michael Downer, a great-grandson, serves as vice chairman.

Customer Joshua Gutierrez outside of the Mechanics Bank Point Richmond office.

The bank prides itself on personable service, particularly its non-automated 800 number. “I love it. When you call, you get an actual person that helps you,” said customer Joshua Gutierrez.

Customer Tina Scott, who works near the bank’s Point Richmond office, said that when the line is too long, the manager will take her deposit and personally bring the receipt to her work. “All the employees are very nice,” she said.

The bank’s involvement with non-profits and record of reciprocity with the community hasn’t gone unnoticed. Last December, the Move Your Money campaign started encouraging people to transfer their funds from big banks to credit unions or community banks. Their site provides a link to a zip code look-up service to help consumers find “risk free” community banks. The Mechanics Bank pops on the list of recommended institutions.

Butler says that Richmond’s oldest bank is still growing; this year the number of people opening new accounts at the Mechanics Bank has doubled. “I’m very proud of what the Bank does for the community, the customers’ trust and the financial stability offered,” Butler said.

What George Livingston remembers most about Robert F. Kennedy is the toll the late-senator’s frenetic California presidential campaign was exacting on his slight body.

“He was a zombie, he was so tired,” Livingston said.

The meeting took place at an Oakland church days before Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968 in Los Angeles.

“He was in the ghetto, because he had to get a black base, and he did very well,” Livingston said.

Livingston, 76, served Richmond as one of its first black council members and mayors throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He shared memories of Kennedy while sitting in his living room last month. Livingston still lives in Richmond. (Click play above to hear the full radio broadcast of Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy in the area that aired Thursday on KALX).

Kennedy wasn’t the only transcendent national figure with whom Livingston interacted in the 1960s. Martin Luther King, Jr. also left an imprint on Livingston during a local visit that decade.

Former Mayor George Livingston

A photo of Livingston greeting King at Contra Costa College in San Pablo hangs on his living room wall. Livingston was in the student body government at the college, and was tapped to help host King for a few minutes before the civil rights leader took the stage.

“He asked me if I had ever thought of getting into politics, and I said, ‘not really,’” Livingston chuckled.

But Livingston recognized the gravity of the meeting.

“He was that type of guy who you just wanted to be around,” Livingston said. “He was a very deep thinker, and the things he would say to you, it was just like glue: it would stick to you. I will always cherish those moments.”

Livingston veered back to his memories of Kennedy.

“I really admired him. His trying, his body couldn’t take it,” Livingston said. “He would have made a good president. In fact, I think he would have made a better president than John Kennedy. I think he was more liberal than John Kennedy.”

Livingston, his body still lanky and lithe like it was when was a towering figure in local politics, spoke while his young grandson sat beside him. He said he loves to share his stories with his family.

“I share with my grandson, and my son and others, that I had a chance to know and to meet the man who was the man,” Livingston said.

Livingston was born to a poor family in Oklahoma in the 1930s. For him, life began in a time and place in which dark skin was a de facto limit on what one could become.

Several times as he spoke, he paused to hold long gazes at his pre-teen grandson.

“One day he can be a leader,” Livingston said, smiling.

When he reminisces about all the progress he has seen in his lifetime, the opening of the way for leaders like himself and beyond, Livingston is almost overwhelmed by the enormity of the change.

“The thing that surprises me most is to see a black president; I never dreamed of anything like that, it didn’t seem to be possible,” he said, shaking his head. “And I remember when I became mayor of the city of Richmond, my grandfather, who was the son of a slave, came to see it, and he cried. He couldn’t believe he saw his grandson as mayor of a large city.”

Livingston paused long at the thought of his grandparents.

“If they could see (President) Obama, oh wow,” he said. “That would be unbelievable.”

“‘Ground Zero’ is a block party for neighborhoods in need of resources and violence prevention,” said Kevin Muccular, an agent with the city’s Office of Neighborhood Safety. “This community needs this.”

The block party will feature live music, gospel and a series of speakers in an outdoor lot at 1443 Filbert St., in the heart of North Richmond.

The event begins today at 11 a.m.

North Richmond, much of which is unincorporated county lands, has a history of struggles with poverty and violence.

But it also has a history of tight-knit churches. Today’s event will take place on a lot adjacent to the McGlothen Temple Church of God in Christ, a historic local church that holds open community dinners each month.

“My desire is to make it a collaborative effort of all the churches in the North Richmond area,” said Albert Featherstone, a local leader and one of the event’s organizers.

Among the performers will be the Stockton-based Redemption Band, a troupe of men who call themselves former “consumers” of the services provided by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Their music combines religious teachings with hope and self-betterment.

“The outreach is designed to bring hope to the community and peace to our streets by sharing the love of God with the people,” Featherstone said.