Introduction by Christine Cordero, Co-Director, Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN)

The city of Richmond has provided an impressive example of highly effective progressive grassroots organizing that has included the building of groundbreaking citizens’ organizations, local institutions and co-operatives and successful electoral campaigns, as well as a major Environmental Justice victory in a decades-long struggle with Chevron, whose massive facilities have long polluted the region. One of the most important figures in this exemplary community is Doria Robinson whose multi-faceted activism has been a key element in its successes. She’s been the Executive Director since 2007 of Urban Tilth, a renowned urban food project building a more sustainable, healthy, and just food system and helped nurture the birth of many local initiatives from bicycle co-ops to urban “greening” projects. Now serving on Richmond’s city council, Doria will share with us some of what she has learned in her decades of building people’s power from the ground up.