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Public Affairs coverage from our award-winning staff |
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Wal-Mart Fight Continues on Chicago's South Side
Produced by Natalie Moore on Wednesday, July 29, 2009
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Wal-mart supporters near the site where the chain wants to build a new store. (WBEZ/Natalie Moore) |
The fight for a second Wal-Mart in Chicago continues. The retail chain’s chief champion is Alderman Howard Brookins who wants the store in his south side ward. Today the city council was expected to vote on a measure that would clear the way for the controversial so-called big box store. But instead, they sent the ordinance to the Finance committee to be brought up at a later date.
Blog: Walmart Robocalls Make the Rounds
Ambi: is this the space right here? Yes
Alderman Howard Brookins and I are in front of a weeded 15-acre parcel of land at 83rd and Stewart in the West Chatham neighborhood.
For years, he’s wanted a Wal-Mart Supercenter here. Wal-Mart representatives say the store would bring 400 jobs to the South Side neighborhood.
It’s hard to think of another retailer as polarizing as Wal-Mart. Three years ago the chain opened on the West Side – the first Wal-Mart in the city. Union and community activists fought for a living-wage ordinance as a way to pressure the chain to pay higher wages. The ordinance failed.
In the meantime, unions have pressured aldermen to reject the chain from further Chicago expansion because of Wal-Mart’s anti-union stance.
I ask 21st Ward Alderman Brookins if he’s tried to find another national chain – just to avoid the political showdown.
BROOKINS: We’ve gone after every national chain and Wal-Mart is still the one that’s been willing to come into our community. Four years ago when I was fighting that was the same argument that the people who are against Wal-Mart would say:…oh, if you leave it vacant someone will else will come. Here it is four years later and we haven’t been able to attract any other national retailer.
That’s one reason why many South Side residents spend millions each year shopping outside of their own communites. At this 50-acre site there are only two businesses: Lowe’s and Potbelly. The rest is vacant land and empty buildings.
BROOKINS: Retailers are apprehensive in coming to the African-American community -- number one. And it’s not until there has been a success story that you’ll find other retailers willing to flock here.
Brookins says he plans to call for a city council vote that would rescind the City of Chicago planning department’s power of approving businesses 150,000 sq ft and larger. That power has been in effect since 2006 and was a way to block Wal-Mart; few stores take up that much square footage. If the ordinance passes, Wal-Mart would be free to build.
ambi: pro-Wal-Mart speech
Wal-Mart is not standing idly by either. It is doing its best to woo South Side residents. The chain sponsored this farmer’s market this past weekend near the site it wants to build. Wal-Mart employees gave out tote bags with the store’s logo and free watermelon. Local job advocates took the stage to highlight the benefits of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart officials have also sent Brookins a letter listing its promises: diversity; jobs to ex-offenders, leasing store space to local businesses.
Melinda Kelly is executive director the Chatham Business Association. She says she’s not concerned about the chain coming in and wiping out small businesses.
KELLY: It’s not just about the jobs and building of the actual store. It’s making them reinvest back in the community, sponsor those hubs, do partnership with the businesses so that when you’re at Wal-Mart, you still know about our local cleaners, you still know about our local specialty stores, you still know what’s in the area and what’s available to you.
ambi fades
Mayor Richard Daley supports Wal-Mart but he says Brookins doesn’t have the votes to change the ordinance. The mayor has kept his distance in the issue, some surmise that’s to appease unions – at least until after it’s decided whether Chicago will be the 2016 Olympic host city.
Wal-Mart says it provides health benefits and an average hourly salary of $12 an hour at Chicago area stores.But a recent call to the West side Wal-Mart found that some workers there start at minimum wage.
Flora Johnson says she’s not convinced. Johnson is a retired union grocery store worker who lives in the 21st ward. The union aspect is why she doesn’t want Wal-Mart in her community.
JOHNSON: Don’t have no union in there to protect you because when you work on a job and there’s no union there, you might do something the boss don’t like, well they say don’t come back tomorrow.
Johnson’s been canvassing anti-Wal-Mart literature with other concerned residents. She says not all 21st ward residents are pleased at the Wal-Mart prospect.
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jks, printer row // Wednesday, July 29, 2009 @ 10:27 AM
A lot has changed since last time we went through the big box battle. With the health care on the radar and the economy. If health care passes then I think the vote for the store should take place.I would support a store going in.
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leo, Lakeview // Wednesday, July 29, 2009 @ 10:58 AM
So you got the Alderman and the Director of the local Business Association but you couldn't find any spokesman from, say, the UFCW?
Sloppy, very sloppy.
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madmilker, Possum Hollow, USA // Sunday, August 02, 2009 @ 11:09 AM
People in America need to realize jus what got America in this shape…”cheap” yes so-call cheap items from a foreign land.
quote*Wal-Mart firmly believes in local procurement. We recognize that by purchasing quality products, we can generate more job opportunities, support local manufacturing and boost economic development. Over 95% of the merchandise in our stores in China is sourced locally. We have established partnerships with nearly 20,000 suppliers in China. *end quote!
Now! if there be 182 country’s making items for the world to buy and they have only 5% of the pie in China…duh! This company makes the nice people of China support their currency(yuan) by keeping it in their country working for the people there…. but with the “yuan” going up in value and the US dollar going down…all the foreign items that the American consumer buys thinking it is cheap has went up in price.
People…its all about the currency and to keep a currency strong you got to keep it floating around the country you live in so it can work for you. For the past 12 years all them US dollars are being shipped overseas to a foreign bank and with the American worker not making anything for the foreigner to buy the “we the people” have to turn to the “second” largest employer in America(Uncle Sam) to sell “we the people” debt in order to get all them dollars back!
50 years ago a foreigner would had given their left nut for a US dollar or a Hershey’s chocolate bar and today the same foreigner has got Uncle Sam and the American consumer by both all the while Hershey is moving the chocolate factory to Mexico. Wake up! America and think “MADE IN AMERICA.”
quote*”Considering that there are over 30,000 ships at sea this morning,” writes James Carlton, director of the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Maritime Studies Program, in an e-mail, “the total number of organisms and species in this global ‘bioflow’ on the morning your readers read your piece could be staggering - billions of individuals, and thousands of species.”
Indeed, scientists have long considered ballast water the primary way invasive aquatic organisms are introduced. From the zebra mussel’s arrival in the Great Lakes, to an American jellyfish severely disrupting Black Sea fisheries, the potential costs of accidental introduction of a species to new homes can be tremendous. Aquatic invasives cost the US $9 billion yearly, according to estimates by David Pimentel, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Zebra and quagga mussels (a cousin to the zebra) alone cost the $1 billion annually.*end quote!
tat is $9 billion a year in hidden taxes to all Americans…
cheap ain’t chic and it cost America…………jobs!
“Now let us look at Wal-Mart again; you buy a product there, 6% goes to the employees, 10-18% is profit to the company, 25% goes to other costs and 50% goes to re-stock or the cost of goods sold. Of the 50% about 20-25% goes to China, a guess, but you get the point. Now then, how long will it take at 433 Billion dollars at year for China to have all of our money, leaving no money flow for us to circulate? At a 17 Trillion dollar economy less than 40-years minus the 1/6 they buy from us. Some say that if we keep putting money into our economy, it would take forever, but if we do not then eventually all the money flow will go. If China buys our debt then eventually they own us, no need to worry about a war, they are buying America, due in part to our own mismanaged trade, so whose fault is that? Not necessarily China, as they are doing what’s in the best interests, and we should make sure that trade is not only free, but fair too.”
http://www.worldthinktank.net/pdfs/TheFlowofTrade.pdf
and when it comes to all them ther turnips in D. C. ….they all need to red…oops! read George Washington’s farewell address after only eight years of serving his country…
Retail makes nothing! ….and until the American people get off their lazy @ss and start to demand…”made in America”….all the retail jobs will be sitting in a foreign land.
The dang government makes only debt…like all it knows is spend…spend…spend. The turnips ain’t never past a dang “saving” bill. They go up on tat big hill and play banker with my dang tax dollars and every dang one of them is one sandwich short of a picnic when it comes to balancing their dang check book.
National Debt from 1776 to 1910 wus only $2.6 billion and tat wus without a income tax. After the stiff-shirt “my sh!! don’t stink” bankers met in 1910 at Jekyll Island tat debt wus put in high gear in 1913 and even with a income tax and now a tax for every dang thig a person touches…even the air he/she breaths tat debt has mushroom to over $10 trillion in 2008.
Now….we the people in the past 7 months has taken on another $1 trillion and tat person in tat big white house is saying the car is going to slow…well…maybe he needs to get out of the dang thig and walk.
http://dailybail.com/home/the-national-debt-road-trip-video-warning-not-for-the-faint.html?
And with America being over $57 trillion in debt….a little walking wouldn’t hurt them either. People….it ain’t no place in the Constitution tat states the government is suppose to take care of you….not one dang sentence. The word “cheap” ain’t no place to be found either. If you don’t buy American made…you don’t have jobs cause RETAIL makes nothing.
Quit thinking in terms of a jack@ss and elephant….they the ones tat put US in tis mess….think in terms of character, faith in God, love of Country, your State, your town, your family and your dang job. Spend a month…maybe two red…oops! reading Michael Hodges “Grandfather Economic Report” series and learn how the people in government has pull the wool over the eyes of “we the people” for the past 96 years.
“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” - John Quincy Adams, 6th President of USA.
“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.” - Thomas Jefferson
“No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.” - George Washington to James Madison 1789.
“support your town…shop around.” - madmilker
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Don Mitchel, spencerport NY // Tuesday, August 04, 2009 @ 5:08 PM
Dear Walmart I was wondering if our country had a national policy to stop ballast water from polluting our waters with invasives bacteria, virus, an other waterborne illnesses, and if it cost more money to China to export goods, if you thought they would continue to buy our treasury notes. Knowing you have consderable influence and one of your lawyers a former employee who was the first lady of your home headquaters state is now the one to negotiate trade for the USA with China, if you could ask them if they would consider allowing us clean water. (we may not need to borrow as much money for health care this way) Knowing when Mrs. Clinton was involved in NY's importation of bait fish regulations, despite recieving grants at cornell university to study virus in water she did not address the natural waters from around the country or chemicals used in transporting bait fish (85% bait fish in USA produced in Arkansa) before being dumped into natural state waters, I am quite concerned she will overlook this issue in ballast water as has been the norm for politicians who support globalization.
Sincerely Don Mitchel
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