Resources

Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy is taking on Wal-Mart after it announced plans to open 40 supercenters in California. If built, the stores will have a devastating impact, replacing good jobs with poverty-wage jobs, driving out small businesses, and increasing crime, traffic and noise pollution.  Some resources include:

• Read a sample Press Release
• See the Wal-Mart Lawsuit
• The Truth About Wal-Mart's Inglewood Ballot Initiative
• View Wal-Mart's Impact on Small Business
• Sign a Stop Wal-Mart Development Petition
• How to Stop Wal-Mart from Expanding into and Destroying Your Community
• How To Win Land Development Issues: A Handbook
• Big Box Sprawl And How To Control It
• The Sprawl Guide
• Sprawl Watch

Links

• Wal-Mart Watch
• Wal-Mart Vs. Women
• NOW’s Wal-Mart Page
• Wal-Mart Class Action Website
• Wal-Mart Sucks
• Wal-Mart Horror Stories
• The Wal-Mart Trash Page

Big Box Reports

The Center on Policy Initiatives recently released a study examining the impact of large subsidized development on the local community. They examined the College Grove Redevelopment Project, which received $13.4 million in the form of public assistance, including $9.5 million for Wal-Mart. The study looks beyond fiscal impacts and incorporates an analysis of employment, housing, neighborhood services and the environment.

According to a study by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, Wal-Mart is now the second highest contributor to the 2004 elections, having already contributed more than $1 million to federal candidates. Last year, Wal-Mart didn't even rank in the top 100.

Rep. George Miller of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, recently released a report  titled "Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart." It outlines the ways "Wal-Mart's wages and benefits are so low that it forces workers to turn to public assistance to make ends meet, and thereby forces costs onto taxpayers both nationwide and locally."

The Front Range Economic Strategy Center released Wal-Mart at Alameda Square: A Bad Investment for Denver (October 2003) and a New Light on a Bad Deal (November 2003).

Reading for Resisters

Who Benefits When Wal-Mart Comes To Town?

Union: Wal-Mart “Buy American” Program Is A Sham

Hightower: How Wal-Mart is Remaking Our World

Hightower: If Wal-Mart Comes To Your Town, Kill It

Littering The West With Vacant Superstores

Wal-Mart’s Home Court

When Wal-Mart Comes To Town

Ready Or Not, Here Comes Wal-Mart

Up Against the Wal-Mart

On the Shelves

IN SAM WE TRUST - THE UNTOLD STORY OF SAM WALTON AND WAL-MART, THE WORLD'S MOST POWERFUL RETAILER, by Bob Ortega, paperback, Times Business/Random House, NY NY, 2000, US$16.00

HOW WAL-MART IS DESTROYING AMERICA(and the World) - And What You Can Do About It, by Bill Quinn, paperback, Ten Speed Press (Berkeley, CA), 2000, $US$10.95

NICKEL AND DIMED - ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA, by Barbara Ehrenreich, hardcover, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, NY NY, 2001, US$23.00

Special thanks to the Center for American Progress, who compiled much of this information for their Progress Report.  To sign up for your copy, click here. And Special Thanks to  Save Austin for putting this information together!

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