Filed under: News
Normally, it's easy to see why people would want to keep Walmart out of their communities.
The big box behemoth has in many senses come to represent everything from the dumbing down of America to the dismantling of the small business economic system that once held together neighborhoods. Complaints about the company stomping the old Mom-and-Pop stores to its handling of workers are valid and widespread. However, while doing all this, Walmart has become the largest corporation in the world.
But an ongoing controversy over the placement of a Walmart store in Brooklyn, N.Y. may well serve as a test of the anti-Walmart logic.
For at least a year, community activists and politicians have been sending the message to the retailer to stay out. They've made it clear that Walmart greeters won't get a greeting in this area. A City Council hearing last week lasted four hours where the company --which didn't even bother to show up -- was shouted down, most vociferously by revolutionary crusading Councilman Charles Barron, whose East New York district has been among those sized up as a potential location.
"Don't even think about coming into east New York," Barron said. "We're desperate for jobs, but we're not going to take anything."
But although there's not much to be happy about when it comes to Walmart, people like Barron do not seem to offer much in the way of alternatives when it comes to poor communities like East New York.
The unemployment rate in that community is about 14 percent, with similar totals in neighboring communities like Brownsville and Bedford-Stuyvesant. In Brooklyn, it's 12 percent, just higher than the city average. There is a lack of gainful employment there, and the New York City Council is not putting it there.
There are many who say small businesses will be put in a vice-grip by the big-boxer who may sell a bag of apples for $2, undercutting the corner store who sells it for $3 because overhead costs are easier to absorb for large companies, thus causing them to lay off workers and shut down.
But at the same time, the people who are up in arms about Walmart coming to town are hardly ever getting into the streets on any other day to fight for the small business to grow and expand, enabling them to hire more people and pay a living wage.
The reason why companies like Walmart are snuffing out the small guy is because in America, for about 30 years now, we've let the small guy down. There was once a time when several shoe shops, for example, could exist within a half-mile radius and do well enough to pay their bills, their taxes and a few dozen employees. Thanks to the American, more-more-more consumer attitude, we shot straight to large department stores that could give us what we wanted en masse.
Over time, we began to forget the man who marketed himself to us by sending Christmas cards to three generations of our families in favor of who had the best sale at the mall 15 miles into the suburbs. All the while Sam Walton was building his company from that exact type of business that once existed on Main Street U.S.A. Now he's the only game in town.
Politicians like Barron, who actually organized a demonstration against a restaurant because it called itself Obama Fried Chicken, don't seem to have another use for the huge, unused, undeveloped empty space being eyed by Walmart. I'm happy to hear what he has to offer to get non-working cats off the block in the middle of the day who ain't doing sh*t else with their time.
There are other examples of large retailers coming to Brooklyn and not disrupting the air. Target is well-anchored at Flatbush Junction, and Ikea has been settled in once crime-ridden Red Hook for five years now. Both stores employ hundreds.
So it really comes down to this question: if a large service industry business comes to the hood offering jobs, benefits and development, do we turn it down? If we do, what do we offer ourselves as an alternative?
Don't get me wrong, there's little reason to be a fan of Walmart. They have a long-documented, poor relationship with workers, and it's not like they sell the best-quality material, goods and produce. But if they can follow the example set on the South Side of Chicago, where an ordinance was passed requiring them to pay workers $10 an hour, in Brooklyn, then it could work.
Not that $10 an hour would be enough to live off of in New York, but it beats the hell out of trying to win money in a Cee-Lo game because your shorty needs formula and diapers.