Wal-Mart Crusade

[Guest Anglesault]

Giant Slayer

Albert Norman has made a minicareer out of blocking Wal-Mart.

 

By Elizabeth MacDonald

It's like a tent revival meeting. As mosquitoes buzz by in the summer heat, 120 townspeople nod "Yeses" and "Amens" from their beach chairs amid the peas and string beans at Hudak Farm in Swanton, Vt."The Raging Grannies," a troupe of older women wearing crocheted shawls, takes to the microphone to belt out anti-Wal-Mart ditties, one to the tune of "Clementine."

 

Found our Main Street,

Found our Main Street,

Boarded up and gone to hell,

All the townsfolk shop at Wal-Mart,

Now we've got no local stores.

 

Then Albert Norman, a 57-year-old visitor from Massachusetts, seizes the microphone and exhorts the attendees to either stop the megachain's plans to build a store of 147,500 square feet right next door in St. Albans Town, twice the retail space of its entire downtown, or get Wal-Mart to cut the building down to size. The new store would sit a half-mile from the farm, across the street from a rusty drive-in movie theater in a bucolic state where not even the capital city has a McDonald's or a Starbucks.

 

"Don't make St. Albans look like the New Jersey Turnpike," Norman rants as three red roosters stroll by. "Don't turn the Green Mountain State into the Black Asphalt State."

 

After noting that another Wal-Mart sits 20 miles away (it's actually 35 miles), Norman pressures the attendees to write letters to the editors of newspapers, start petitions and make appeals to their zoning board. "Wal-Mart is the end of competition in St. Albans. When you wind up with a Microsoft or Enron, you end up with no free market," he raves. "You have the power to cut Wal-Mart down to size."

 

This business of fighting businesses is more than a grassroots movement. For Norman, whose day job is running Mass Home Care, a nonprofit network in Burlington, Mass. that helps senior citizens remain in their homes, the anti-Wal-Mart crusade is a business. He gets up to $3,000 for his speeches, which he delivers 36 times a year, money paid by merchants, concerned townspeople and unions. He has plenty of allies, including the United Food & Commercial Workers union, frightened competitors from small retailers to big chains and environmental groups. Norman gets results. He says in the last decade he has helped towns from Charlevoix, Mich. to Hood River, Ore. to Eureka, Calif. beat back 180 Wal-Marts (and 70 other big-box stores).

 

Now Norman is taking his consulting work abroad. He has so far confronted Wal-Mart in Ireland and Barbados.

 

In Swanton, the Bentonville, Ark. megachain has a serious battle on its hands. In an unusual move, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has included the entire state of Vermont on its 2004 annual list of America's most endangered historic places. Paul Bruhn, executive director of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, says while he supports smaller Wal-Mart stores, the four existing Wal-Marts in the state were enough to threaten Vermont's picturesque villages and bucolic way of life.

 

Wal-Mart, Norman says, encourages sprawl, drives neighborhood stores into bankruptcy and "blands down" America by morphing towns once known for their regional élan into miles of windowless, concrete walls and parking lots. He quails: "America has been invaded by Wal-Martians, they have successfully colonized the United States and planted their flag in ten other nations."

 

The bigger the target, the more the lawsuits. No surprise that Wal-Mart has 5,000 lawsuits of one sort or another pending against it, many of which are in-store accident claims. Another could be the largest class action in history, filed on behalf of six women workers, in a class that could grow to 1.6 million women employees. The suit charges the chain with sexual discrimination. Wal-Mart says the suit is without merit and that it does not represent the experience most women have when they work there.

 

What a fucking loser.

[Guest JebusNassedar]

To be fair, I was with him until 'Wal-Martians.'

[Guest Anglesault]

I was with him until I found at that he left his own hometown, let alone his state and COUNTRY to prove his point.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Fuck Vermont, and fuck Wal-Mart.

[Guest MikeSC]

We NEED more expensive local stores that hire fewer people for --- well, there's probably a damned good reason!

-=Mike

[Krankor 0]

Obviously those half wits have never went to a Wal-Mart before. Why pay 15 bucks for a dvd when you can pay 2 for $11?

 

This guy can go fuck himself.

[Red Hot Thumbtack In The Eye 0]

SC Mike, you really gotta shorten that sig up dude.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

I don't understand how people in small towns can ever oppose a Wal-Mart. It creates hundreds of jobs, brings cheaper prices and makes life easier. It doesn't kill all of the small stores like people say just the bad ones that were only surviving their shitty service and prices because they were the only show in town.

[Highland 0]

Because people believe that the local mom and pop store with its shitty service and overpriced goods is part of the cultural makeup of the town and Wal-mart is the big bad outsider that'll leave the place a ghost town when they pack up and leave.

[DerangedHermit 0]

I fucking hate Wal-Mart.

 

Target, however, rules.

[Guest MikeSC]

SC Mike, you really gotta shorten that sig up dude.

Well, since I was politely asked twice...

-=Mike

[The Czech Republic 0]

Oh yeah Target is great. Wal-Mart prices without Wal-Mart customers, you can't go wrong.

 

Having spent several years in a small town with its Mom-and-Pop Main Street, I can attest to the fact that prices are obscene and service is shit. But I guess when you're leasing real estate from a draconian firm that has insanely high rates for property and holds a virtual monopoly on the city, you can't be too chipper.

[yankovic fan 0]

Walmart's service is terrible in my area.

 

If you want something that is locked up in the little window thing, you are not buying it because there is no service.

 

All the mom and pop shops here are better service.

 

I loathe going to walmart locally.

 

There is a walmart in a neighboring town, 15 miles away that isn't as terrible, but it is really not worth the 15 mile drive.

 

So Target has turned into my store of choice.

[NoCalMike 0]

it's not Wal-Mart COMING to the town that creates problems, it is when they leave when the city is in shambles. A lot of the local shop owners end up spending away their life savings trying to keep their shops open, but they eventually close down. Then when Wal-Mart doesn't think the town offers them enough profit, they just up and leave, which in turn puts a lot of people out of work, and all the former shop owners have no money to re-open. It is give and take really, but like I have said before in other Wal-Mart related threads, it doesn't effect big or even mid-sized cites like it does a small town that basically depends on THE ONE store in town for it's goods & services.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Instead of bitching about Wal-Mart, how about bitching about the people who SHOP at Wal-Mart?

 

I hate people...

[Krankor 0]

If the town's people hate it so bad they can always create an angry mob, light some torches, and burn the evil witches in wal-mart.

[Lil' Bitch 0]

This guy might as go on a 7-11 Crusade too.

[The Czech Republic 0]

This guy might as go on a 7-11 Crusade too.

Hey now. 7-Eleven does NOTHING wrong. I prefer White Hen Pantry for my convenient-store shopping that doesn't involve Slurpees, however. I don't know how widespread White Hen is...I know they're all over greater Chicago at least.

[treble 0]

Someone took a bulldozer to the frame of the new Wal-Mart they're building here. They had to put in a stop-work order and now there's 24/7 surveillance of the construction site.

[Steviekick 0]

it's not Wal-Mart COMING to the town that creates problems, it is when they leave when the city is in shambles. A lot of the local shop owners end up spending away their life savings trying to keep their shops open, but they eventually close down. Then when Wal-Mart doesn't think the town offers them enough profit, they just up and leave, which in turn puts a lot of people out of work, and all the former shop owners have no money to re-open. It is give and take really, but like I have said before in other Wal-Mart related threads, it doesn't effect big or even mid-sized cites like it does a small town that basically depends on THE ONE store in town for it's goods & services.

I've never heard that argument used against Wal-Mart before.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Wal-Mart's horrible and so is everyone who shops there. Politics have nothing to do with it.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

it's not Wal-Mart COMING to the town that creates problems, it is when they leave when the city is in shambles.  A lot of the local shop owners end up spending away their life savings trying to keep their shops open, but they eventually close down.  Then when Wal-Mart doesn't think the town offers them enough profit, they just up and leave, which in turn puts a lot of people out of work, and all the former shop owners have no money to re-open.  It is give and take really, but like I have said before in other Wal-Mart related threads, it doesn't effect big or even mid-sized cites like it does a small town that basically depends on THE ONE store in town for it's goods & services.

I've never heard that argument used against Wal-Mart before.

Great post, guy.

[The Czech Republic 0]

it's not Wal-Mart COMING to the town that creates problems, it is when they leave when the city is in shambles.  A lot of the local shop owners end up spending away their life savings trying to keep their shops open, but they eventually close down.  Then when Wal-Mart doesn't think the town offers them enough profit, they just up and leave, which in turn puts a lot of people out of work, and all the former shop owners have no money to re-open.  It is give and take really, but like I have said before in other Wal-Mart related threads, it doesn't effect big or even mid-sized cites like it does a small town that basically depends on THE ONE store in town for it's goods & services.

I've never heard that argument used against Wal-Mart before.

Incandenza was right. Great post.

 

 

Actually that is a common complaint. They open a Supercenter <20 miles from another, wipe out the competition, then close the Supercenter so that everyone has to now rely on the one further away. It's happened.

 

Wal-Mart does suck. It's all about Target.