RESISTING THE CORPORATE MAW
Wal-Mart loses vote in California

From Reuters via the Houston Chronicle:

Voters in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood Tuesday rejected by a 2-1 margin a ballot measure that would have allowed Wal-Mart to build a sprawling shopping center in the heart of their town.

In voting down the referendum, residents appeared to have taken their cue from most elected officials in working-class Inglewood, who fought bitterly to keep Wal-Mart from building a supercenter there, despite the promise of 1,200 jobs and millions of dollars in sales tax revenue.

"This was a major victory," said Jerome Horton, a state assemblyman representing Inglewood. "This was a test site for Wal-Mart. This would have set a national precedent and developers all over the nation were watching to see whether or not a developer could exempt themselves from complying with local laws. This was a much bigger issue than just jobs."

And

The Inglewood City Council had prompted Wal-Mart to appeal to the voters by passing a law to thwart the world's largest retailer and its "big-box" shopping center -- which would have occupied a plot of land the size of 17 football fields -- on the grounds that it would put local mom-and-pop stores out of business and pay lower wages to its employees.

Click here for the rest.

As I have said many times here at Real Art, Wal-Mart sucks: they devastate local economies, their employment policies are atrocious and probably illegal in at least a couple of instances, and they censor music and movies; their corporate version of Sherman's March to the Sea seems unstoppable. It's nice to see that some Americans are able to resist successfully their Borg-like economic assault.

Thanks to Bronze Johnson for the tip.

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