Activists throughout Wisconsin should band together to take on Wal-Mart “supercenters.”
Supercoalition
By
Sarah Streed
The people of Stoughton, Wisconsin, have been fighting Wal-Mart for more than a year. The "Uff-Da Wal-Mart Supercenter" and "Oh-No supercenter" citizen groups organized to see if there was anything the people of this town of 12,500 could do to prevent Wal-Mart from building a 180,000 square-foot Wal-Mart “supercenter” on 26 acres of Stoughton cornfield.
Wal-Mart had $245 billion in profits in 2002, but through grassroots organizing and by not giving up we had been successful in fighting them off until last week. We are still alive, but on April 6, Wal-Mart was able to elect four members to our local city council who are supporters of the supercenter cause. This will make it easier for them to ram through the permits that we have thus far beaten back.
This battle might have been played on a less unbalanced field if we had known members of communities similar to ours with whom we could share experiences and resources. We have worked without a model. We knew of many communities throughout the nation that were fighting to keep Wal-Mart and other Big Box stores out, but their communities and circumstances were mostly quite dissimilar to ours. We would have benefited if Wisconsin had a statewide coalition to combat Wal-Mart supercenters; indeed, we still would benefit from such a thing.
Wisconsin is relatively underdeveloped where Wal-Mart stores are concerned. The company’s goal is to have a supercenter within 20 miles of every person in the United States. Whether or not Wal-Mart is successful in building its Stoughton supercenter, the great likelihood is that they will be coming to a community near you soon. In other words, this battle is coming to all of us. Because it is early, we still have a chance of winning.
As for Stoughton, we already have one Wal-Mart store, but Wal-Mart’s executives have targeted Stoughton as the location for one of these regional behemoths. We think it will change the character of our pleasant, independent small town. Throughout the nation, the evidence shows that Wal-Mart supercenters cause side effects such as increased traffic, higher property taxes, stressed city services, increased storm water runoff, more crime, and 24-hour-a-day light and noise pollution. That does not even account for the boarded-up local businesses and empty downtown areas that Wal-Mart supercenters so often leave in their wake.
An independent survey of Stoughton residents showed that the majority of the people who live here are against a supercenter in the proposed location. The mayor of Stoughton declared that the survey needed to be redone, and a second survey revealed the same result. The people who responded to the survey and attended public hearings were overwhelmingly in favor of keeping a supercenter out.
Throughout Wisconsin and the United States, many towns and cities are saying no to Wal-Mart. Recently, in San Marcos, California, the majority of residents voted no to a new supercenter despite raising only $10,000 for their campaign while Wal-Mart poured $100,000 into theirs. Glendale, California, said no to Wal-Mart in an April 6 referendum. Beaver Dam, Wisconsin voters ousted their pro-Wal-Mart mayor on April 6. Throughout the nation, local citizens have joined together to drive Wal-Mart out through various means.
What if towns and cities in Wisconsin did not have to reinvent the wheel each time they were approached by Wal-Mart? What if we had a statewide organization that any town or city could contact at the first overture? When the Wal-Mart threat rears its head, a town or city could immediately plug into a statewide organization that could quickly respond in the most effective manner instead of having to make it up as it goes the way Stoughton often has.
Kevin Pomeroy, an Uff-Da member and the planning director of 1,000 Friends of Wisconsin, says, "Stoughton's approach is quite replicable. It shows you don't have to roll over and play dead."
As the old Arlo Guthrie song goes, "And if enough people start doing it, it becomes a movement."
Let the movement begin! Let's form a statewide anti-supercenter group, committed to helping to inform other communities. Respond to this article if you are interested in joining or have ideas for how we should proceed. Let's decide how our state is going to look in the future, whether it should be dotted with supercenters and covered in asphalt parking lots—each one the size of 10 football fields—or still have some rolling hills and distinctive towns.
April 15, 2004
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Sarah Streed lives in Stoughton and is a member of the Uff-Da Wal-Mart SuperCenter grassroots organization.
