Anyone here successfully fight a WalMart???

[Danmel]

Looks like my neighborhood is about to go down the toilet. The local town board is likely to approve a super Wal Mart Home Depot construction project about 3 miles from my home on an already saturated congested road (And they also want to put a large Tanger outlet, BJs wholesale club and movie theater down the same road about 2 miles further south.

This will not only have the dreaded general "Wal MArt" effect of forcing out local merchants and lowering the standard of living in the area, it will also cause unspeakable congestion and spill over of large amounts of traffic onto local streets.

Have any of you had any experience fighting this monstrous corporation? There is a meeting Tuesday which we will attend. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. God I don't want a Wal Mart in my neighborhood. I hate them with all my heart.

[donco6]

1. A group in Thornton, Colorado did.

However, their neighbor Westminster went ahead and approved it just down the road from the original.

[Generic Other]

2. I think kids in our area kept burning the construction down

They gave up.

on edt: Not that I would ever advocate such activity.

[Reverend_Smitty]

3. Our neighborhood did

unfortunately I was too young/not politically active enough to care at the time. But they wanted to put one in right across from our development on a big corn field. Thankfully they stopped it because I couldn't even imagine the eye sore of a Wal-Mart not to mention the traffic havoc it would cause on the two lane road it would be next to. I remember them getting petitions signed, staging demonstrations at the proposed site and raising general hell at council meetings. My best advice is strength in numbers, get yourself a pretty big coalition of people and it would be hard for the township to ignore you.

Every time I drive past that field I thank my lucky stars that Wal-Mart didn't succeed. It would have wiped out our property values over night

[deutsey]

4. There was already a Mall Wart when I moved here

I try to do my business through the Internet with Union-based organizations. Obviously, it's not as convenient as running over to Sprawl Mart (and I can't always avoid going there, unfortunately), but I feel better about buying from these groups:

http://www.shopunionmade.org/

http://www.unionjeancompany.com/

http://adbusters.org/campaign_blogs/content/view/50/47/ (I can vouch for the Classic sneaker...comfortable, sturdy, attractive. I like this one better than the "No Sweat" sneaker sold through www.nosweatapparel.com, frankly).

http://www.unionlabel.org/

http://www.nosweatapparel.com/

[noamnety]

5. I have flyers you can print up

http://www.ideamouth.com/politics/walmartflyer.pdf

You may want to white out the links since some of them are outdated now, before making multiple copies. Anyway, if you print these front and back, and cut them into thirds, you can pass them out to everyone at a town meeting, and also use the bullets as talking points, or make them into big powerpoint slides or flipcharts.

It might be worth blanketing the neighborhood in something like this as well, and talking to the local chamber of commerce, since small businesses are always hurt by Walmart.

[G_j]

6. among other things you will

probably need detailed traffic projections for the 'project'.
If none exist, you may want to have one done but it is expensive

good website: www.hometownadvantage.org

the website we put up while fighting WM ..we beat back em twice but they eventually won :-(
www.main.nc.us/csd

[CatholicEdHead]

7. No, it came in here

It was initiall rebuffed by the city council but then the mayor pushed the council and they gave in. Now we have a Super WalMart.

[bicentennial_baby]

8. Call Al Norman! (Sprawlbusters)

He kept them out of my town...

http://www.sprawl-busters.com/index.html

[FourStarDemocrat]

9. They prevented a Walmart in Rego Park, NY (Queens)

This link has a lot of info on how they did it:

http://www.theboxtank.com/walmartbox/rego_park_queens/ (scroll down for article)

[fishnfla]

10. I think they did in New Smyrna Beach/Edgewater FL

so far anyway. They tried also in DeLand FL

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

11. Aberdeen, South Dakota...

...is currently fighting off a Super Walmart. Local mall merchants have stated they will have to close up shop if the new Super Walmart is built. They have been successful in fighting it so far.

[proud patriot]

12. The "I hate Hate Walmart" CD , T-shirts, Song MP3

http://www.davelippman.com/walmart/index.html

This is a friend of my Dad's . I get many compliments
on the T-shirt ....

[napi21]

13. We successfully stopped on in North Hall County Ga.

We got lots of reesidents to contact the City Councilmen and tell them, they would be out of a job if they OK'd that beast! We also went to all the meetings and expressed our disapproval. WM had some pretty heavy hitters at these meetings and they pulled out every trick they had, but the Council finally sided with the public and voted NO.

There was an article in our paper the next day where a reporter interviewed the reps from WM. They said they couldn't believe what had finally happened here, but they were returning to Ar. (I suppose to pout!