Guest Blogger: David Breeden
Big Box, Big Lie
The summer of 2006 was the summer of the Big-Box in Chicago. The city council considered an ordinance requiring stores of over 90,000 square feet and annual sales of over a billion dollars to pay a living wage to their employees. In Chicago a “living wage” is calculated to be ten dollars an hour plus three dollars an hour in benefits. Labor unions members, civil rights activists, and religious activists marched in the streets and demonstrated at city hall for the ordinance. The ordinance passed by a vote of 35-14.
Wal-Mart and Target threatened to leave town. That didn’t faze anyone. Then Wal-Mart and Target said, “And, oh, yeah, we’d been thinking of opening some stores on the Southside.” That fazed people.
Chicago is a macrocosm of US cities, the logical result of the racism that exists everywhere in this country but usually stays more or less hidden, at least from the affluent. If Memphis or Kansas City have their tens of thousands, Chicago has its millions. I live on the Southside. I’m one of the few white faces on the trains and buses here. I travel from the Southside to the Northside. I watch the complexion and the net-worth of people change at each train and bus stop.
On the Northside “big-box” stores tuck themselves into old factories or otherwise blend into quaint, rich neighborhoods. On the Southside the few stores open are of the variety that pock the US small-town landscape, tin and plastic non-sequitors with vast parking lots. And there are precious few of those. So, we Southsiders have a choice: travel long distances to the wealthy neighborhoods to shop, or depend on local establishments, many of which exist to gouge people who can’t travel.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Wal-Mart right down the street, a place with “the lowest price, always”? Wouldn’t it be nice to have the jobs those businesses offer to our local residents?
This is the question Mayor Daley began to ask black aldermen after the vote. He said that the ordinance was a classic case of “red-lining,” racial discrimination according to neighborhoods. When three aldermen caved to pressure, Daley vetoed the big-box ordinance. And so it is dead. And so the big-box stores have won.
It is a complex issue. Yes, poor sections of American cities need the low prices and the jobs offered by big-box stores. I have to ask why they can’t pay living wages, however. I have to ask why those stores weren’t already in poor neighborhoods. I have to notice that, when a big-box store does come into a poor neighborhood, the taxes go up because the store has gotten so many perks. The taxes and property values go up so that the residents near the store can no longer afford to live there.
Complex questions. I do know that the people marching in the street with me were of all complexions, mostly working people who want fair wages. They were people who want to be treated fairly and who are willing to fight the corporations.
As for today, Wal-Mart and Target and the others have won. They are free to pay what they like, free to go where they wish. And for the poor here on the Southside of Chicago, poverty goes on.
—David Breeden
The summer of 2006 was the summer of the Big-Box in Chicago. The city council considered an ordinance requiring stores of over 90,000 square feet and annual sales of over a billion dollars to pay a living wage to their employees. In Chicago a “living wage” is calculated to be ten dollars an hour plus three dollars an hour in benefits. Labor unions members, civil rights activists, and religious activists marched in the streets and demonstrated at city hall for the ordinance. The ordinance passed by a vote of 35-14.
Wal-Mart and Target threatened to leave town. That didn’t faze anyone. Then Wal-Mart and Target said, “And, oh, yeah, we’d been thinking of opening some stores on the Southside.” That fazed people.
Chicago is a macrocosm of US cities, the logical result of the racism that exists everywhere in this country but usually stays more or less hidden, at least from the affluent. If Memphis or Kansas City have their tens of thousands, Chicago has its millions. I live on the Southside. I’m one of the few white faces on the trains and buses here. I travel from the Southside to the Northside. I watch the complexion and the net-worth of people change at each train and bus stop.
On the Northside “big-box” stores tuck themselves into old factories or otherwise blend into quaint, rich neighborhoods. On the Southside the few stores open are of the variety that pock the US small-town landscape, tin and plastic non-sequitors with vast parking lots. And there are precious few of those. So, we Southsiders have a choice: travel long distances to the wealthy neighborhoods to shop, or depend on local establishments, many of which exist to gouge people who can’t travel.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Wal-Mart right down the street, a place with “the lowest price, always”? Wouldn’t it be nice to have the jobs those businesses offer to our local residents?
This is the question Mayor Daley began to ask black aldermen after the vote. He said that the ordinance was a classic case of “red-lining,” racial discrimination according to neighborhoods. When three aldermen caved to pressure, Daley vetoed the big-box ordinance. And so it is dead. And so the big-box stores have won.
It is a complex issue. Yes, poor sections of American cities need the low prices and the jobs offered by big-box stores. I have to ask why they can’t pay living wages, however. I have to ask why those stores weren’t already in poor neighborhoods. I have to notice that, when a big-box store does come into a poor neighborhood, the taxes go up because the store has gotten so many perks. The taxes and property values go up so that the residents near the store can no longer afford to live there.
Complex questions. I do know that the people marching in the street with me were of all complexions, mostly working people who want fair wages. They were people who want to be treated fairly and who are willing to fight the corporations.
As for today, Wal-Mart and Target and the others have won. They are free to pay what they like, free to go where they wish. And for the poor here on the Southside of Chicago, poverty goes on.
—David Breeden
posted by Craig at 12:32 PM
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