Check out the article by Jean Friedman-Rudovsky that just won the “Green Eyeshades Award” from the Society of Professional Journalists for the Best Consumer Reporting of 2011, for her piece that took over three years to investigate:
Walmart greenwashing: Workers pay the price
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2011-01-06/news/walmart-greenwashing-workers-pay-the-price/
Congratulations Jean! Your reporting reminds those of us in Denver, don’t believe the hype about Walmart being a responsible corporate neighbor.
I would like to know more about the retail/restaurants going into this space. What percentage is residential? And I am not in favor of walmart being part of the development. Kind of a sleazy outfit in their merchandise, employment practices, supplier relations. Please reconsider.
I received this email from a team that stopped a Walmart in Sioux Falls:
Saving our Neighborhoods
10:07 AM (23 minutes ago)
Louis,
Thanks for contacting us! The most important advice I can give is to research research research! Our city had ordinances which pertained to rezoning, drainage, traffic, etc. We played on each of the ordinances and played the fine lines that they were crossing on each. If the land is not zoned correctly yet, check city documentation for required proper buffers between the residential and the commercial land (apartment complexes, small offices, etc). If those buffers don’t exist, use that for leverage. Make sure that they are complying with any drainage requirements, and that they aren’t going to be draining into any protected land. See if the city has a future land use plan (usually in a form of a map) and see if the Walmart being put there is consistent with the future plan. If it’s not, go after that too. Use their own rules and documentation against them. This fight is not against Walmart, it is against your city officials. If you check out http://www.savingourneighborhoods.com you will see a lot of info and data supporting our arguments. Those types of documents and data are what you are going to have to locate in your own city documentation.
A lot of what you can accomplish depends on what stage the process is in. Has it gone to the city council or the planning commission for vote yet? Those are the two places that you will have the most leverage.
Once you set a game plan of facts that back up the statement that Walmart does not belong in that area, meet with each of your city council members and your mayor individually and present your data. I cannot stress this step enough as most of their decisions will be made already prior to their vote.
Another strong point is media. Get it out there….get your city engaged in the discussion. I didn’t let our TV stations go for less than 3 days without some sort of a communication regarding our stance, or what our next steps were (within reason, because you don’t want to show your hand to Walmart prior to the vote). Make it a city wide issue, not just a neighborhood issue. Walmart tends to shy off when they are portrayed poorly in the media. We had stories in the paper, and on the TV at least 2-3 times a week. During the week of the city council meeting, we had something on each station at least twice a day.
Find a location that will support your cause and get a petition available at that location to be signed. Make sure your petition supports the relocation of Walmart, not the eradication of Walmart. This is very important, because otherwise you will make your position appear that you are against Walmart, not the location of Walmart in a residential area. The petition will hold no legal binding, however it will hold water to your city council members that are supposed to be representing their constituents. We live in a population of 150,000, and we had about 2,000 signatures supporting our cause. In order to attain them, we had 3 events, and went door to door in a 2 mile radius around the site, and also had the petition available at a church for 10 hours of the day for those that could not make it to the events or were not home when we went door to door. That part is by far what takes the most work. You will need volunteers for your door to door campaign. We were able to put together an army with a volunteer sign up at our events and at the Church where they petition was available.
Get a website and a email sign up list. Make sure to update this often to keep people coming back. Also get a facebook page and post updates there too. Any media attention that you receive, post on your site and on facebook. If you don’t keep the community engaged in this issue, you will find it very difficult to use your leverage. The more people you have, the more voice you have. At one point, Walmart reached out to us for a closed door meeting, which was driven completely by the number of support we had accumulated via social networking and email. Also, make sure to communicate to your people the importance of emailing your city officials, many times. Be sure to stress the importance to them to stick to the topic at hand in their emails, and not to branch of to an “I hate Walmart” email.
We had 8 core members in our group, but each of us had strong skills for the task at hand. One of our core members was a civil engineer. He was key to our cause because he was able to read and interpret city laws and ordinances extremely quickly and parse through the facts to provide proof that Walmart was in fact pushing the limits of these laws and ordinances. He was also able to parse through traffic data and reports quickly to prove that the current infrastructure in the area would not handle the traffic increase based on the sheer volume of vehicles.
I know this seems to be an extremely daunting task, but if you have a few key team members that are willing to devote the time to this, it can be accomplished. Persistence is key.
Good luck to you and your group…I hope you come out victorious! If you have any other questions, feel free to contact me again and I will answer your questions to the best of my ability.
Sincerely,
Brian Schumacher
SInce Jeff Fuqua indicated that he received 50% comments for and 50% comments against Walmart via emails messages, here is his email address to be certain that our message gets across! jeff.fuqua@fuquadev.com