Yet, there I was, spending my Saturday morning in a crowded parking lot on the South Side, watching hundreds of people line up for the opportunity to buy cantelopes for a dollar a piece.
Four days worth of produce were sold in three hours.
I never thought I would be writing about Walmart, but here I am.
Last week, I got a vague email with a press release for a new Walmart. I didn't delete it, but I rolled my eyes. I'm not really a write-about-giant-hated-multi-billion-dollar-corporations kind of girl.
Then my husband was chatting to me about Christian Lander, the author of Stuff White People Like. He watched an interview with him, and one of the questions was "What post made your white friends the most upset?"
His answer: "Knowing what's best for poor people."
This Walmart press release and this other random fact rolled around in my head, until they met, made friends and ended up driving me down to Chatham Saturday morning.
So, there's this big empty lot in Chatham. There used to be a U.S. Steel plant there. But not anymore. The site is supposed to be commercial development, but it's been held up. There's a Lowe's and a Potbelly there, and room for quite a few other small businesses. But the main anchor is a big empty lot, and that's where Alderman Howard Brookins wants to put a Walmart.
Should we build a new Walmart in Chatham? from Megan Cottrell on Vimeo.
Four years ago, he tried to put one there, but he was defeated. "Find
another retailer," people told him. He tried Target, Dominick's,
Roundy's, K-Mart, Sears and Kohl's, he says. He offered them tax
incentives to come, but nothing happened. Nobody wants this empty lot.
And his people need jobs. Chicago's unemployment rate is 11.3 percent. Chatham's? It's 20 percent.
Chicago's food deserts in pink, according to the latest research
And the South Side is crawling with what advocates call "food deserts." Places where there just aren't grocery stores.
I
think most of us who live on the North Side have never really
experienced this. There are two grocery stores within walking distance
of my Lincoln Square apartment, one less than a block away.
But
when I spent a summer in Lawndale on the Westside, I saw a bit of
this. The only place to get food within walking distance was Save-A-Lot.
Although it was cheap, there wasn't much, and their produce department
looked wilted and covered in dust. When we wanted food, we'd sometimes
go to the Dominick's on Roosevelt, but it was often too expensive and
the quality wasn't much better. Most of the time, we took a weekly trip
to the suburbs to go to Walmart.
In many poor communities, there aren't stores, except for liquor
stores. There aren't banks. There are currency exchanges. There aren't
offices or retailers or restaurants.
No economic development. No jobs. No fresh food. No tax revenue.
There is one Walmart store on the West side. I visited there two weeks
ago, and it was bustling. The average wage there is $12 an hour, and
the employees have access to at least some health insurance. It's
attracted other economic development like Aldi and Bank of America. It
still has its critics, but it's there.
Walmart doesn't have a good reputation. If you've seen Walmart: the high cost of low price
you already know about Walmarts vicious resistance to unions, their
lack of environmental responsibility, their low wages and expensive
health benefits, and there general disregard for anything except the
bottom line.
Here's a clip:
I guess I'm taking a bit of a U-turn here. I recently wrote about how awful it is to have a crappy, dead-end job, and how we can't expect anyone to settle for them.
Just part of the line to buy fresh produce on Saturday. It stretched nearly all around the parking lot
But this giant empty lot made me re-think things.
It's a luxury for me to be able to turn up my nose at Walmart. I have
other places to shop. I have other places to look for a job.
Many people don't have that luxury. And who am I to stand in the way of
some income, some benefits, some fresh food, some economic development?
It may not be the way I would want to do it, but I also wouldn't want
to live in a community without a grocery store and without any
available jobs for my neighbors.
Yes, Walmart has union problems, environmental problems, wage problems, health care problems.
But they are also the only company willing to come into a tough community, bringing jobs and fresh food with them.
It's easy for those of us who choose not to shop at Walmart to look down our noses. It's easy for us to know what's best.
But I also wonder - do we really know what's best? Are we saving people from crappy jobs and refusing to give profits to a company we don't support?
I don't know. But the chant on Saturday was "It's our community. It's our choice."
How do we argue with that?