Big Box Swindle: The Fight to Reclaim America from Retail Giants

[Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Stacy Mitchell's new book, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses (Beacon Press, 2006).]

To Beat Wal-Mart We Need to Shed Our Consumer Identity

Citizens groups are waging a growing number of successful campaigns against big-box retailers. They are winning victories in places as far-flung as Damariscotta, Maine, a coastal village where two stay-at-home moms ignited an uprising this past spring that not only blocked a Wal-Mart supercenter but led several towns to adopt store size cap laws that effectively ban big boxes region-wide, and Inglewood, California, a working class city near Los Angeles where voters handed Wal-Mart a stunning upset two years ago even though the chain spent over $1 million on a massive public relations blitz.

Despite differences in circumstances and demographics, all of these successful campaigns -- and there have been dozens in the last two years -- have one striking commonality: a core part of their strategy involves getting people to see themselves not just as consumers, but as workers, producers, business owners, citizens, and stewards of their community. When people walk into a voting booth or city council meeting with this vastly expanded sense of their own economic and political identity, they are far more likely to reject big-box development projects and to endorse measures that force these companies to adhere to higher standards. This is a crucial lesson as we work to knit these local efforts together into a broader movement to counter the power of global corporations.

In contrast, when the big chains win, they do so by getting people to assume the familiar and narrow role of consumer and to view their relentless expansion and radical restructuring of the economy as simply a matter of shopping options.

Although pervasive in its influence today, this consumer identity is a relatively recent invention. It only became a powerful force in U.S. politics in the years after World War II. To a large degree, it was created and propagated by the first generation of chain retailers-companies like A&P, Kroger, and Woolworth-which encountered such strong public opposition in the 1920s and 30s as to call into doubt their continued existence. The chains responded with a massive PR campaign that managed to transform American citizens into consumers-a sharply circumscribed identity that corporations have used to augment their power ever since.

Chain stores first began to multiply in large numbers in the years following World War I. During the 1920s, the number of chain stores climbed from about 30,000 to 150,000. By the end of the decade, they were capturing 22 percent of all retail sales nationally. Leading the pack was A&P, with some 15,000, mostly small, outlets that accounted for 11 percent of the country's grocery sales and generated over $1 billion in annual revenue. A&P was the Wal-Mart of its day-although it was, in relative terms, significantly smaller, accounting for 2.5 percent of all retail sales, compared to Wal-Mart's 10 percent share today.

As the chains expanded, so too did opposition to their presence. It was a cause embraced by populists, progressives, unions concerned about wage pressures, farmers fearful chain store buying power, wholesalers, and of course local business owners. By the late 1920s, more than 400 local organizations had sprung up around the country to counter the chains. These "home defense leagues" and "better business associations" were varied in their approaches. Some, like the Community Builders in Danville, Virginia, never mentioned the chains, but instead promoted the idea, through billboards and radio programs, that money that stayed in town helped to build the community and its institutions. Other groups attacked the chains directly and exhorted people to boycott them. A campaign in Springfield, Missouri, urged, "Keep Ozark Dollars in the Ozarks," and ran newspaper ads describing chain store managers as "mechanical operators" whose duty was to "get Springfield's money and to send it to the Home Office."