I hope the DC city council sticks to their guns and tells Wal-Mart to be sure to let door hit them in the ass on the way out. Sure, it will cost the District jobs if Wal-Mart cancels its plans to open three outlets, but that just means that other companies, like CostCo, can pick up the slack while paying the District’s residents a living wage.
I like the idea of the nation’s capital being a Wal-Mart-free zone.
As a resident of the area…
The big stores like CostCo around here are all in… wealthy white suburbs, in the richest counties in the nation by leaps and bounds. There is no way for low income people to actually reach most of them as they are off public transportation. The ones that aren’t… you can’t haul back what CostCo sells on the METRO, it’s too large.
Furthermore affordable food stores in the city proper are all being run out by ultra expensive places like Whole Foods, Gourmet organic markets, and Dean and Deluca. So poorer residents are often fucked into convience stores which serve crap at a higher price.
The nice ethnic markets, again out of the city now in rich white person land. So unless you own a car, you ain’t shopping there.
This was part of the plan to force low income residents out of the city and replace them with cosmopolitan whites, and it’s working. Crimes down, property values are up, and the city is younger and more educated than ever. But the poor got screwed.
I hate to say it but we need a Walmart in the city. Because right now cheap and good food is strictly in rich white areas. Good expensive food is in the city, and expensive shitty food for poor people is in the city.
And no Costco is not going to open a store in the city, PERIOD. Because they have several right around it, you know so rich white people can have cheap stuff. But I’m sure we can close down another Safeway and replace it with a Whole Foods that charges several times as much to force people out and raise property values again!
The poor pretty much always get the short end of the stick. One never sees an oil refinery in a wealthy area. Those with power make the rules.
Agree.
I understand that Walmart is an evil coglomerate, but I also no what it’s like to have on $20 to spend for food for the week (or 2 weeks when I was really struggling) and the choice is whether to buy a “pack” of chicken, some rice, a coupla cans of whatever and more non-perishables to last you until the next pay day. There is no way you can survive on $20 when you only have a Costco or Whole Foods or even a Target in your neighborhood.
Walmart is usually the only option left in the poorer neighborhood. If there was a better reasonable choice, then hell yeah, I’d say to WalMart…”fudge off”, but what else is there?
Yeah I think the only Costco is in Pentagon City, which isn’t DC proper (it’s Arlington) but it’s probably the closest you’ll get. I have a BJ’s near my house but you aren’t going to see any projects near Van Dorn. And you sure as fuck won’t see any Costcos or BJ’s coming to Anacostia, Congress Heights or Water Front. Georgia Ave and Brookland are “safer” now, and now poor people can barely tread water in those parts. I know wannabe slumlords are cleaning up tho.
All the same I still say fuck Walmart and approve of their decision. Service industry is continuing to remove laborious jobs which is the natural order as an economy advances. Either retail is going to have to pay living wages, or we need to establish a minimum income provided by the government. I vote both.
Agree with seabe here. Wal-Mart is trying to set themselves up as the only option to offer groceries in some low-income communities. I would note a couple of things about that:
Let’s face it: it has gotten to the point that there are some jobs that are worse than no job. That is true for Wal-Mart workers, who are often tied up with jobs with inconsistent shifts which require them to always be available for call-in, making it difficult to impossible for them to look for other work or further their education and training.
It is also true for our society and government. Our local, State and Federal governments have subsidized the Wal-Mart business model. Among the many ways we have done so is by providing SNAP, Medicaid, food banks and other social services to workers whose employers could pay them well enough to avoid needing some of these services, but whose employers choose not to do so, because America Fuck Yeah!!!
My parents are in Loudon, one sisters in Falls Church, my brother is in Fairfax. There are tons of CostCo’s, H Mar t (great bulk discount food Asian and Latin), Wegmans (amazing grocery and cheap) Food Lion, and all sorts of stuff there.
But point blank they will NEVER come into DC. DC it’s either “make them go broke and eat whole foods”, “make them eat from 7/11” or give them a wallmart. The good companies flat out will not move to DC. So anything but Walmart is a fucking pipe dream and if someone advocates for it they should be laughed at for being an idiot.
Is it fair, no. But “get rid of blacks and replace them with young white liberal college grades” is the Democratic government of DC’s goal. Has been since we stopped the crack crime wave.
I live in Rosslyn and work off K Street. I grew up in and around DC, born and raised here. So I know the drill. Tell young whites how cool, liberal, and urban, city living is, than push out all the poors… from those same areas. The Obama era is REALLY helping property values oh so well.
I work at a food bank that supplies food to seniors so they can pay their bills and not kicked out of the ever decreasing housing in DC… guesss what, cheap food banks are non profits only now. So if a poor person shows up on their own, they won’t give them any food!
Fucked up as it is, Walmart is the only hope for poor minorities in DC when it comes to food.
Is Walmart really that cheap? I live, probably, no more than 10 miles from Boo as the crow flies. There is a Walmart near us that I’ve only been in about 5 times(always as an absolute last resort). If I go, I always make it a point to check their prices. At least in the one here, their prices aren’t worth the extra drive as compared to the stores that are closer to me.
They’re not any cheaper than your standard grocer, but that’s his point: there are no “standard” grocers in DC. There are corner stores, 711, and Whole Foods. And of course Safeway. There are Harris Teeter’s, but those are also more in the Pentagon City and Rosslyn areas, but you need to make at least $65k to afford to live there, which is by yourself and not supporting a family.
I have a Giant right around from my house — in fact I walk to it because I don’t have a car — but I’m a middle class white guy living on the Alexandria/Arlington/Fairfax border.
There is a Whole Foods closer to me than the Giant. Walmart I’d have to drive. I stick to Giant; they give me points for gas which I give to other people who want a 20-30 cent discount per gallon.
Here’s what happened.
When DC cleaned up, they did it by importing a fucking ton of rich, socially liberal, whites. And selling them on how hip and cool it was to live in an urban area.
So any grocery store or store that sells actual food you’d want to it, is extremely high priced to cater to them, and help drive out the poor minorities. This is city policy, and also the cost of socially liberal hip urban living. There’s great food… provided you can blow 40-300 bucks a person eating out and shop at places that are Whole Foods (with prices inflated for DC) or more expensive.
Everything else… is 7/11s, minimarts, and horrible fast food. Which sell “food” at prices the poors can afford, but it’s horrible for you and you don’t get much.
So a Walmart would be a huge improvement for most people, massively so. It would be actual affordable food.
And arguing for another store is stupid, nobody will fucking do it because they aren’t stupid. All the places with great food and great prices are usually well off the public transportation lines so they don’t have to deal with theft and people don’t have to deal with the bums. So unless you own a car and can drive out in VA or MD, you’re stuck with the inflated food prices or the 7/11.
The only area that’s possible with public transportation is the Rosslyn, Pentagon, Crystal City area… which in many ways is more downtown than downtown DC. But… let’s put it this way I pay over 2 grand a month for a studio and that’s considered cheap here. Most people make well over 100k. You’d also have to take the subway all the way out here, and then take it all the way back in with your food. If you live in the less well off areas of DC (ie you can’t afford a custom butcher, whole foods, and a custom seafood market for all your meals each day). that’s over an HOUR round trip when it’s not rush hour, and it’s holy hell during rush hour as well. Plus even in Rosslyn they’re pushing out cheaper places and installing more Dean and Deluca’s, Whole Foods, it’s spreading.
DC suffers the same problem as every major liberal urban mech, though I’d argue it’s a feature loved by upper class urban liberals. It’s staggeringly expensive, it’s amazingly high end, the income inequality is staggering as well, because that’s how urban mechas are built.
If you have cash it’s a socially liberal, great food, amazing culture, tons of arts, liberal paradise. If you don’t it’s a hell hole designed to fuck you over so the elites can live high off the hog.
It’s not just “food” that’s the issue as well. Want cooking gear? You’ve got Williams-Sonoma and Sur-la-table. Want clothes, we’ve got Armani and DKNY! Everything in the city proper or in the other urban areas is only the “best of the best”, and this is a deliberate result of our true and solid blue local governments where no Republican could get elected.
The city planning is to turn DC and the NW border of it into a high income liberal paradise for the well educated and socially cosmopolitan sect, and then force everyone else into the crime ridden shit hole of PG county and force them to commute an hour each way by bus and bleed them dry.
Walmart was supposed to help fix this by dumping one off the green line in the ghetto so the poor would have some place to go and get cheap food and goods. The poor people wanted it, the rich people hate the idea (there’s good waterfront property there for yachts!). None of the good stores will build one, there just isn’t enough money. Just for a laugh I got multiple lobsters, king crabs, caviar, ahi tuna, fresh veggies, two whole ducks, rack of lamb, and some steamed crabs for under 300 bucks… because I went out to the H-mart in Falls Church (not reachable by public transportation at all). In the areas that are reachable, that would have cost well over a grand between Whole Foods, the butcher, and the warf. This is deliberate because well off people live there. Shit’s dirt cheap in the automobile area where people make money, shit’s pricey downtown.
And raising the minimum wage to 12 is sadly not going to make a fucking remote amount of difference. 65k is barely making it in most areas for a single person. 2k a month studio, 140 a month for parking at your building, god knows how munch downtown, massive electric and heating bills, massive bills for internet access, sky high cell phone prices, and crazy high food prices. You can get by on 50k but you’re one issue away from being sunk and will rack up debt just to live, 120k is OK, 150k for an individual is sort of the sweet spot, but that’s chump change compared to what most of the cosmopolitans here make. The costs keep going up, they went up through the recession, our housing NEVER crashed.
DC is an odd beast that if you aren’t from here you can’t possibly begin to fathom the actual issues the area faces. It’s rather like NYC in that aspect. Most people hear about the great parts, and not the really fucked up issues we have.
I work with a food drive for elderly people who are being gentrified out of their communities. Because the food banks aren’t really public (the good ones anyways) and you have to be a non profit to access them. Guess what our government and corporate run food banks give us for these people… all of which were here through the civil rights era and the crack era… rice, beans, canned veggies, canned fruit, seltzer water. That’s what they LIVE OFF. And the reason is… so white liberals who love urban living can move into the area, many of which are furious at us for doing it.
I don’t mean to be so down on my home. It’s a fantastic place, truly socially progressive for gays and women, very much pro affirmative action… but it’s a plutocratic nightmare of the highest proportions.
The only option is to massively expand the METRO system to cover a vastly greater area much better. But that would cost billions and upper class liberals don’t want poors taking the subway to where they live, and frankly don’t need it or want to pay for it. So instead we are expanding it to… more malls that sell Rolex watches, air ports, museums… you know shit rich liberals like. There’s also the three way pissing contest for whole will pay for this between DC, MD, and VA.
/end rant
Someone should do a DC hangout, it’s great if you have some disposable cash and the place is beautiful.
Yep. My friend Zach just moved to Tyson’s corner from his old house in Foggy. I think he paid around 2250-2500 for his tiny place. It was a nice place, not quite studio as the rooms were all “separate” but his living room and kitchen were separated by a bar stool.
Which is why I chose to rent a room from someone who owns a house in Van Dorn. The house is prolly worth like $500k but my room with its own bathroom and utilities/Internet is only $995. The only problem is it takes like 30-40 minutes one way to get to Ballston or Clarendon.
Tbh I prefer the house parties of my activist friends who live on yellow/green line than paying $6 for a Budweiser. Tho petworth-Georgia ave is another area that is being hit with the same gentrification. I wouldn’t go near Anacostia and that’s a sad thing…
I’m looking to buy a place in Rossyln, with the veterans home loan and other items… 600k for a studio… fun fucking times.
Also a bigger reason why metro won’t e expanded: it will delay trains everywhere else. Blue line is already getting hosed because of the silver addition. And I’d say rich people’s time is more of an impediment than their money.
As always, there’s just grandstanding and no real attempt to solve the problem. Good food stores can be brought in by government incentives (which is what is required for Walmart as well). Co-ops and other local retail structures can be and have been developed. Won’t happen, though, when all the “incentives” flow to Walmart and its oligarch gang. But that might reveal how we’re long past any kind of market-driven economy or democratic system.
Of course there’s a downside to kicking out Walmart: precisely the same one that came with ending the plantation system. Walmart and the rest are just the most recent incarnation of that same old system with much better lobbying and PR.
In a sane country, the government would respond to the tremendous financial and social costs that come from so many millions being forced to eat food with poor nutritional value. That country would improve the next Farm Bill by stopping the subsidies of sugar and corn products and transferring those subsidies to dense greens, fruits and other, better foods. Businesses would also come up with better ways to market truly healthy foods, and companies which slowly destroy people’s health would be forced to fund a truly effective educational program about nutrition, such as those marketing tobacco products were forced to do in recent decades.
Because we have so many sociopathic and insane people in power, we can’t even pass a status quo shitty Farm Bill, and the House GOP will try to destroy food assistance this summer by separating SNAP from the subsidies to farmers. Also, we can’t even get minor policy changes enacted by voters or politicians, as hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign propaganda screams at us: “THE FOOD NAZIS WANT TO TAKE AWAY YOUR SODA POP, DONUTS AND SAUSAGE!!”
But let’s remember, True Progressives, it’s all Barack’s, Harry’s and Nancy’s fault.
Same here in Chicago. Why? Clientele with deeper pockets and less crime which means lower insurance premiums and lower pilferage. Nothing racial. WalMart is willing to go into cities because they can find a bigger pool of cheap labor (that Costco doesn’t need because they pay good wages) and WalMart treats all their customers as suspected criminals anyway. No other store that I know makes you check your bags on the way in and minutely inspects your cart right after you leave checkout.
At least in these parts (PNW), Safeway is no less expensive than Whole Foods. In the case of (fresh) produce, it’s often more.
Wal Mart is welcome to set up shop in DC if they pay 12.50 an hour in a city with an atrociously high cost of living. Nobody’s stopping them from doing that.
I used to work (briefly) at the head office of one of their competitors. I can tell you right now, the perception that wal mart is cheaper than a normal grocery store is not necessarily true. Wal Mart and similar stores price target only about 100 items. The rest are usually inferior product (such as shoes that will fall apart) or are more expensive. They do this deliberately, knowing people don’t have time to research price on less popular items. Yes, someone might save money on milk; but then they lose that savings on an item they don’t buy as often.
What might really help some of these neighborhoods more quickly is smaller cheap food stores like Aldi, but wage issues exist there, too.
Ultimately, there will need to be incentives to get good companies into the poorer neighborhoods – but by raising the wage and providing other types of incentives, perhaps a retailer can provide real jobs, too. That might actually help the neighborhood. A national minimum wage increase also needs to be part of this fight, but that’s off the table until the GOP is out of the house. So cities like Washington are trying to figure out what to do in the meantime.
“I can tell you right now, the perception that wal mart is cheaper than a normal grocery store is not necessarily true. Wal Mart and similar stores price target only about 100 items. The rest are usually inferior product (such as shoes that will fall apart) or are more expensive. They do this deliberately, knowing people don’t have time to research price on less popular items.”
THIS.
Wal-Mart’s notoriously atrocious compensation for their workers perversely helps them market themselves as the low-price leader. Consumers incorporate into their minds the knowledge that Wal-Mart pays their workers shit, so that’s how they can afford to offer such low prices, right? Makes it easy for their customers to avoid thinking things through or do a real combing through of their receipts.
Sounds like a good place to open a co-op.
Poor poor Walmart would have to pay their employees a whopping 12.50 an hour if the living wage ordnance passes city council. This is Kenyan Muslim Socialism!
The demand is there to support that retail.
If Wally World wants to turn up its nose to make a point, screw ’em. Someone else will take the money.
No, they won’t, because poors. All that will happen is they will be screwed more by minmarts and 7/11.
Sadly this is a case of you’re either pro walmart, or pro hurting poor people.
Wal Mart isn’t the only discount retailer on the eastern seaboard.
So, SIDC, I clearly understand your views here. But with the evidence some of us present upthread, you think Wal-Mart helps poor people?
It would be wise to reconsider that POV. There’s plenty of evidence to show that Wal-Mart is the deadliest of enemies to the lower and middle classes.