Corporate Swine, Inc.

April 2004 will go down in anti-corporate history, illuminating the strength of community activists and labor rights workers all over the nation. On April 7th, the community of Inglewood California rejected a measure for development of a WalMart Supercenter the size of 17 football fields. The construction of the supercenter would have created a WalMart village, of sorts, and if approved by voters of the city, it would have been exempt from environmental and zoning regulations.

WalMart spent over a million dollars in a public relations campaign across the city, using typical rhetoric that WalMart creates jobs and increases land value in a community. The Coalition for a Better Inglewood, however, saw through the lies and launched a grassroots campaign that united community activists and resulted in a 2-1 vote against the supercenter.

The victory has effects reaching far outside this Los Angeles community. It sets a precedent around the US in a year when WalMart has announced the development of 40 of these massive supercenters in California alone.

Opponents of Measure 04-A included four of Inglewood's five city council members the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Democratic Representative Maxine Waters. The Coalition for a Better Inglewood united religous groups, educators, elected officials, labor unions, churches, civil rights groups, and business owners.

WalMart is up against oppostion across the country from labor unions, because they are anti-union, from workers who are stuck in an inescapable system of low wages and no health care, and by environmental activists who are resisting the massive development because it would give the retail giant Carte Blanche on the 60 acre lot. This victory is just the beginning! Thanks, Inglewood.