community activist

Joslyn Williams 7-26-2011

Walmart has launched a charm offensive as part of its new urban strategy to impose smaller versions of its big box in inner cities across the country. It has proposed four stores for Washington, D.C. -- all in predominantly minority, and most in low-income, neighborhoods.

The debate over building Walmart stores in D.C. is engaging intense public sentiment, and for good reason. While Walmart promises new jobs in a community, in reality it displaces other local businesses, leaving in question whether there is a net jobs gain; one study showed that for every retail job Walmart brought, communities lost 1.4 other jobs. In addition, Walmart passes on the cost of its low wages to taxpayers when associates and their families rely on publicly funded health care and other assistance programs.

Barbara Grady 5-27-2009
Troost Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, has been dividing rich and poor, black and white, jobless and employed in this city since the days of Jim Crow when it was a legal line of segregation.
Becky Garrison 10-15-2008

Clint Eastwood's latest feature Changeling (opens October 24) depicts the real life story of Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie), a working class single mom living in Los Angeles circa 1928.