Jesse wants his payoff.
Nobody neutral on Wal-Mart proposals
Community leaders, clerics passionately disagree whether giant retailers will help or harm neighborhoods
By Dan Mihalopoulos
Tribune staff reporter
May 4, 2004
At a recent meeting with religious leaders in the Austin community, Wal-Mart representatives pledged that the workforce at a store they hoped to make the chain's first in Chicago would reflect the makeup of the economically struggling neighborhood.
Taking them up on the promise, ministers pointed to a deep pool of Chicagoans in need of jobs: paroled convicts.
"It's going to be difficult for Wal-Mart to say they reflect the community if they don't hire ex-offenders," said Rev. Joseph Kyles, chairman of the 37th Ward Pastors Alliance.
He and other black ministers at the meeting said company officials appeared surprised by the request, although areas near the proposed Wal-Mart site have the highest concentrations of parolees in the city.
The demands for a set-aside program for reformed criminals illustrate how doing business the Chicago way is very different from opening discount stores in the rural communities and suburbs where Wal-Mart has historically operated.
When the City Council votes Wednesday on whether to make zoning changes to allow the West Side Wal-Mart store and another store on the South Side, aldermen will decide a furious dispute that has opened rifts in the predominantly black neighborhoods where the world's largest retailer wants to open shop.
With each side invoking Scripture, the debate has unleashed complex passions among area African-Americans, whose public policy opinions frequently--and mistakenly--are seen as monolithic.
Concerns largely center on wages and benefits at Wal-Mart, and critics recite widely reported complaints that the company abuses workers, particularly those who try to unionize its 1.4 million employees.
But many blacks say they are tired of having to travel miles to hunt for bargains and they view Wal-Mart's entry into Chicago as validation of black buying power.
"I'd rather spend my money in my neighborhood than go to somebody's suburb," said Krystal Garrett, a 27-year-old public school teacher and homeowner in Chatham, the South Side neighborhood where Wal-Mart wants to build a store.
Better than no jobs
Proponents also say the 300 low-wage jobs at each store are better than having no jobs at all.
Such attitudes reek of "desperation and ghettonomics," according to Rev. Jesse Jackson. Pastors at nine black churches, including the 8,500-member Trinity United Church of Christ, have called for boycotting Wal-Mart.
William Lucy, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, sarcastically noted that slaves technically had jobs too.
"If Wal-Mart comes, it will come recognizing that this is not Tupelo," Lucy said on Jackson's TV program recently. "This is Chicago, where you have got to deal with the political and religious and community leadership."
In launching a vigorous charm offensive, Wal-Mart officials appear well aware that doing business in the city will require that they do more than put up a "big box" store and post their yellow smiley-face logos.
Wal-Mart's face before the City Council is John Bisio, a 38-year-old publicist with a boxer's jaw and a broadcaster's gravelly voice. Bisio, in Chicago to lobby for the proposal, embodies his company's famous thriftiness with his $30-a-day meal allowance and $65-a-night downtown hotel room, booked at an Internet discount rate.
Wal-Mart stepping up
"We want to integrate ourselves into your community," Bisio told an all-black crowd of about 70 at a recent 21st Ward meeting led by Ald. Howard Brookins.
Bisio, who is white, was accompanied by two black Wal-Mart executives: Alton Murphy, a district manager for the northern suburbs; and Wes Gillespie, an official from the company's headquarters in Arkansas.
In talking to the group, Murphy cited Colossians 3:23, which urges labor for the Lord, not man. The company eagerly will hire blacks, he vowed. "You won't go in and pay your hard-earned money to someone who doesn't look like you," Murphy said, sparking applause.
"That's right," a middle-age woman shouted.
Gillespie told the crowd that moving up the ladder at Wal-Mart "has allowed me to grow personally and spiritually."
Also speaking up for the company was Eugene Morris, who owns a Chicago advertising agency that receives $20 million a year for producing TV spots featuring Wal-Mart employees.
"Obviously, you can see him, he is African-American," said Brookins.
As for critics of Wal-Mart's treatment of workers, Morris said that slavery ended long ago and that no one will be forced to work for the retailer.
Retailer's promise
Wal-Mart has promised to donate to good causes in Chicago, as the company did when it opened a store last year in a largely black section of Los Angeles. Recipients included the Los Angeles Urban League and the Magic Johnson Foundation.
According to Ald. Emma Mitts (37th), in whose ward the West Side store would be built, the company has given 50 calculators to Austin High School and $1,000 for toys and clothes for poor children in her ward.
"The peanut gifts don't mitigate treating people wrong," said Rev. Reginald Williams Jr., associate pastor for justice ministries at Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side.
The church, at 400 W. 95th St.,, which touts itself as "unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian," has been a hotbed of opposition to Wal-Mart. Trinity's stained-glass windows depict civil-rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr., speaking in Washington.
Brookins, a freshman alderman, is a church member, putting him in the uncomfortable position of listening to his own pastor blister Wal-Mart supporters from the pulpit. Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Trinity's influential pastor, says the company's backers are "pimping" blacks.
"Whenever price means more to you than principle, you have defined yourself as a prostitute," Wright declared in a recent church bulletin.
Threat by black aldermen
Some black aldermen have said they will oppose the zoning changes for Wal-Mart, despite a council tradition of letting members dictate real-estate decisions in their wards.
"This is one of the worst corporations in America," said Ald. Toni Preckwinckle (4th). "If we're going to allow them in the city, we should extract some concessions."
Wal-Mart officials have refused to put any promises in writing, noting that their competitors have not been asked to make a similar commitment. They could not name an instance where the firm had set a policy of hiring ex-cons.
But Kyles, the West Side pastor, said he supports the proposed project, at Grand and Kilpatrick Avenues, and noted Wal-Mart vowed to explore hiring parolees.
Those pushing for the company to make that commitment note the West Side is home to thousands of ex-offenders who may be more likely to commit new crimes if their records keep them from finding work.
"I don't know if [Wal-Mart officials] are trying to find a way into the city or if they are genuinely wanting to take the lead in dealing with the city's social ills," Kyles said. "Moving into the inner city, their philosophy has got to change."
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune |
