The voters of Inglewood defeated Measure 04A, an intiative to approve the development of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the city. A coalition of community leaders, small business, labor, and anti-Wal-Mart activists came together to fight the Measure, which attempted to perform an end-run against the development process.
Wal-Mart has seen an increase in resistance from communities, from small businesses threatened by competition from gigantic retailers, from unions, because the stores are anti-union, from workers themselves, who find themselves stuck in a seemingly inescapable system of low-wages and few raises, and from communities that don't want large scale development.
Wal-Mart's strategy appears to involve moving into resistant communities using low-profile tactics. In West Covina, they attempted to purchase the old BKK landfill site for $10 million above market value, but the proposal to the city council did not include "Wal-Mart" in the title. The proposal failed. In Glendora, Wal-Mart failed to get approval from the city council, so they took the development to the initiative process, got on the ballot, and got voter approval. In Inglewood, the Measure that failed included provisions to allow the developer to circumvent the normal approval processes for developments. In Rosemead, an unnamed development attempted to get the city to approve spending for a sign for an unbuilt shopping center, but it was rejected when someone revealed that it was Wal-Mart.
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