I'm dissapointed in Chicago..

[BayCityProgressive]

I just saw on CNN they are allowing Walmart to enter the city...

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. Yes, but remember that Daley is a DINO,

very friendly with the current occupant of the White House, and the City Council rubber stamps his every whim.

[Egalitarian Zetetic]

2. What's wrong with that?

A lot of dems here support unabashed predatory capitalism, mention socialism though and they throw a fit , so they brought this on themselves, the country shall dig its own corporate grave.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Well, they can look forward to more sprawl and fewer jobs

And little pay and no benefits to go with the fewer jobs.

[Cocoa]

4. me too

but at least they blocked one of the two.

[ieoeja]

5. The people want it.

The people in the neighborhood viewed the opposition to Wal-Mart as a racist. They felt that bad jobs are better than no jobs. They wanted the same access to less expensive goods as the folk out in the suburbs. And so on.

The construction unions, of course, fought this tooth and nail which is why it took Wal-Mart years to finally get the city council to make the necessary change in zoning.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know WHAT change was needed to zoning? There are certainly plenty of places in Chicago where a Wal-Mart store would have been okay within the current zoning laws. Did they change the zoning to permit non-union construction and maintenance?

[Cocoa]

8. not that simple

some people wanted Wal Mart, and others didn't. Community groups were among the opponents of Wal Mart, and labor unions of course. I think it was primarily service unions. I even thought I heard that the store construction was going to be done with union labor.

And I didn't hear any mention of racism. There may have been some, but I didn't hear any of it. Can you provide any details about this?

edit: and small business owners were also among the Wal Mart opponents.

[KamaAina]

6. At least they're not disturbing sacred burial sites, like in Honolulu

http://starbulletin.com/2004/05/27/news/index4.html

State Circuit Judge Virginia Marks has denied a Nanakuli woman's request to stop Wal-Mart from relocating native Hawaiian remains at the site of its new Keeaumoku Street store.

"I'm distraught right now," Paulette Kaleikini said after yesterday's ruling, which clears the way for Wal-Mart to move 42 sets of remains discovered during construction of its new Sam's Club and Wal-Mart store complex....

Kaleikini's attorney Moses Kaia, with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., said she hasn't decided whether to pursue a lawsuit alleging the state didn't follow its own rules in deciding what to do with the remains which were found between January 2003 and January 2004....

Kaleikini's attorneys failed to show that the state "breached its public trust" in giving Wal-Mart permission to relocate the remains on the 10.5-acre "superblock," Marks said yesterday.

If any of the "chicken skin" tales we hear about the ancient burial sites are true, this particular Sprawl-Mart may give a whole new meaning to merchandise "flying off the shelves"...

Hey, I know! Maybe Sprawl-Mart can take out that "peasant insurance" retroactively on those 42 Native Hawaiians!

The hell of it is that the Sprawl-Mart site is only a few blocks from Daiei, a Japan-owned store that sells many imported Japanese goods (ranging from dry ramen noodles to high-end electronics). If Daiei goes down the tubes, we'll loseyet another landmark that keeps us from being SoCal with even higher prices. :(

[linazelle]

7. The people want it because they don't know any better

Thanks to the "liberal media" few people know anything about the implications of opening up a Walmart. I've been watching the people asking/begging for Walmart because they need jobs--some of the requesters are ignorant politicians, democrats at that. It's sickening.

[Southsideirish]

9. Me, too, very embarrassed indeed. Its a poor area - they think it will

help them and they (WalMart) seemed to have won over the alderwoman in that ward. Each alderman, apparently, has the last word in their ward regarding what is built there -its one of the flaws in the city planning.