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GUEST: Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator, formerly with the Black Commentator. He is now affiliated with ‘The Black Agenda Report.’ This week’s commentary is about Walmart’s Siege of Chicago.

Wal-Mart’s Seige of Chicago

Wal-Mart, the meanest junkyard dog, and biggest employer, in the country, has bullied the proud city of Chicago into submission. In the process, Wal-Mart put together a virtual cartel of big box retail corporations to blackmail, extort and otherwise play super-gangster in ways that Al Capone would envy.

Earlier this summer, a popular movement to force Wal-Mart and other huge retailers to pay employees at least ten dollars an hour by the year 2010, plus three dollars in benefits, won 35 votes in the 50-member Chicago City Council. Target Stores and Home Depot would also have been affected by the legislation. It looked as if the big boxes had been defeated, and would henceforth have to pay a living wage for the privilege of doing business in Chicago. The Living Wage Movement seemed to have even overcome Mayor Richard Daley’s political machine, by racking up a veto-proof majority on the City Council. However, living wage supporters could only afford to lose one of those 35 votes.

Enraged at the very idea that the citizens of city would have the gall to interfere with the way it does business, Wal-Mart and its partners in corporate coercion declared war on Chicago. Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot acted in concert to force their economic will on the people and the people’s representatives on the City Council. This troika of big capital threatened to withhold any future investments in the city if the big box living wage law went into effect. If these corporations had colluded among themselves to fix prices, that would be a violation of anti-trust law. But it appears to be perfectly legal for multi-billion dollar corporations to gang up on a city to extort wage legislation of their own choosing.

Wal-Mart and its fellow corporate thugs threatened to ring Chicago with suburban stores, to suck out of the city every last dollar of shoppers’ money. It was, in fact, an idle threat, since the mega-stores are hungry to dominate the nation’s big cities, tightly packed with customers. But Mayor Daley pretended as if he believed them, and leaned heavily on the City Council in an effort to switch at least one vote. Wal-Mart paid visits to every councilperson that would let them in the door, and flew in former Atlanta Mayor and Martin Luther King lieutenant Andrew Young to appeal to corrupt and greedy Black preachers. A selfish crowd of Black businessmen sided with the big box gang, showing they care more about the prospect of getting a contract from Wal-Mart than whether Chicago workers earn a living wage.

Half of the 18 Blacks on the city council had been on Wal-Mart’s side all along. In the end, the veto-proof majority cracked. Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot peeled away at least three votes, more than enough to allow Mayor Daley to veto the Big Box Living Wage bill. What the Chicago battle has shown is that African Americans don’t need more Black faces in high places, like in the city council. They need progressives in high places. In Chicago and every other city in Black America, there must be a purge of the sell-outs at every level. Otherwise Big Capital, which is intent on returning to the cities, will impose the Wal-Mart economic design on urban America. For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford.