Kudzu and Wal-Mart

PHOTO CREDITS for kudzu and truck with kudzu: yahoolavista.com

KUDZU BEWARE!
A Wal-Mart Story as told to me by Mary Petruska.

Mary Petruska recently saw my Wal-Mart book review and emailed me about her own Wal-Mart community story. Mary and her partner Bob Dombrowski are the real heroes in the U.S., people who are trying to make a difference in their own community.

Mary and Bob live in Trenton Georgia. They made the move to Georgia about five years ago after living in their artists' loft in the Flower District of New York City for over thirty years.

Bob and Mary are two wonderful artists who practice their beliefs. Not just content to live on the farm they rent and make art, (see photos of their art in 11/8/07 blog), they got involved in their community and quickly became known and admired as those weird artists from up north.

The adjacent community of Tiftonia, Tennessee, eight miles from Trenton was picked by Wal-Mart to be the new location. Dade County was given an opportunity to voice their views about Wal-Mart before it was built. Dade County, Georgia, where Mary and Bob live, had rejected a Wal-Mart twenty years ago. The new location was seen as some as pay back and has had a negative effect on the surrounding communities. Bob and Mary researched the effects of Wal-Mart stores and brought the information to the local meetings and distributed a two-page flyer. This is what happened as told to me by Mary's email:

"Read the Wal-Mart blog - I fought them here - and lost... but did a great campaign likening them to Kudzu! -

Here's an excerpt:

"During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the Soil Conservation Service promoted kudzu for erosion control. Hundreds of young men were given work planting kudzu. While it helped prevent erosion, the vine also destroyed valuable forests. These vines will destroy everything in their path over a period of time if no attempt is made to control their growth.

"Wal-Mart first enters a community promising growth, tax benefits, and jobs. It subsequently destroys whatever local businesses are in that area. It alters the environment completely and if profits do not meet expectations because the local economy has already been sucked dry - they leave. THIRTY Wal-Marts have already closed in the state of Tennessee."

I love the KUDZU analogy. Mary said Bob used it at a community meeting, throwing out a hook to get the community to remember the effects Wal-Mart would create if the super center went forward. Mary used it in a two- page flyer and Wal-Mart showed up with a 12-page document rebuking the arguments. At the meeting Mary said, "You got to think about a company that comes prepared with 12 pages of rebuttals..." "But," she said, "it fell on deaf ears, just like kudzu - the community thought it would bring prosperity and jobs."

"The Wal-Mart Super Center was built in 2004. Everything around the Wal-Mart is closed and holding. The property values got ahead of their time and it looks like a wasteland."

Not to hide her difficulty to live in a world without being part of the problem, Mary says she goes to the plaza to eat at the China Buffet which offers all you can eat sushi for $8.95. "What can I say?" Mary says in an email, "I miss sushi."

It's nice to remember our obligation to others before we buy. Since the death of pets and more recently the lead in toys and the zero regulation policy of pharmaceuticals in the U.S., I am not buying anything from China. It's not easy. A recent attempt to buy canvas shoes proved impossible. On the bottom of every shoe I looked at in over ten stores in New York, was marked "Made in China." Everything in Wal-Mart is made in China. See my review here in my blog, or better yet read "The Wal-Mart Effect" by Charles Fishman. It's chilling. He shops at Wal-Mart. His wife doesn't.

“Wal-Mart has become the most powerful, most influential company in the world.”
"The Wal-Mart Effect"

Kudzu is it's own amazing story. Since it's introduction to the U.S. from Japan in the 1930's it has destroyed millions of hectares of ecosystems. The threat has begun in New Zealand with invasions in the North Island.