All posts in Neighborhoods category.
“Eating local” is nothing more than a turn-of-phrase without defining the word “local.” Although some corporate natural foods stores label blueberries from Northern New Jersey as local to D.C., most agricultural advocates define local as grown or otherwise produced within 100 miles of the buyer. This range is often referred to as a region’s “foodshed.” [...]
[Excerpts cross-posted from The Brightwoodian. Click here to read full post] Walmart is feeling a little wobbly about the chances that the four sites that they’ve chosen for stores in the District will actually become realities, and here’s proof. Yesterday, the mailer you see here was received in mailboxes all across the city. You’re looking [...]
After many, many requests from urban farmers, cyclists, and food activists for information on a rescheduled DC Urban Farms Bike Tour, I am elated to let you all know that you can break out your bikes (and helmets, ahem) in less than two weeks. And there are two exciting new additions to the tour, bringing [...]
[Cross-posted from Will Bike for Change (or Pie!)] It’s a sadly common misconception that the local food movement is elitist. That’s why I was excited to hear about Jeremy Smith’s new book Growing a Garden City. It tells the stories of how first graders, single moms, and homeless folks have benefited from community gardens. At [...]
[Cross-posted from The Fight Back.]
“Once they get their foothold in D.C. we can never go back,” said Gary Cha, owner of Yes! Organic Market, which has seven stores, all located in the District of Columbia. “Washington is a very small city to have four Walmarts… Having just one Walmart can have a devastating effect. I can’t imagine the lawmakers, the councilmembers, the politicians letting four Walmarts come to D.C.”
Gary Cha at Yes! Organic Market
The Washington Post noted, “Last fall, Wal-Mart announced initial plans to open stores in Wards 4, 5, 6 and 7, and it has followed with a carefully orchestrated campaign to win support and disarm critics. It says that its stores would create 1,200 retail jobs… and would generate an estimated $10 million annually in tax revenue for the city.”
Cha challenges Walmart’s claims: “For every job that they bring, one-and-a-half to two jobs are lost, so it’s not a net gain of jobs.” A joint study by Hunter College and Bill de Blasio, the New York City Public Advocate, reached the same conclusion: “Wal-Mart is trying to take advantage of the current economic downturn by promising an immediate infusion of jobs and investment dollars in city neighborhoods that have been hit hard by the recession. Considering the body of independent research that clearly demonstrates Wal-Mart’s negative long-term impacts on local economies, it would be shortsighted to allow this destructive retail monopolist to enter the New York City market via the Trojan Horse of ‘job creation.’”
Regarding the estimated tax revenue D.C. would reap from Walmart’s arrival, Cha said, “[While] they’re bringing [in] about $10 million a year [in] sales tax… if the sales mostly come from existing business, that’s not a new tax that they’re generating, it’s just simply shifting from what small business owners [are already] paying.”
In his store on Georgia Avenue, the movie “Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price” plays continuously. It’s part of Cha’s effort to help educate the community. “A lot of people have no idea what Walmart does… I didn’t know that much about Walmart until I started doing research and it’s very scary… I’m concerned not just for my stores, but [for] a lot of other people because this is where I’ve been doing business for thirty years. This is my home.”
Much of D.C.’s vibrant nonprofit community has remained silent on Walmart’s attempt to enter the District. The Washington Post noted, “Wal-Mart’s charitable foundation has provided grants and donations to D.C. nonprofit organizations in recent years, including more than $2 million in fiscal 2010.” Additionally, Walmart’s charitable foundation pledged $25 million for last year’s controversial D.C. teachers’ contract. Initially the contract stipulated that if then-Chancellor Michelle Rhee left town, so could the money.
Press coverage of Walmart’s effort has ranged from non-confrontational to nonexistent. Cha pointed out that, on average, Walmart spends more than $6.5 million a day on advertising. Washington City Paper noted on Feb. 14, “Last week, Wal-Mart execs met with writers and editors of the Washington Post. This week the editorial board writes an editorial how Wal-Mart would be a welcome addition to the District (which follows a similar-themed column from [Washington Post columnist] Robert McCartney). Put yourself in for a raise, Wal-Mart press guy!” The Post’s pro-Walmart editorial stated, “Unsubstantiated criticism should not be allowed to derail a private investment that, on balance, appears to be to the advantage of the District and its residents.”
“Being a business owner in D.C. since 1982, this is where I make a living, ” said Cha. “I care about where I do business and I hate to see not just my business, but other small businesses suffer because of allowing Walmart to come in [to D.C. and do] what they’ve done elsewhere.”
[Cross-posted from The Fight Back.]
Listen to John Gloster: download mp3
Ten years ago, what was then Ward 8′s only supermarket was closed. Members of the D.C. Statehood Green Party responded by starting their own market. Ten years later, the Ward 8 Farmers’ Market is still going strong and leading the way in finding innovative approaches to providing fresh produce to the food desert that is southeast Washington, D.C.
In two recent editorials, the Washington Post encouraged D.C. voters not to limit themselves to voting for Democratic candidates, but instead to consider voting for D.C.’s second politcal party which, according to the Post, is the Republicans. John Gloster, one of the founders of the Ward 8 Farmers’ Market and a member of the D.C. Statehood Green Party, responded: “Here’s the deal: the D.C. Statehood Green Party, we call ourselves the second party. The Republican Party is the third party in the District of Columbia. You look at the number of votes we get in elections the last few cycles, it bares that out. We’ve been out-voting the Republican Party.”
Gloster continued, “We stand more in line with the values and the needs of the people of the District of Columbia. For that very reason, we are intentionally excluded from media coverage by organizations conservative in nature like the Washington Post because we represent more of a threat to the power structure than the Republican Party, if you think about it. Because we are more in line with the average citizen of the District of Columbia there’s more of a potential of our becoming first party, and that would totally upset the power structure right now. Right now, if Republicans became somehow magically in power in D.C. not that much would change when you look at the way in which the city is run… for the wealthy and for the large corporations. So the Republicans being in power, the Democrats being in power, that wouldn’t change that much. Statehood Green, that would be like a revolution. So therefore, it’s very important to organizations that tend to protect the status quo to make sure that the Statehood Green Party is marginalized.”
Not only has the D.C. Statehood Green Party kept the Ward 8 Farmers’ Market going for ten years, but it has launched a creative new initiative called “the buyback program.” This initiative provides farmers with $250 a week in guaranteed sales, apart from their sales to individual customers. The produce from “the buyback” is distributed to local feeding programs, as well as to corner stores. Yes, corner stores, which have historically sold less-than-healthy items, are now selling fresh produce in southeast, D.C.
Gloster explained the initiative, “During the six-months that we operate, the corner stores provide an avenue through which produce can be obtained throughout the week or until what we give them sells out. I do find though that the typical purchaser from the corner store is not necessarily the typical purchaser from the farmers’ market. A lot of the people who are buying produce from the corner stores do not appear to have ever gone to the market, and so we’re reaching also another type of consumer, one who doesn’t necessarily think [the] farmers’ market is a place that they would logically be going to, but yet and still they’re buying farmers’ market produce through the corner stores.”
Getting the corner store owners to buy into the program wasn’t easy, said Gloster, “Well, you know, [they had] a little bit of skepticism, as you might think. But because of the fact that we have the grant and are able to subsidize it, the corner store owners…, [the] three of them that we operate with, were willing to take a chance. And even though it’s subsidized, it’s still a chance for them because every inch of space in a store is a potential profit center. So taking a portion of your space and using it for that [when] you could be selling yet more, whatever, gummy bears… or cigarettes or whatever else it might be. So that has opened up an avenue and we’d ideally like to see that replicated and see more corner store owners see the potential for selling produce in their stores.”
Gloster said, “I think it’s worked quite well. For instance, I remember strikingly the first time that it really sunk home. We had delivered watermelons on one particular Saturday and when we came back the next Saturday it seemed to be the same number of watermelons and so I remarked to the store owner, who was there, ‘Oh, you didn’t sell any watermelons.’ He said, ‘No, quite the contrary. We sold out of your watermelons about mid-week and so people were complaining that there were no more watermelons so we bought more from another supplier.’ And he looked at me, I guess to see if I would be upset by that. And of course I was delighted because that’s exactly what we wanted, for the corner store owners to see that there is potential demand for these products and they’ll eventually be able to acquire them for themselves.”
Journalist Pete Tucker reports for D.C.’s Pacifica Radio station, WPFW 89.3 FM. Tune in weeknights from 6:00-7:00 PM to catch his reports on “Spectrum Today” with Askia Muhammad.
[Cross posted from Defeat Poverty DC.] What does access to healthy foods have to do with defeating poverty? Not only does the presence of affordable fresh food in a community have the potential to improve residents’ nutrition and overall health, but attracting full-service grocery stores also can boost the local economy – grocery retail creates [...]
