What approach did ACORN adopt to stop Wal-Mart’s expansionist drive?
We found that wherever a Wal-Mart store comes up, crime in that area goes up. Studies conducted on this business model brought several disturbing trends to light. For one, since the stores are located far from residential areas, people need to drive there in order to shop. The police chief of the city of Orlando, in Florida, has testified in court how difficult it is to manage the huge volumes of traffic that come to these areas. The highways cannot carry so many cars. This is an issue that should concern India because you already are facing gridlock with too many cars on the roads. Wal-Mart’s parking lots have also been found to be dangerous. We believe that there has to be some restriction on size. These ‘big box’ operations, where a store is between 70,000-90,000 square metres in size, raise issues of sprawl and its impact on the environment. The entire building of a suburban infrastructure around these stores is done at the taxpayer’s expense. It is not as though Wal-Mart’s spendin
