Big-box brawler

Big-box brawler
By Kate Bucklin
The Forecaster
October 2006

Stacy Mitchell fights the nation’s mega-retailers from Munjoy Hill

PORTLAND – When the Bayside Neighborhood Association wanted to know more about the possibility of a big-box retailer locating in the community, it didn’t have to look far for an expert to explain options for fighting such a development.

Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, lives on Munjoy Hill. She grew up in Portland, graduated from Deering High School in 1991, and moved back to the city about five years ago from St. Paul, Minn. When she moved back, the institute let her take her job with her.

Mitchell travels the country helping communities develop land policy aimed at keeping mega-retailers in check. She also works with those groups to develop economic plans aimed at creating sustainable local businesses. She has been concentrating on the impacts of big-box stores since 1999, when she wrote a small piece on the subject called “Hometown Advantage.”

“It mushroomed into a full-time job,” Mitchell said during a recent interview. The institute created a public policy wing called New Rules, which concentrates on the need to change current public policy because, Mitchell said, those rules often undermine the local economy.

Since 2001, the organization has helped defeat about 200 proposals by retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster.

Mitchell said she has seen interest in sustaining local businesses accelerate each year since she began working for the cause. More research is being done on the impact of mega-retailers, too. A recent study asserts that on the average, a community will lose 180 jobs if a Wal-Mart store moves in.

“Locally owned business also keeps a lot more money locally than a Wal-Mart or a Starbucks,” said Mitchell, because local businesses tend to use local accountants, suppliers and banks.

The most effective way to combat big-box retail is with strong community groups, Mitchell said. While she has worked with communities all over the nation, she said the small Maine town of Damariscotta is a great example of a dynamic local group that successfully fought Wal-Mart. Damariscotta passed an ordinance restricting the size of retailers wanting to move into the town.

“Wal-Mart spent a lot of money and they still lost,” she said, “thanks to a smart and tenacious community group.”

Local action groups are not just working to stop mega-retailers. Mitchell said there are several dozen independent business advocacy groups in the country, including the newly established Portland Independent Business Alliance, which has launched a Buy Local campaign.

“In Austin, Texas, you can see a strong local business (alliance),” Mitchell said. While strip malls have historically housed chain stores, she said, now “shopping center developers in Austin are coming to us for help getting local businesses into their buildings.”For the last year and a half, Mitchell has been compiling her knowledge and experience of mega-retailers for a book. “Big Box Swindle,” published by Beacon Press, will hit local book stores later this month. The book explores the evolution of the big-box store and the subsequent decline in independent businesses.

Case studies of the impact these giant retailers have had on small-town America are accompanied by examples of what Michell says the government has done to help the Home Depots and Wal-Marts of the world grow.

The book also highlights communities that have successfully thwarted big boxes in their towns and lays groundwork for communities looking to develop their own anti-big-box land use policies.

Kate Bucklin can be reached at 781-3661, ext. 106 or kbucklin@theforecaster.net.

Press Herald 9/18/2006

Dave Marshall is a 28-year-old who balances his free time between the role of artist and candidate for local office. Marshall has decided to run for Portland City Council representing his neighborhood in the West End.

"It's time for our generation to take the torch from the baby boomers," he said. When he's not wearing the hat of aspiring politician, Marshall is creating portraits, still-life paintings, figures and landscapes inside his art studio, dubbed "Pine Street at Night," appropriately located at 41 Pine St. On the Web, his art can be viewed at DAMfineart.com. When he's not hanging at his home, studio or home page, you may find him visiting one of the following sites:

pinestreetstudios.com: "The collective studio and Web site of four West End artists, including myself." thebollard.com: "The best local investigative journalism."
thewestendnews.blogspot.com: "The local news that never takes a vacation."
portlandbuylocal.com: "The Portland Buy Local campaign was developed by business owners and citizens to educate the public about the importance of supporting Portland's locally owned, independent businesses. "Supporting local independent business makes economic sense."

Thanks for coming to SWELL!

Thanks to everyone who came out for SWELL - we had a great time, ate great food, and saw lots of folks!

We hope you liked the music and performances, the dancing, the marching band, the buffalo bicycles . . . it was all great.

Muse: In Defense of Difficult Art

Friends,
I just sent this to the Press Herald.  I'm sending this to you in hope that more artists will write letters on this topic IN YOUR OWN WORDS.  I'd appreciate copies of whatever you may write, or other comments on this piece. Art can be difficult.

Arthur Fink

P.S. Here's a link to the editorial I referenced.
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/viewpoints/editorials/060908cops.shtml
        

Some may say I've got it easy.  As a photographer, one of my main subjects is dance -- beautiful swirls of energy and passion that most people find graceful and uplifting.  Rarely does that subject offend.  My fish portraits -- photographs of dead fish on ice at local fish markets -- can bring a more squeamish reaction.  Some viewers turn away, to avoid experiencing these images that I found so visually exciting.  But none of my work has been subject to such condemnation as the paintings of Thomas W. Manning, shown until recently at USM.

Art is not always beautiful, comfortable, easy to experience, or simple to understand.  Artists may take on difficult topics, produce disturbing images, probe the failures of our social o! rder, highlight the erotic in ways that offend some, or graphically depict the violence or deprivation that some of us may wish were hidden.

Indeed, some exhibit spaces have asked me not to display any nudes, or any fish portraits, or any homeless people, or even anything that might be disturbing.  Artists are asked to contribute to the "creative economy", but not in ways that might be unsettling.

But the uproar over the Thomas Manning exhibit has raised this reaction to a new and frightening level.  A recent editorial in the Press Herald asks that we judge the moral character and behavior of the artist before even looking at the art.  "When a tax-funded institution of higher education exhibits art created by a man convicted of murdering a policeman, that's more than 'cutting edge'... When the hand that wields the brush is covered in blood, it indelibly stains whatever it touches."

According to this editorial, "It's almost meaningless to ask whether Manning's work meets objective standards of artistic ! merit."  Evidently Manning's past actions, and his statement that he is portraying "political prisoners", should be reason for us to close our eyes and not experience the message his art portrays.

What a remarkably shortsighted view!  I'd encourage everybody to take a more careful look at what this artist is saying, what truth it might represent, what visual appeal or expressive power the work may possess.  Or ... I wish I could.  I didn't make it to the USM gallery in time, and now the University has relented to conservative pressure and taken the show down.  Now the work is much less accessible.

We don't dismiss out of hand the artistic work of slave holders, or Nazi's during the 2nd world war, or other artists whose views or other behavior many of us would judge harshly. Why this sudden rush to judgement -- without even a look a the work itself?

Hanging the work of Thomas Manning was not an endorsement of his views or of his past b! ehavior.  It was an affirmation that at least one cur ator thought there was something of value in his art, and that we should have a chance to see it.  What a shame that this chance has been denied.

I wish that USM could have simply issued a clear and strong statement reiterating their condemnation of Mannings past actions, and the fact that the messages in the exhibit are HIS messages, and not those of USM.  Let the USM students who view the show, and other visitors, decide for themselves what to make of the art and of the social history that led to its creation.  A university should be fostering dialog -- not removing access to the primary source materials that can inform that dialog.

Portland wants to foster its "creative economy".  Of course, that requires creating more housing and work space for artists, more spaces for exhibit and performance, strengthening the already solid arts programs at USM and at the Maine College of Art.  But it also requires educating a community that the response! to art we don't like, or to art by artists that we don't like is not to have the exhibits taken down.  I thought USM already knew this.


Arthur Fink is a photographer who lives on Peaks Island.