Community First: Resources and Allies
Resources
Need help? Look no further than these seasoned professionals who can assist you in trying to keep Wal-Mart out of your community.
- Brennan Center for Justice - The Brennan Center uses scholarship, public education, and legal action to find innovative and practical solutions to intractable problems in the areas of democracy, poverty, and criminal justice. The Brennan Center helped develop the New York City Health Care Security Act and the Chicago big box employer living wages and health care bill.
- LAANE - Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy is recognized as a national authority on issues affecting the working poor and an innovator in the fight against working poverty. Combining a vision of social justice with a practical approach to social change, LAANE has helped set in motion a broad movement based on the principle that hard work deserves fair pay, good benefits and decent working conditions.
- Sprawl-Busters - If its unwanted development, Sprawl-Busters can help you stop it. In hundreds of communities, Sprawl-Busters has helped citizens groups strategize and carry out a plan to stop the superstores.
- The Hometown Advantage / The New Rules Project - The New Rules Project
provides resources to citizens groups, small business owners, and
elected officials working to counter big-box expansion across the
country. The project has helped dozens of cities and towns revise their
planning and development policies to impose higher standards on
national retailers and to stimulate local business development.
Allies
From the environment to business ethics to sprawl, there are a variety of issues which concern people when Wal-Mart wants to come to town.
- ACORN - ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities.
- Jobs With Justice - JwJ's mission is to improve working people's standard of living, fight for job security, and protect workers' right to organize. JwJ's core belief is that in order to be successful, workers' rights struggles have to be part of a larger campaign for economic and social justice. To that end, JwJ has created a network of local coalitions that connect labor, faith-based, community, and student organizations to work together on workplace and community social justice campaigns.
- Business Ethics Network - The mission of the Business Ethics Network is to inspire a race to the top by the world’s largest corporations. Our goal is to bring corporations back to their original purpose to serve the common good. Our strategy is to change the way citizens see corporations by leading a national strategic initiative that unites environmental, health, social justice, labor, community, religious and socially responsible investors in a movement that makes all corporations ethically and legally accountable not only to investors, but to all stakeholders.
- Center for Community Change - The Center for Community Change helps low-income people, especially people of color, build powerful, effective organizations through which they can change their communities and public policies for the better.
- Good Jobs First - Good Jobs First helps grassroots groups and policy-makers ensure that economic development subsidies are accountable and effective.
- The Sierra Club - Inspired by nature, the Sierra Club works together to protect our communities and the planet. The Club is America's oldest, largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization.