Chicago Ministers Play Hardball on Wal-Mart (and for the Right Team!)

Cite this Article
Thomas A. Lambert, Chicago Ministers Play Hardball on Wal-Mart (and for the Right Team!), Truth on the Market (March 02, 2010), https://truthonthemarket.com/2010/03/02/chicago-ministers-play-hardball-on-wal-mart-and-for-the-right-team/

I’ve previously posted on the moral bankruptcy of the campaign against Wal-Mart in Chicago. Those fighting to prevent the company from opening outlets in Chicago’s inner-city neighborhood — including Alderman Ed Burke, the busybody who once tried to ban trans fats in the City of Broad Shoulders — continue to flex their illiberal muscles to deny inner-city residents access to the “everday low prices” wealthier suburbanites regularly enjoy. They’re also depriving inner-city residents of job opportunities that plenty of folks find desirable. Indeed, the Wal-Mart that opened a few years back in Evergreen Park, Illinois (just over the Chicago border on the southwest side), received a whopping 25,000 applications for 325 positions — and that was before the economy headed south!

Fortunately, a group of black ministers from churches on Chicago’s southside have decided to speak truth to power and demand that their elected representatives stop denying their congregants access to lower prices and jobs. Godspeed, friends!

(Be sure to watch the video.)