Two former television journalists are traveling cross country in search of Independent America and are making a documentary about what they find. Continue reading
Communities around the country are celebrating the second annual Independents Week, which draws on the July 4th holiday to remind people of the value of locally owned businesses. Continue reading
The Vancouver City Council voted 8-3 to deny approval for a 130,000-square-foot Wal-Mart superstore along Marine Drive in the southeastern part of the city. Continue reading
A lawsuit filed this month alleges that Visa and MasterCard illegally fix the price of fees that small retailers pay for credit card transactions. Continue reading
PORTLAND, ME [June 28, 2005]—Hundreds of Maine workers employed by Wal-Mart are enrolled in the state’s public assistance programs, including Medicaid, Food Stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, according to data released by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services. Continue reading
More than 40 percent of the towns surveyed for a new report by the London-based New Economics Foundation are so overrun by chain stores that they have lost their local identity and become little more than "clone towns." Continue reading
Grassroots groups that form to fight big-box development proposals often dissolve after winning or losing on that particular project. But a citizens group in Charlevoix, Michigan, called This is Our Town, kept on working. Now, one year after successfully pressuring Wal-Mart to drop plans for a supercenter, the group is celebrating new zoning rules that will limit future big-box development. Continue reading
The entry of Wal-Mart into New York City is the biggest challenge to neighborhood businesses and local communities in our city’s history, contends the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, which has been an advocate for New York City’s locally owned businesses for the past twenty years. Continue reading
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has presented its 2005 Main Street Civic Leadership Award to the New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the commercial district revitalization movement by an organization or individual working in the public policy arena. Continue reading
At the request of independent movie theaters across the state, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is investigating claims that major movie theater chains use their clout with distributors to prevent independent theaters from showing many of the most popular first-run films. At issue is a common industry practice called clearance, whereby theaters are given exclusive rights to show a film within a certain radius around their theaters. Continue reading
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