Read before you sign

Yesterday I went to Wal-Mart. I really, really don't like Wal-Mart. I don't like how their guaranteed-lowest-price policies have affected suppliers, I don't like how big they are, I don't like the store layouts or lighting or flooring, I don't like that they have become the largest employer in the country with such crap low-end service jobs. (I'm not going to judge you if you shop at Wal-Mart. The prices are the lowest and money's tight.) Baby L had a birthday present duplicated and it was purchased at Wal-Mart, and I don't feel like throwing money into the street, so I was at Wal-Mart.

There was a petitioner table set up outside the Wal-Mart that had a sign: "Stop big box stores." I did a double-take. The Wal-Mart has not called the cops to drive away the petitioners collecting signatures to ban Wal-Mart?

On the way out, I stopped. "Sign here," a woman directed me, and I said, "I want to read the draft of your proposition." So I did.

Two weeks ago, in San Diego, the city council passed an ordinance that would force big-box developers to conduct community impact studies--how will these stores affect local business studies--before developing a store. (I'm sure they're conducting these studies already to determine where to put a store; they're just not keen on sharing that info with the community at large.) The mayor tried to veto the measure, and the council overrode it.

The petition is a referendum that would strike that measure and put any development of a Wal-Mart to a public vote. I don't know if you've noticed this, but with certain obvious exceptions (Hi, Meg and Carly!) elections seem to swing in the direction of who's got the most money. Wal-Mart has a lot of money.

The guy I talked to began trying the tactic on the sign, big box stores are coming into our community, and I said, "But that's the complete opposite of what this measure does. This measure breaks what the city council just fixed to let big-box stores into our community."

Then he changed tactics: we live in a free enterprise society, bigger companies than Wal-Mart have come and gone, Wal-Marts are good for their communities because they bring jobs and give back to the community. To which I said, more free the more wealth you have; we are seeing the greatest concentration of wealth in the hands of a few than we've ever seen in this country; the jobs are crap and they're not giving back nearly as much as they could.

No, I did not sign it. "But you're here bargain shopping," he said to me.

"I'm exchanging a present."

I've seen similar signs outside my beloved Trader Joe's in the liberal bastion of Hillcrest; I'm wondering how many people signed it without reading it. How despicable and desperate do you have to be to advertise the exact opposite of what your measure does to get signatures?