Brother Victor Mineros from Local 396 was in the thick of things and sent us some awesome photos.
The Teamsters good friend Tom Morello led the marchers in "This Land Is Your Land." In an interview, Morello said,
The Los Angeles Times reported,
"We believe small business will be hurt. Some will close down and there will be layoffs," King Cheung, a member of the Chinatown Committee for Equitable Development, told the crowd. "We just can't support a Wal-Mart who has no heart and no morals. We don't want you in Chinatown. We don't want you in Los Angeles."
Wal-Mart intends to build a 33,000-square-foot store on the ground floor of an existing apartment building at Cesar Chavez and Grand avenues. The Los Angeles City Council approved a moratorium on big-box stores in March, but Wal-Mart was granted building permits for the store just a day before the vote.
Further angering those who oppose the retail giant: A few weeks ago an employee of a public relations firm hired by Wal-Mart was caught posing as a reporter at a news conference hosted by a group of critics. Wal-Mart has since dropped the firm.
"This historic neighborhood will be utterly gutted if Wal-Mart comes here," Morello told The Associated Press about the prospects of the retail giant driving smaller stores in Chinatown out of business.
"It's Wal-Mart's global policy of sweatshop labor and poverty level wages that we don't need in LA," he said.And we have this report from The Huffington Post:
Walmart workers, large groups from various unions and others shouted slogans such as "Walmart hurts the 99 percent" and "Walmart, Walmart, you're no good. Treat your workers like you should" as they passed many of the neighborhood's small Chinese businesses.
While less vocal than the chanting activists, many of the mom-and-pop owners and employees held anti-Walmart signs or had them in their storefront windows.
"When they corporatize business, all small businesses do die," Carter Lee, son of the owner of Ocean Pacific restaurant, told The Huffington Post. "They just keep sucking profit out of the local community. It's like a black hole."
Several protestors told HuffPost that they did not want a Chinatown Walmart because they wanted to preserve the culture and businesses of Chinatown. Others expressed concern about Walmart's non-union jobs and reputation for low wages and lack of benefits.
