Incisive comments from the NO 7-Eleven petition

The petition comments have been full of intelligence and succinct eloquence. Of the many brilliant, here are a couple that stood out for me:

From Mark Lepage
Aside from the killing of local businesses and character, and the other pernicious effects of corporate chains, it must be recognized that there is nothing naturally "free market" about this incursion. It is meant to redesign NYC as a massively low-wage, high-rent zone. Locals have every right to resist a backroom-mandated corporate disfiguration of the neighborhoods in which they live and raise their children.

And an exerpt from Adam Weiner:
...While evolutionary change is inevitable and healthy, mass chain invasions as explictly planned (and already executed) by the likes of Subway, 7-11, Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts have the effect of diminishing the difference between living in New York City and living (much more cheaply!) in the 'burbs....If you want to drive me and many others out of Manhattan or out of New York City entirely, keep on letting the chains have their way with the city.

If only chain stores would drive people away from New York. Rents would decline, the tax base as well, undermining municipal services like transportation and policing, yet more of the entitled who expect services would leave, and soon we'd be back in the '70's when New York had a wild spirit and its people were here, not to file blithely into stores, be served hand and foot and spend money, but to join in the anarchic edginess of it all. If it didn't include the drug addictions and drug trade, it would be perfect. 

But chain stores will not drive the new New Yorker away. They have so much disposable income that lower costs in the suburbs do not register on them at all. They come to the city primarily to party, to socialize with each other in bars, to get laid. In ten years New York bar conversations will begin not with the excessive rents (as today) or crime (as in the '70's and '80's) but complaints about the latest chain store incursion as the downside and cost of living in New York. But it will be a complaint in name only. Underneath it'll be just a pick up line. 

The city is your backyard

Bob Holman mentioned yesterday that "NO 7-Eleven" is not a NIMBY issue, unless our backyard is the entire city.

I've been thinking about how NO 7-Eleven is distinct from gentrifying or gentrified neighborhood groups. It's not just that it's a city-wide effort, not just that it's calling for community say in land use for all communities. I think it goes way deeper. Chain stores are an invasion from an inaccessible source. I think that's why I'm puzzled by critics who welcome chains on the ground that it's an expression of the free market. There's nothing "free" about corporate control from afar. 7-Eleven, Walmart, Walgreens, McDonalds -- the whole lot of them -- are the Persians at the Athenian walls, the body snatchers and Big Brother all in one.

We're New Yorkers -- an immigrant, diverse, crazyquilt of communities. We're not the corporate overlords from remote locations and they're not us.

Corporate control from afar

Back in the 18th century, Henry Rutgers, a New York City landowner, contracted to have a house built on one of his lots. He specified that there be no rear house; the lot not covered by the main house should remain a yard. Rear houses couldn't be rented to people of "quality." A rear house would attract riff-raff, and Rutgers thought it more important to keep up the neighborhood than extract a bit more profit from the lot. After all, it was his land, his neighborhood.

A century later, the first apartment buildings, called tenements, were constructed in New York, all in impoverished immigrant neighborhoods. The very first drawings of these show rear tenements. It's a clear indication that the landowner has lost any faith in the neighborhood as a place where he or his associates might consider living. The purpose of the land is no longer use, but exchange, constructed not to live in but to make money from. It's the concurrence of the commodification of space and control of land use from afar. The two are inseparable.

As demand increased at the bottom of the housing market, the quality of the living space declined, to the extent that mid century tenements were unlivable, unhealthy breeding grounds of plagues of cholera and epidemics of tuberculosis. Interior rooms had no windows and multiple families might occupy a mere 300 sq ft space in a mere three tiny rooms.

Eventually government stepped in, but only after the Draft Riots, a working-class, immigrant near revolution with the riots lasting four full days. But the exploitation of housing space continues as fewer and larger landlords buy up more lots in the city, applying their legal resources to evict and harass tenants throughout their properties. As these giant corporate landlords increase their holdings, there will be less accountability and more harassment.

Similarly with city commerce. New York has seen steady increases in chain store proliferation. They limit consumer choices, limit job and entrepreneurial opportunities; they increase commercial rents because they can pay higher rents than any local service or mom and pop. The consequence was particularly evident in Hurricane Sandy when all of downtown lost electricity. The small bodegas and independent pizza shops and small restaurants and bars were all open almost immediately, sometimes giving away perishables. All the chain stores were closed and remained closed until five days later electricity was restored.

Locality is not the solution to all the woes of the world, but corporate control from afar threatens us with increasing disempowerment, loss of choice and identity and undermines community self-determination. Regaining community self-determination is the underlying motive of our group "NO 7-Eleven: resist chains and corporate control."

NO711's zoning amendment is better than a special zoning!

The NO711 zoning amendment -- to require all chains including banks go to the local community board for approval before opening -- would not only give the community board a chance to deny a chain where the community doesn't want it, but it also gives the community board leverage to negotiate with a chain store as they do with bars for their liquor approval. Stipluations could include wage scale, aesthetics, range of merchandise -- just about anything could be put on the table. It would give far-reaching power to the CB, a radical idea, but a necessary one if NYC is not to be given over entirely to corporatocracy.

So if McDonald's wanted to open two stores within a couple of blocks in a neighborhood where you have to walk a mile for a supermarket, a dry cleaner, a bike shop or ten miles to a credit union, or where there's a community center that's been waiting for an avaiable space but can't quite meet the chain-store-rent, the community board would be able to consider denying yet another McDonald's. But if Fresh & Co wanted to open on Delancey Street where the community welcomed it, the community board could still negotiate the signage, the hours, maybe even the payscale.

A special zoning that restricts chain stores (like the one CB3 is contemplating) doesn't allow for negotiations. It just says, x many is too many. Not only does that exclude any negotiation, it's also too inflexible. Times change. In ten years, any number chosen today is likely to be either too many or too few. One of the most depressing facts about urban planning documents is how quickly they become out of date, irrelevant or constraining.

But our zoning proposal can never be out of date -- it's maximally flexible. All it really says is, the community board can have a say -- any say, for or against -- if it wants. It wouldn't have to say anything. To paraphrase John Rawls, it's a piece of perfect procedural planning, a thing of urban planning beauty. 

7-Eleven and labor organizing

A critic of NO711 says that it's easier to organize labor in giant corporate stores than, say, in a bodega, so 7-Eleven would be better for labor than a bodega. 

But labor in a 7-Eleven is exactly as fragmented as any bodega -- two guys in a store with a manager. That's also true of Duane Reade, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, Subway...the list goes on -- all the chain stores that NO711 is trying to resist. 

So this "organizing" argument is irrelevant. It's about big box stores like Walmart. Here's Human Rights Watch: "[Walmart] stands out for the sheer magnitude and aggressiveness of its anti-union apparatus." In other words, the larger they are, the more financial and legal resources to resist unionization.  And the more resilience to strikes. Why do you think labor organizes against Walmart? Because it's really bad for labor. Supporting giant corporations because it's easier to organize in them is like contracting hepatitis C in order to get on medicaid. Only an ideologue would be so stupid.  

One begins to get the impression that critics of NO711 don't have much upstairs. Think, guys. Take your slurpee straw out of your mouth....

7-Eleven and wages

It's important to consider what would replace a 7-Eleven on 11th and Avenue A. Since there are three liquor licenses within 500 feet of the site, it would be difficult for a bar owner to get passed the State Liquor License's constraints on license density. The next likely candidate would be a restaurant, judging by the local commerce in the EV. So how would a restaurant affect labor?

7-Eleven store associate hourly wage can be as low as $7.25/hr; $8.44 average (from Payscale and Glassdoor). 7-Eleven store associates are required to have English fluency: "Must be able to communicate clearly and effectively with customers and coworkers." They are also subjected to background checks -- no undocumented immigrants allowed.

Mean average for a cook's wage, nation-wide, $11.20/hr; median: $10.29/hr; lowest 10%: $8.14/hr (BLS). No language requirement, no background check. 

So replacing a 7-Eleven with a restaurant in NYC would improve the wage prospects generally, and specifically of immigrant workers, documented as well as undocumented. Unless it were a chain restaurant -- a McDonalds cook wage averages, according to Glassdoor, $7.41/hr. That's one reason among many, NO 7-Eleven is trying to curtail all giant chains and franchises. Minimum wage may be fine for a 16-year-old's first summer job, but not a way forward for labor in general. "The majority (66 percent) of low-wage workers are not employed by small businesses, but rather by large corporations." 

Is it easier to organize labor in a giant corporation? Maybe (but maybe not). Giant corps also have greater political clout the larger they are, so there is a danger of promoting corporatocracy. In one way it's the meeting of Stalinism and libertarianism -- "free" market corporatocracy replaces the totalitarian state, the "internal contradiction" of libertarianism, trading one form of control (government) for another (corporate giants). Reminds me of a Maoist friend who voted for Giuliani thinking that his reactionary policies would spark a revolution. Instead we have rampant gentrification.