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New Rules Project Items
Carbohydrate Economy Items |
Welcome to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance Online Store
Here you may order from a selection of our publications and books. Please select from the two categories to the left for more items than you see below.
NEW! CD Available!
Are you interested in developing a “buy local” campaign in your community? This CD contains 130 slides synched with audio from a presentation given by Stacy Mitchell, senior researcher with the New Rules Project, at the National Main Streets Conference in Philadelphia on April 1, 2008. The presentation shows how "buy local" campaigns around the country are changing shopping patterns and influencing government decision-making. It provides tips for launching a campaign, as well as strategies for articulating the economic, environmental, and consumer benefits of choosing locally owned independent businesses over chains. The CD includes two versions of the 75-minute, self-playing presentation, one for Mac and one for PC, along with supporting resource materials.
Click Here to order a copy of the CD.
DVD Available!
The DVD contains a speech by Stacy Mitchell, author of Big-Box Swindle, about the hidden costs of big-box retail and what communities can do to rebuild local businesses. The event was held in Salt Lake City on November 2006 and was sponsored by Local First Utah (www.localfirst.org) and filmed by Salt Lake City Television.
Click Here to order a copy of the DVD.
Big Box Swindle Now Out in Paperback. Order Today!
In less than two decades, large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising pollution and diminished civic engagement. She then shows how a growing number of communities and independent businesses are effectively fighting back.
Mitchell traces the dramatic growth of mega-retailers - from big boxes like Wal-Mart and Home Depot to chains like Starbucks and Old Navy - and the precipitous decline of independent businesses. Drawing on examples from virtually every state in the country, she unearths the extraordinary impact of these stores and the big-box mentality on everything from soaring gasoline consumption to rising poverty rates, failing family farms, and declining voting levels. Along the way, Mitchell exposes the shocking role government policy has played in the expansion of mega-retailers and builds a compelling case that communities composed of many small, locally owned businesses are healthier and more prosperous than those dominated by a few large chains.
More than a critique, Big-Box Swindle provides an invigorating account of how some communities have successfully countered the spread of big boxes and rebuilt their local economies. Since 2000, over 200 big-box development projects have been halted by groups of ordinary citizens, and scores of towns and cities have adopted laws that favor small-scale, local business development which limit the proliferation of chains. From cutting-edge land-use policies to innovative cooperative small-business initiatives, Mitchell offers communities concrete strategies that can stave off mega-retailers and create a more prosperous and sustainable future.
Reviews of Big-Box Swindle
“In the muckraking tradition of Fast Food Nation, this is a searing indictment of the impact of behemoth retailers. It illuminates a stunning collection of business outrages, government favoritism, environmental damages, hidden economic and societal costs, debunked myths and a rising swell of consumer activism against big-box blight . . . Big-Box Swindle takes mega-retailers to task in convincing fashion. But Mitchell also provides inspiring lessons from places that are turning the tide.”
—John Marshall, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, who included Big-Box Swindle in his Top Ten 2006 list"Wal-Mart has been harvesting kudos for its dramatic 'green' promises. . . But author-activist Stacy Mitchell has tossed a firecracker into the Wal-Mart-environmentalist lovefest."
— Neal Pierce, Washington Post Writers Group“What Nickel and Dimed did for the Wal-Mart worker, Mitchell does for the community threatened by mega-retailers.”
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature"Prodigiously researched, lucidly written."
— Marilyn Harris, Business Week SmallBiz“A compelling indictment of Wal-Mart and other ‘big box’ stores, based on numerous national examples.”
—Publishers WeeklyBuy a copy of Big Box Swindle Today!
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For discounts on bulk orders of our publications, please call us at 612-379-3815.
