I am glad to hear that Walmart backed away from its plans to build a big box store in Queens. For now anyway.

Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist with the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, a coaliltion of small supermarkets, bodegas and Korean markets, knows how to fight the big guys. He told New York Magazine: "You have
to identify the little mayors, the caretakers of localized customs and
traditions who are agressively protective of their neighborhoods. Your
message can’t just be about jobs. That gets labor on your side, but the
key is combine a left-wing populist message with a conservative
populist one about neighborhood character. That’s the music that makes
the elected officials want to dance."

There are so many of these battles going on in Brooklyn right now — the Atlantic Yards, Ikea, Fairway, and others. And like Lipsky said, it takes a small group of peope