E-Mail This Article to a Friend No sympathy for the devil Though shut out of Downtown Crossing, Wal-Mart will keep trying to weasel its way into Boston BY DEIRDRE FULTON

If it were a nation, its GNP would rank 33rd in the world. It’s the biggest private employer in North America, and yet provides health insurance to less than half its employees. It refused to carry Jon Stewart’s America: The Book, as well as Redbook and Maxim magazines. It has a pharmacy but won’t sell emergency contraception. That’s just some of the bad news.

The good news is that Wal-Mart is not coming to Boston. At least for the time being.

That should ease the fears of a loose coalition of progressive activists, community leaders, and union workers who raised hell about a month ago, when the world’s largest retailer expressed interest in moving into the Downtown Crossing location soon to be vacated by Filene’s. As in other urban areas across the country (New York City and Chicago are just two cities currently involved in Wal-Mart wars), Boston residents and officials who decry the city’s creeping homogenization are making it clear that their city won’t be Wal-Mart’s next colonial outpost.

Last week, mayoral spokesman Seth Gitell bluntly laid out Mayor Thomas Menino’s position: "The mayor doesn’t like Wal-Mart, period."

And neither do the neighborhood and union groups that have banded together to block any further forays by Wal-Mart into the area. "I think it was a trial balloon," says Greater Boston Labor Council executive secretary-treasurer Rich Rogers, of the retail behemoth’s lunge at Downtown Crossing. "I still think they’re going to show up somewhere."

Wal-Mart itself is staying mum. "We’re not interested in that site," says the company’s regional spokesman Philip Serghini, of the Washington Street location that will soon be empty now that the parent companies of Macy’s and Filene’s have merged. He offered no comment when asked if the corporation is looking into other Boston locations. (In September he told the Boston Globe, "In the long term, we will be looking at Boston. We see no reason why our customers in Boston should be denied access to our low-priced goods.")

So while they wait for the other shoe to drop, "We’re going to try to be telling everybody and educating folks," says Maude Hurd, a Boston resident and the national president of ACORN, a neighborhood-based national social-justice network for low- and moderate-income families.

It’s a difficult task, because Wal-Mart’s low prices are seductive to anyone who needs to stretch a dollar. "A lot of people don’t understand," Hurd admits. "They do market themselves pretty good. You can go there and buy things at a cheaper rate, and you can go there and get everything in one stop. We just don’t like the way they treat their staff, we don’t like their practices."

SPURNING SATAN

Typically associated with slaughtering the main streets of rural America, Wal-Mart has spent 2005 looking to move on to the big city. In February, the chain was turned away from a coveted location in Queens, New York. Two months later, citizens of Englewood, California, voted against allowing Wal-Mart into their town. A month after that, however, the chain won permission to build a 150,000-square-foot store on the west side of Chicago. So in its urban thrust, Wal-Mart has so far had mixed results.

The chain is also trying to garner more street cred. It recently announced a deal with Black Entertainment Television (BET) to market "BET official" brand two-pack DVDs with "urban" (code word: black) content. And last week, the chain launched "Metro 7," an "urban" clothing line that seeks to rival Target’s hip brands while helping shoppers feel better when people ask, "You buy your clothes at Wal-Mart?"

But if you live in Boston, the only way to pick up some fine Metro 7 is to go to Quincy, the area’s closest store.

On that store’s exterior, big red letters spell out we sell for less. And it’s true — the cost-cutting starts before you even get through the door, at outdoor soda machines where you can purchase a Sam’s American Choice (Wal-Mart brand) soda for just 30 cents, or upgrade to a Coca-Cola for 20 cents more.

Inside, you can buy DVDs for less than $10, CDs (ones they actually let in their stores) for under $15, and a one-gallon jug of Hawaiian Punch for $1.97 (at Shaw’s, the same item sells for $3.19).

"The prices are better than the supermarket," says Cheryl Scibilio, a 32-year-old stay-at-home mom who shops at Wal-Mart frequently, especially because "they have food now."

Scibilio’s tale of shifting consumer loyalties is of a type that’s highlighted by Wal-Mart’s proponents and detractors alike.

Indeed, it’s hard to resist low prices if you’re a young mother, a college student, or a retired worker living on meager Social Security payments. But when you buy the cheap Kool-Aid, what are you really paying for?

• Discrimination. Wal-Mart is currently involved in the largest class-action lawsuit in history, brought on behalf of more than one million current and former female Wal-Mart employees who claim that the corporation discriminates against women in its wage and promotion policies. Wal-Mart contends that because each store makes its own hiring and promotion decisions, widespread allegations should not be combined in a single lawsuit. Lawyers argued both sides at the San Francisco–based Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in September; a decision should come this fall.