For a few years, Ms. Mitchell centered on Walmart, together with writing a ebook about mega-retailers in 2006 referred to as “Huge Field Swindle.” A few of her work was hands-on, like when Walmart introduced a brand new supercenter in the tiny Maine city of Damariscotta.

Just a few townspeople wished to oppose the retailer however didn’t fairly know the way. “We had been so out of our depth,” considered one of them, Jenny Mayher, mentioned. “Walmart had a really profitable technique of dividing communities. It could say that individuals who didn’t need their shops had been privileged wealthy folks, whereas the working folks wanted jobs and an reasonably priced place to get diapers.”

The Walmart opponents contacted Ms. Mitchell, who gave a presentation at the native library arguing that each tax income and the high quality of native jobs would decline. “Stacy armed us with precisely the data we would have liked to have fact-based argument,” Ms. Mayher mentioned. “She has a capability to be wonky with out taking the humanity out of it.”

In early 2006, Damariscotta voters modified the city zoning, blocking the supercenter. Walmart declined to touch upon Ms. Mitchell.

Walmart was a problem. Amazon is a much bigger one. Walmart dominates groceries, however the firm will not be a platform-controlling gatekeeper for multitudes of smaller companies in the similar approach that Amazon is. And Walmart’s demographics differ from these of Amazon, which has grow to be a necessary characteristic of a sure optimized city life-style.

“Folks love e-commerce expertise,” mentioned Michael Zucker, director of Change to Win, a federation of labor unions that’s allied with the Athena coalition. “The frictionless capability to order one thing reliably with little or no danger is a very fashionable product. The query is, would you like only one firm to have that?”

Optimism at a darkish second

It’s most likely not a coincidence that this middle of Amazon resistance is about as distant as you may get from the precise firm. Seattle is 2,500 miles distant, and Maine is considered one of the few states with out a main Amazon warehouse. (There’s a Complete Meals, nevertheless, a couple of blocks from Ms. Mitchell’s workplace.)