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In less than two decades, large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America.  Stacy Mitchell will speak about how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising pollution and diminished civic engagement—and she will discuss how a growing number of communities and independent businesses are effectively fighting back.

Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher with the New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance that challenges the wisdom and inevitability of economic consolidation and works to advance policies that support strong local economies and vibrant communities.  

Her book, Big-Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses, was named one of the top ten business books of the year by the American Library Association’s Booklist, while Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth, claimed that it “is the ultimate account of the single most important economic trend in our country—the replacement of local businesses, and all they represent, with the big boxes. What Nickel and Dimed did for the Wal-Mart worker, Stacy Mitchell does for the community threatened by mega-retailers."