"Independent America"

Two filmmakers’ 'two-lane search for mom and pop.

A documentary written and created by husband and wife team Hanson Hosein and Heather Hughes, released in late 2006, has been creating a lot of discussion across the country. 

An investigative news team known as “Hot Zone” and featured online by Yahoo News!, recently interviewed Hosein for a three-part story on the documentary revealing a national concern and one that may apply to Quakertown as well.

Filmmakers Hanson Hosein and Heather Hughes set off on a cross-country journey with a goal of shunning "big box" outlets and chain stores.  The motivation for the idea came from the fact that Hosein had lived in Paris, Tel Aviv or New York all of his adult life and had never realized how important his relationships were with independent businesses. Not at least until he moved to a remote location in Canada and saw the proliferation of “big box” retailers and realized how much he hated their dominance of the local culture. ↓

Hosein was embedded as a journalist with the U.S. military during the Iraq war for six months. When he got back, he decided to get reacquainted with his wife (Heather) and the neighborhood. During a trip along the Pacific Coast Highway, they decided to try to reconnect with the independent businesses with which they felt a connection.

After that first trip, they developed the idea for the documentary. According to Hosein, “it was really based on our adult life and what matters to us and how we live. We wanted to see if it was still possible to do business with mom and pop or whether they were a dying breed, as we saw in Canada.” They drove cross-country “without setting one tire on an interstate highway or one foot inside a corporate chain restaurant, motel or store.”

Initially, they learned that these independent or "mom and pop" shops are what keep the West Coast’s historic Route 66 alive.  In the film, they examined what happens when a big box retailer in Flagstaff, Arizona tried to make an impact on local politics, resulting in a public relations faux pas. They showed how local businesses in Austin, Texas fought back against the large retail chains and won. They also showed the result of a large upscale coffee chain opening up in a typical small town and also what happened in Wyoming when one day big business simply walked out.

The response to the film has apparently been very positive. People’s comments have ranged from “This is what I’ve been waiting for” to "I never really thought about it until I saw the film.” Because of their new mindset, many are changing their shopping patterns and lifestyles because “it makes sense that we wanted to support our communities more than corporations thousands of miles away. Somehow it's touching a nerve that people didn't really know existed.”

As Hosein said in the interview with the Hot Zone team, “The rise of corporate chain retail and big boxes in the world has only been in the last 10 or 15 years. We haven't had a chance to measure it. We've seen it. We've taken advantage of it but we don't know what the impact is. Now people are beginning to feel the impact. They are beginning to see it, and they're quite concerned about what is happening to their communities and local businesses. I think we're only beginning to grasp the consequences.”

In one documented scene, journalists Hughes and Hosein discover what happens when the popular coffee chain from the Northwest moves into a small town. According to Hosein, “What happens is that the big boxes essentially rob the American consumer, the North American consumer, of choice. They've become so dominant in the way they go into an area that they push independent businesses out of business.”

As we know from our local experience, it's really the independent businesses that give you more diversity. They typically carry the alternative products, not made in China, but by a traditional supplier now feeling the pressure from international competition.

According to Hosein, “All of a sudden, limiting that retail diversity actually makes an impact on our democracy.” If it's only Barnes and Noble or Borders that are carrying certain type of books, you're not getting that diversity of choice in that retail space. If Wal-Mart is only carrying the cheapest sides of beef and you don't want that, then you have no choice because you know that the independent butcher you used to go to is no longer in business. They couldn't afford to stay in business, so really it's a very fundamental equation that essentially if you don't have diversity in your economy, then you don't have a strong democracy.”

Initially, the big box retailers are popular because they provide a new choice to shoppers, often at lower prices than what they are used to. The longer-term effect though is that after the large retailers move in, you soon lose the choice to go somewhere else.

“People don't understand what the low prices really mean.  A lot of these corporations, especially Wal-Mart --which is now the largest company in the world-- have such economic power that they can sometimes move into a community without even going through the entire approval process or complying with restrictive zoning laws.”

The writers of the Hot Zone team went on to point out that a lot of the time these companies get subsidies --even though they are the richest in the world-- from communities who think they are going to create a lot of jobs and make a difference to the community, which is not always the case.

Hosein said “They might hire 600 people and there are usually lines around the corner for those jobs, but the problem is no one is looking at the people they are putting out of work in the process. A lot of the independent businesses that ring that area close down after that.”

According to the Hot Zone team, fairly objective studies have proven that usually there is no net gain in a community once everything is said and done. Or, there is actually a net loss because these corporate chains are so efficient in what they do. Essentially, they can put out of work people who own their own business and then make them clerks in a large corporation, instead of enjoying the autonomy they once had. They indicated that has been shown more than once.  

They went on to say most of the revenue from these large chains actually leaves the community because they rarely advertise locally and they don't hire local lawyers or accountants and rarely hire a local employee for a senior management position. They conduct their business on a national level in a big city, so the impact within the community is not as great as if you had done your shopping at a local independent business.  Hosein said “A lot of people are thinking, ‘Hmm, maybe this isn't as good for my community economically as I thought — the small businesses are putting more back into the community.’"

The most shocking realization for the film creators was that this is a widespread concern. According to Hosein, “You would think it was more of a "left-coast, San Francisco-type" sensibility saying, ‘We need to get rid of big business,’ but, that's not the case at all. We were shocked to find that even in the small, very conservative communities people were against Wal-Mart as well. Wal-Mart is seen as a conservative company, but, across the board, it really amazed us that we could be in these places that were pro-life, pro-Republican communities and they were saying ‘No, we're really concerned about this Wal-Mart thing. We need to be more sustainable. We need to support our neighbors and these guys aren't part of that equation.’ It was amazing to us that that happened.” 

The film is available on DVD and more information is available at the Independent America website. Due to the warm reception to the documentary, additional projects are likely to explore this phenomenon more in depth.