printed in the Mendocino Beacon, July 3, 1997
BOOKMARK
by Tony Miksak
A group of Davis residents banded together last year to help keep their local independent bookstores alive. Here's an update, slightly edited for brevity, from Mark Nemmers, one of the people who fought the good fight, and owner of Bogey's Books in Davis. He can be reached by email at marknem@sl.net.
Hello Tony,
Profuse apologies for not responding sooner to your message of last month in support of our fight against a Borders Books store oozing into our town of Davis. We have been busy, but unsuccessfully so, I'm afraid.
I'm sorry to report that Borders, and the various local and state government forces backing Borders, were too strong for our group of citizens to resist. While we did raise more than 4,000 petition signatures against Borders moving into Davis, the City Council majority, City administrators,
University of California administrators, our main city newspaper and the local Chamber of Commerce aligned themselves against us. They portrayed us as greedy 'rabble' opposed to free enterprise, with us whiny bookstores afraid of a little competition. And while I believe the majority of Davisites are against downtown shopping malls and big-box warehouse businesses coming to town, the issue was simply not compelling enough for them to protest loudly enough to turn the corporate tide.
As the result, the downtown must soon compete at its very edge against a 'could be anywhere' design of shopping mall with Borders as its centerpiece. Because of Borders' arrival, one of our most esteemed independent bookstores -- The Next Chapter -- has just announced it will close after Christmas and move elsewhere.
The Friends of Davis group is wrangling to try to mitigate the damaging effects -- such as traffic congestion -- of this terribly designed mall, but so far the project has slid through bureaucratic process with minimal changes.
This was a slam-dunk project from day one. Even our own U.C. chancellor crowed about the greatness of Borders Bookstores in front of a city council meeting: Ethics, as well as intellectual awareness and common sense, seem to have shriveled in the power chambers of Davis, CA.
Working in quiet, behind-the-scenes tandem, however, the University and the City of Davis brought the project in under the radar. Only after being tipped off by a regional business newspaper was the Borders issue brought to public light, and too late to do much but express shock.
There's been a profound breach of public confidence in our local government and university in favor of the power of commercial developers. Many of us feel the local newspaper has abused its franchise as a trusted community newspaper (this is the same paper that advocated building a shopping center in the city's central park, so we shouldn't have been surprised!). The well-documented issues of squelching of intellectual freedom, undue influence on publishers by the book superstores and the negative impact on communities of big-box category killers' like Borders were not discussed for even an instant by the city, the university, or the newspaper. The only message I've gotten from these entities over the last several months is simply Greed is good.'
Sorry for going on so long, but consider this therapeutic venting. Let me add that we've been buoyed over the months by the e-mail support from people like you across the country who are aware of our drift into cultural homogeneity and corporate totalitarianism. Don't give up. Keep writing about the problem, Tony. Don't make the mistake of assuming, like we did, that the people running your town necessarily have the best interests of the community at heart.
We believed we lived in a progressive, intellectually aware community that would never promote such urban blight as malls or bring in controversial megastores. Instead, we've been delivered a staggering reality check, one which will affect local residents for many years to come. And remember this: Just because they have the power doesn't mean they have the right.
One cheery bit of news to end this with: independent bookstores and an involved community banded together to try to fight off Borders in Capitola (adjacent to Santa Cruz). Last month, they won. Borders announced it was giving up and invading elsewhere.
Best,
-- Mark Nemmers
printed in the Mendocino Beacon, July 3, 1997
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updated 2July97 : : 14:35 Caspar (Pacific) Standard Time