More than 30 years ago, Joni Mitchell lamented in harmonic verse that “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Three decades — and many cover songs — later, her words seem particularly prescient, with Wal-Marts alone paving over acres faster than you can say “Everyday Low Prices.” But this steamroller of development, and the loss of mom-and-pops and diverse ownership of small businesses, is not inevitable. In fact, a fleet of organizations is cropping up to harness the collective muscle of citizens in the face of distant corporate power. (A crosssection of successful efforts of communities and small businesses is triumphed in the king-of-local Michael Shuman’s latest book, The Small-Mart Revolution.)

I recently heard firsthand about one of these successes from Northern California’s Humboldt County, where citizens had experienced corporate bullying up close. One of California’s largest counties, Humboldt County is home to some of the state’s grandest redwoods, but not too many people (128,000 total). In 1999, Wal-Mart spent a quarter million dollars to change zoning laws in one city to locate their box store on prime — but publicly zoned — waterfront. The measure lost, with 60 percent of voters opposed. And, in 2004, the mega-lumber company MAXXAM paid $300,000 to finance a recall of the district attorney after he initiated a lawsuit against its subsidiary Pacific Lumber, alleging the company had submitted false data on timber harvest plans.

Though the recall also lost at the ballot box, community members in Humboldt County started musing about a policy that would prevent future attacks by nonlocal companies on community interests.