Vanessa Hall-Harper is a true champion of community-based economic development, and we are delighted to give her our Economic Justice Champion award as part of our 50th anniversary celebration.
As a Tulsa native, Vanessa Hall-Harper watched as her North Tulsa neighborhood — Greenwood, the historic Black Wall Street — was overrun with chain dollar stores, losing its last full-service grocery store in 2009. She won a seat on Tulsa’s city council in 2016, campaigning on a platform of food security and public health. With her academic background in political science, plus two decades of experience working with the Tulsa Health Department, she was the perfect person for the job. Once on the city council, Hall-Harper pushed relentlessly to get the city to adopt dollar store restrictions, which it did in 2017. And, yes, she was out there picketing the dollar stores in her neighborhood.
Hall-Harper then set about attracting a grocery store. She called all the major chains, but they all told her the same thing: “Your neighborhood has too many dollar stores. We couldn’t make it work.” But, of course, that didn’t slow her down. She joined forces with the Tulsa Economic Development Corporation and raised money to buy land and build a building to house a grocery store, then found Aaron Johnson, a talented entrepreneur with grocery industry experience to launch a grocery business there. Oasis Fresh Market opened in May 2021, the first grocery store in North Tulsa in over a decade. Because the building is publicly owned, the grocery store’s overhead costs are lower — and stable.
Tulsa’s ordinance restricting dollar store development was one of the first in the country, and has inspired countless others. Today, more than 60 towns and cities have adopted similar ordinances, and 140 have defeated proposed dollar stores — and the number is growing. Not only that, but Vanessa’s idea of public investment in grocery stores as a way to help ensure access to healthy food is gaining in popularity as more and more communities recognize that healthy food access is a basic human right and a community responsibility.
During her acceptance speech, Hall-Harper said, “I am an elected official, but I am a community activist who happened to have won an election. My heart is with the people.”
She also shared her gratitude for ILSR’s help fighting dollar stores. “Your resources have been indescribable to this work.” You can check out our dollar store resources here.
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Co-hosts Stacy Mitchell and Marie Donahue speak with Tulsa City Councilwoman, Vanessa Hall-Harper. Earlier this year, the city council of Tulsa, Oklahoma passed an ordinance restricting...
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