Wal-Mart Watch: Stymied by local government concerned about its devastating costs for local communities, Wal-Mart gambles on the referendum process to escape regulation: The proposal would essentially exempt Wal-Mart from all of Inglewood's planning, zoning and environmental regulations, creating a city-within-a-city subject only to its own rules. Wal-Mart has hired an advertising and public relations firm to market the initiative and is spending more than $1 million to support the measure, known as initiative 04-A. ..."We were told, basically, `Don't waste your time,' " said Peter Kanelos, the Southern California coordinator for Wal-Mart's community affairs division. "But these groups are not representative of the community," he said. "Organized labor is attempting to bully Wal-Mart and its customers. If organized labor and those elected officials they put into power think they're going to attack Wal-Mart, then they better expect Wal-Mart to fight back." The project's opponents say that Wal-Mart is the one doing the bullying. They noted that the company paid signature gatherers for the ballot initiative more than it pays its average clerk. And they say that Inglewood will be a test case. If the initiative succeeds here, they say, it will become a model for Wal-Mart sovereignty across the nation and around the globe. "This is the first time in the country they've tried to do something this extreme," said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, leader of the Coalition for a Better Inglewood, a group formed to fight the Wal-Mart project. "They are driving a Mack truck through California land use, planning and environmental law and trying to create a Wal-Mart government on this 60-acre site. If they succeed in doing this, it will be their blueprint."