Lucky White Girl

LWG explains the global food crisis

The global food crisis is a product of a market-based (capitalist) system of food distribution and Raj Patel, a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy and author of the new book Stuffed and Starved agrees with me:

"People go hungry not because of a lack of food but because of poverty"

Mr. Patel lays it out in an interview on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Captialism

Milton Friedman, one of the most famous economists of the 20th century, was a big believer in the power of crises (of the economic sort) to induce a generalized state of shock in a population.  A crisis makes people vulnerable and desperate and thereby opens them up to ideas and changes that might not be in their best interests --such as the restructuring of their economy to a format more beneficial to Western industrialized super powers (e.g. us!). 

"Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change" he said. 

Friedman was talking about economic crises but natural disasters can do the same thing: terrorize a population, make them desperate and open the doors of opportunity for the economic restructuring of a society.  Naomi Klein explains it all in her new book The Shock Doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism.

When [a] crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas. And once a crisis has struck, [Friedman] was convinced that it was crucial to act swiftly, to impose rapid and irreversible change before the crisis-racked society slipped back into the "tyranny of the status quo".

Some examples:

After the 1973 coup in Chile that overthrew the democratically elected Socialist president Salvador Allende, 50,000 people were tortured, 80,000 imprisoned, unknown numbers of folks were disappeared and the income of the wealthy rose 83%.

The 1989 crackdown in China killed hundreds, jailed thousands and ushered in a new era of sweatshops and free market capitalism.

And right here at home in the US of A, after Katrina:

"Most New Orleans schools are in ruins," Friedman observed [in an editorial he wrote three months after the disaster], "as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity."

[pause to shudder...before Klein explains]:

Friedman's radical idea was that instead of spending a portion of the billions of dollars in reconstruction money on rebuilding and improving New Orleans' existing public school system, the government should provide families with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions.

In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools.

Privatize.  Privatize everything, everywhere until the whole world is run by the dictates of the profit margin.   And if people don't want to give up things like public education and national safety nets such as social security and medicare, well, that's where the shock doctrine comes in.  It's brutal but that's exactly the nature of global capitalism. 

But there is hope, she says.  "The best way to resist shock is to know what is happening to you and why". Click the screen below to watch a short video based on the book.   

Reason #7,856 to hate Wal-Mart

The bottom line of business is to externalize as many of your costs as possible while internalizing the profits.  This They-Pay-You-Profit model is pretty common sense and it's all about increasing the profit margin.  From literally capitalizing on the desperation of kids from poverty-stricken families and getting them to work for tips only (see post below) to paying their employees so little that they are forced to survive off government assistance, Wal-Mart has perfected this business model to a grotesque degree.  Now the National Education Association has joined the 'Wake-Up Wal-Mart' campaign in order to put pressure on the retail giant to stop being so evil.  Read more about it in this article: Wal-Mart steals billions from public schools.

Need another reason to hate Wal-Mart?

How about them getting teenagers to work for free in Mexico?  From their sign:

OUR VOLUNTEER PACKERS COLLECT NO SALARY, ONLY THE GRATUITY THAT YOU GIVE THEM. SUPERAMA THANKS YOU FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING.

Now if that ain't the most ingenious outsourcing of costs I've ever seen, well!

Review/evaluation of the USSF

The seed sprouts: Another historic moment in the U.S. South

an article by barb howe for The Gainesville Iguana

A platoon of young men and women dressed in desert Army fatigues moved silently through a hotel lobby in downtown Atlanta last week.  Despite the din of hundreds of socializing convention-goers, the troops remained silent and focused.  Arms positioned to mimic M-16s, members of Iraq Veterans Against the War swept the luxury hotel as if patrolling a Baghdad neighborhood. 

A hush fell over the lobby.  The performance was a powerful visual scenario intended to announce an anti-war strategizing session about to start in Ballroom B of the Westin Hotel.  Meanwhile, at the Civic Center, only a ten minute walk away, people gingerly stepped over hundreds of empty shoes which led the way to a photo exhibit called Dreams and Nightmares: Life and Death in Occupied Iraq.

Welcome to the newest manifestation of the global justice movement.  The first ever US Social Forum (USSF) was held in Atlanta this summer.  The location was appropriately symbolic of another people’s movement that triumphed despite deep institutional apathy and in spite of powerful forces arrayed against them.  For five days, this historic southern city pulsated with the energy of ten thousand people who, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and others who struggled for justice and dignity in the U.S. South, came together to strategize, network and build the connections for a new kind of globalization in the 21st century.

The Forum was an historic occasion, not only because this was the first of the Social Forums to be held in this country, but because it marked a small but significant shift in the focus of the movement, embodied in the slogan “for another world to be possible, another U.S. is necessary”.  Recognizing that those of us in this country. have a unique role to play in working alongside the rest of the world to create a more just kind of globalization, the focus was squarely on what we can do from within the “belly of the beast”.  How can we use our position within the most powerful country in the world to undermine the hegemony that causes so much harm to others?

Revolutionary not only in content but in form, the USSF, perhaps more so than any previous Social Forum, practiced “horizontalism”, passing over the giants of the non-profit world and the big names of the Progressive Left and focusing instead on recruiting smaller grassroots groups made up of women and people of color.  The result is a smarter, sharper, more dynamic movement led primarily by people who are not necessarily white men (in other words, by people who have the most direct, lived experience of oppressive regimes and are most hurt by them).  There was no single iconic figure who stood out.  The USSF was ordinary people working together to do extraordinary things.

The organizers of the event also went to a lot of effort to make the forum language accessible.  Language access volunteers made sure written materials, including the official schedule of events and workshop descriptions were available in both Spanish and English, and simultaneous interpretation (including sign language) was provided at most events.

What was most remarkable about the USSF however, was how this phenomena has truly become a “movement of movements”.  Organizers and participants both put a lot of emphasis on making the connections between issues that we are usually taught to believe are separate and unrelated: from ending the illegal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan to abolishing absurd ideas such as the corporate privatization of water; from supporting unions in their efforts to organize workers in the U.S. South to advocating for immigrants’ rights and opposing the construction of a wall on the U.S. Mexico border.  There were over 1,000 workshops over three days of the forum; to even try to summarize them would be fruitless and would miss the point: neoliberal economic globalization involves an immense variety of issues around the world but they are all connected to the single goal of powerful corporations, international institutions and individuals to create a worldwide economic system that benefits the few by the blood, sweat and tears of the majority.

The USSF demonstrated that what we are witnessing is the emergence of an organic, diverse, multi-faceted but unified resistance to the globalization of capitalism.   This is a movement that is stronger for its diversity, harder to control for its horizontalism, smarter for its inclusiveness, and faster and more dynamic for its organic pluralism.  That makes it extremely powerful and that’s what will make it successful.  As neoliberal economic globalization has spread around the world so has this movement to oppose it.  Marx explained that capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.  That seed is now sprouting and taking root.  The convergence in Atlanta this past week demonstrated this.

Hablamos muchos idiomas: Language access at the USSF

I feel much rejuvenated this morning.  My volunteer shift signing up other volunteers was over (people are pretty much done with wanting to be volunteers at this point) so this morning I got to go to workshops.  I started early. I wanted to hear an introduction to the solidarity economy lecture but when I got there the tent was deserted.  I have various observations of the day so far, but I thought I'd start with some reflections on language access here at the US Social Forum.

After discovering there was no introduction to the solidarity economy to be had, I went next door to hear a panel discussion on poor people's economic human rights.  I mostly watched the interpreter and tried to imagine doing such work (what sorts of little tricks I could use like how to make yourself heard even though the english speakers are applauding what you're still in the process of translating).  The panelists though all waited on the interpreter and the transition was smooth and seamless. 

The next thing I went to, a workshop on 21st century Socialism, was all in Spanish but here they did the interpretation differently.  They gave headphones to the English speakers so that you couldn't hear the interpretation at all if you didn't want to.  I don't think I like this approach as much.  It's very segregated and one result was the speakers here don't wait on the interpretors.  It seemed like the interpreters were not getting stressed out about it but to me it'd be highly stressful.   Maybe they had an idea of the speeches beforehand.  Knowing the relevant vocabulary and even just having a general idea of what someone's going to say helps a lot, I think.

Having the conference be so multi-lingual is one of the things I really like about the Social Forum.  I kinda took it for granted until I saw that the article in the local paper mentioned this as an example of how "politically-correct" and radical we are.  Really?  If we were an international trade association meeting here this weekend they wouldn't think it radical and progressive that there is support for multiple languages, why is it different for us?  As if this were not another kind of globalization, a globalization of people coming together who are fed up with the world as it is.  As if, despite the slogan plastered all over this town right now, we weren't talking of creating other worlds.  Worlds where many voices are heard, a post-post-modern world that is characterized by multiplicity and real (read: participatory) democracy.

Someone today (her name was Adrianna I think) mentioned something today about having a radical process and not just radical content in our movement and I think this is a good example. 

I met Karl Marx!

... well, okay I met Fenton Wilkinson playing Karl Marx in a production of Howard Zinn's play Marx in Soho but I swear it was possibly almost as inspiring as meeting the original.  (Well, actually I don't know if I'd want to meet the original ---we'd probably have a very awkward conversation) But I was reinvigorated by this event tonight.  Beginning with something the woman who introduced the play said about the Independent Progressive Politics Network... I can't find the quote at the moment (I think the recording I made didn't turn out) but it was something about working for electoral change (out of immediate need?) while also believing in the fundamental corruptness of the system as such.  Just the idea that they don't find this inherently contradictory intrigues me.  Not in a judgemental way at all.  I'm just curious.  I want to know more about their thinking on this. Could this actually be a logical strategy? hmmmm....

Then Mr. Marx came on stage and expounded on the nature of capitalism and the working class and the purpose of theorizing and philosophizing about the world... you know, the usual stuff.  He even gave some glimpses into his personal life, his relationship with his wife Jenny and his children.  It was very superficial by nature (but it is just supposed to be an introduction) and didn't distinguish between oh, let's say early Marx and later Marx (really how would they do that? we change so much throughout the course of a lifetime!  It's common sense but still we expect people maybe especially historical people to be static pictures) and it didn't portray any um... what's the word?  Things that would make him a complex character?  Ambiguities?  A man as smart as Marx must've had a lot of ambiguities.  His head must've held lots of contradictory thoughts at the same time.  But ya know, this wasn't a character-study.  It was more like Marx for dummies.

Nonetheless this show really got me excited.  Especially the part where he talks about the Paris Commune  when for the first (and only?) time Marx's vision of democratic communism* was actually tried out and how we can and should think about how we could get there again.... how we're even closer than we think to being able to do so.  I'd like to think more about that too.  I have lots and lots to think about tonight.  Tomorrow's another looooong day.

* democratic communism is a term that I know is technically redundant when talking about Marx's idea of communism but I still feel it clarifies things to add it in.

The tragedy of the commons is the theft of the commons

Aristotle wrote in Politics that "that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it" thereby initiating the "tragedy of the commons" theories which hold that if everyone has access to a common resource no one has the incentive to take care of that resource. 

I was reminded of this today when watching this excellent documentary here at the Social Forum about the privitazation of water.  Thirst is a film that looks at three communities where this has been an issue.  In Stockton, California the mayor had the brilliant idea that the city could save money by privatizing the water company and local residents campaigned hard for the right just to vote on the issue (they were unsuccessful apparently).  Bolivia, however, was adament about kicking out Bechtel who wanted to do the same thing in their country.  And in India a man named Rajendra Singh travels across the country organizing communities to resist the selling of this precious resource to private corporations.  One of the women interviewed said that this idea of privatizing all the water in the world is like the "theft of the commons" by the corporations.

Isn't that an interesting way of putting it?  The "theft of the commons".  True, eh?  Water is an essential natural resource that belongs to all of us.  Anyone who tries to claim it for him or herself (corporate or not) is insane.

To steal something that belongs to everyone.... Isn't that just what people who believe in the "tragedy of the commons" theories are worried about?  That people in their own self-interest will just take all they can (e.g. add another sheep to their herd and another and another and another ad infinitum) and not think about sustainability (e.g. how many sheep the pasture can support)?   In other words, that they will externalize their costs (onto the environment) while internalizing the profits (from having yet one more in their herd).

What's the point of all this?  Just that I thought it ironic that some people use the "tragedy of the commons" theory to argue for privatization which, as the water wars demonstrate, is clearly NOT in the public's best interest.  And that the REAL tragedy of the commons is the THEFT of the commons (beause then there are no more commons).

I think that we have to be careful about pushing the analogy too far but the validity of the first scenario --a sort of free-for-all where anyone can do anything (e.g. add as many sheep as the pasture will bear) with little or no regulation by the community does NOT mean that the opposite extreme --the second scenario (privatization)-- is therefore the right way to go.  They both lead to the same place in my book... lack of incentive to do the two absolutely essential things here: a.) care for the land and b.) share the resources.   In fact, they're not opposites at all... they're the same thing, aren't they?

Just a thought inspired by another day at the Social Forum....now off to watch Marx in Soho!  Happy evening everyone!

Day 2: USSF

It might be just that I'm getting the hang of things here but things seem better organized to me today than they did yesterday.  Believe it or not, I successfully became a somewhat helpful volunteer staffing the volunteer table this morning (we still need yet MORE volunteers by the way!  Come by the volunteer table in the Civic Center if you can work a 4 hour shift at some point during the weekend!).  Before the afternoon workshops started i even got some time to take some photos (and found myself both photographer and photographed: a man from the Atlanta-Constitution came up and asked my name because he had taken my picture while I was taking pictures of an Iraq War memorial).  Then I made it to my first workshop on building solidarity with Venezuela.  It was pretty good but I was hoping for more information on specific programs the Chavez government is starting up and only one of the speakers talked about stuff like that (that I remember).  The rest talked about building solidarity movements (well, that was the name of the session after all!).  I'm really interested in these community and workers' councils they are starting up down there as a way of decentralizing power.  --ooh gotta run, next workshop session is starting: "The Wars Abroad and at Home: Connecting militarism, growth of prisons, immigration and the global economy" (sponsored byt the AFSC --the Quakers)... just to give ya a little taste of some of the workshops those of us here in Atlanta are getting to experience. 

The world is full of beautiful people.

Does the downtown Atlanta police station always have half a dozen police officers standing around outside the front of their building?  Maybe.  Do the Atlanta police always walk around with a thick wad of plastic zip handcuffs?  Probably not.  And that helicopter hovering low a few blocks away?  That must be where I want to go!

Welcome to the first ever US Social Forum in Atlanta, GA!  It's hot.  Bring water.  There are lots of people here.  Workshops start tomorrow and there are so many that I want to be in at least six places at once!  The organization of all this isn't bad, considering.  I only saw three food tents though, and it took half an hour to 45 minutes to get through the line to eat but that's okay because I got to meet a social worker from Boston and we traded stories about living and working in South America (he went to Nicaragua during the 80s with the Sandinistas).  He wants to know how I became a Marxist.  I didn't know what to say so I said it was because I love to read.  But I didn't get a chance to explain because we had to go to different registration lines.  So, Carlos (it was Carlos, wasn't it?), what I meant was, it's like why Ortega told them to teach the people to read.  Reading is subversive.  In and of itself.  Because reading makes everything else possible.  Opens worlds where alternatives exist.  Breaks the myth that the way we do things now is the way we always will do them because that's the way we always have done them.  Reading and dreaming and imagining is where it all starts.  So maybe I became a Marxist because I learned to read.  And paid attention to the world around me.  It's not hard to see that capitalism hurts lots and lots of people. 

The girl above was very cool-looking so I took her picture.  Come on down to Atlanta, y'all... you can meet lots of beautiful people who are reading and dreaming and imagining new ways of doing things.  See ya! :-)

p.s. here's a link to a video the guy sitting next to me is posting about a multi-issue caravan he was on this past week.  I haven't seen it yet so y'all tell me if it's cool or not!

US Social Forum

All this talk in the world about how to respond to the overwhelming brute force of a world dominated by a single super power.  What about those of us who live in that single superpower? 

Well, with a mix of trepidation and eager anticipation I'm off to the first ever US Social Forum in Atlanta.    The reluctance comes of recently wondering what in the world made me think I would enjoy sitting through long bouts of talk and discussion and whether or not I will get annoyed with the indecisiveness and infighting that I've found characterizes activist movements on the left.  But.  It's in Atlanta, it's practically in my backyard.  And you never know.  Things could be different this time.  Filled with love and harmony!  (Imagine that!).... don't say it.  I know I'm too cynical!

I'm volunteering to staff an info table and when I'm not doing that I'll be taking photos so that will give me something to occupy myself with.  At the very least I hope I meet a few people and make a few new contacts.  Lord, help me not to get annoyed with the shrill, the obnoxious or the extremely flakey.

I hope my cat doesn't pee on my bed while I'm gone.

Globalization: inevitable and alterable

Globalization: Inevitable and alterable

by barb howe

Nayan Chanda doesn't want you to worry about globalization.  It's not about world-wide cutthroat capitalism, rampant consumerism or a race to the bottom for wage-slaves.  No, he says, it's about "an expression of human desires that date back to the dawn of time" according to the NY Times' review of his new book BOUND TOGETHER How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization. 

Before you rush off to puke at this sickly sweet sentimentality let’s give Mr. Chanda credit.  He’s right about one thing: globalization is nothing new. But that is hardly an insightful contribution to the discussion.  Scholars studying the phenomena have been saying that at least since the 1990s and some like International Relations theorist Robert Keohane argue that they've been saying it since the 1970s.  Few are arguing that there's anything new about contemporary economic globalization even in the aspect of scale (the world has seen other periods of history with as much or more international trade apparently).  What's different about contemporary globalizations is the particular format, the technologies that characterize it today, especially in the field of information and communication.

For Mr. Chanda globalization in the general sense of the term may be about primordial human desire but for most of us it has a much more tangible effect on our lives.  It’s about losing jobs to those who will work for less and less money overseas.  It’s about multi-national corporations externalizing their costs onto the people and environments in poor third world countries.  It’s about sweatshops and child labor.  Neoliberal economic globalization is about money and profit.  Period.  Other globalizations are often about resisting these things as every meeting of the World Social Forums indicate (“Don't you externalize your costs on me!” say the poor of the world).

Globalization --or more accurately globalizations with an 's' because as indicated above there are many different kinds-- are certainly not a new phenomena and are probably here to stay but that's not a recipe for impassive acceptance as Mr. Chanda seems to imply.  He makes the age-old argument that this phenomena is natural and therefore cannot and should not be resisted or directed in any way.  The book after all is not entitled BOUND TOGETHER How everyday people in the non-ruling class shape globalization.  For him, it’s the elite, the “traders, preachers, adventurers and warriors” who are in control.  The rest of us need not trouble ourselves. 

Whenever anyone tells us that something is inevitable, it's usually with the intent to diminish/deflect critiques of it.  Let's turn that notion on its head.  Anything human beings make, human beings can change.  Globalizations of some kind or another may be inevitable but they are not unalterable.  We have a choice which one or ones we want to see predominate.  Do you want the McDonaldization of the world or do you want to globalize social/economic justice and human rights?

Don't believe them when they tell you that you can do nothing.  Subvert the dominant paradigm.  It’s your world, despite what people like Mr. Chanda tell you.  It’s people like you and me who really shape globalization.

May Day: International Worker's Day

Happy belated May Day everyone!

Did your town have a May Day celebration?  Ours did!  We had music, speakers, a maypole, facepainting, a capitalist pig piñata and lots of good eats and good people.  The organizing committee really outdid themselves.  If you didn't get to go to a cool May Day festival like this, maybe consider organizing one in your town next year  The folks at the Civic Media Center would have lots of resources and advice to get you on the way.

And in honor of May Day, Chavez has "nationalized" the oil industry!  No, not really but if we call it that it will sound conveniently scary and socialistic.  That's what I think the mainstream media must be thinking with headlines such as this.  (To be fair Chavez uses the term "nationalization" also).  But he didn't really nationalize anything, he just re-negotiated the state's contract with the foreign oil companies so that the state gets a larger share of control.  The companies are still privately owned but Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA now holds 60% of the shares instead of something like 40%.  This should help them keep more of the income generated from such ventures instead of having most of it drain off to other countries.  All the foreign companies agreed to the deal because it's still more profitable for them to mine for oil there in Venezuela than it is to go somewhere else.  This was explained by an analyst on Radio France Internacional (I love RFI!).  You can read the full story here.

So yay Chavez!  Good for you.  Así se gobierna!  (That's the way to govern!)

Sidestepping ads on the internet

Cleaning out and revamping this blog today I deleted the post about Adblock Plus I had up here and I probably should have left it.  So in case you were looking for the link to download the extension, here it is. 
This is for if you use the Firefox browswer.  It's been out for a year but I only just now discovered it.  I tried it and it works!  Instead of annoying, flashing, agitating ads I see cool, calming white space on ad-heavy sites such as Lycos Mail and The Gainesville Sun.  I highly recommend it.  It's a great way to de-commercialize your internet experience.

Charles Fishman on Walmart

The Diane Rehm show is having an excellent discussion on Wal-Mart today.  Charles Fishman author of the Wal-Mart Effect relates the following story:

Jim Weir, CEO of Snapper (the company that makes lawnmowers) pulled his product from Wal-Mart  stores recently because their price demands (ever lower prices) would've forced him to reduce the quality of his lawnmowers (which have a pretty good reputation).  He concluded that in the long term having to reduce the price would reduce the quality and durability of his product and he's proud of the reputation Snapper has.  So, he went to Bentonville (headquarters of the giant retailer) to tell them he didn't want to do that.  What'd Wal-Mart say?  They suggested he produce a lower-quality line of lawnmower that he could sell at Wal-Mart (translation: produce cheap plastic crap).  Also, his lawnmowers are made in Georgia so Wal-mart suggested moving his production overseas.  Mr. Weir said no way.   

Good for him!  And if you're ever in the market for a lawnmower, buy a Snapper in good conscience.

Keep the airwaves corporate-owned!

The state of Florida is doing its part to keep the airwaves corporate owned.  It's now a felony to operate a pirate radio station and people face five years in prison if caught.  For more, listen to the NPR story here.  The story, however, focusses only on music-based pirate stations, ignoring political and news and information based broadcasters and the inherent implications for free (in both senses of the word) speech.

Wal-Mart movie Review

The new Wal-Mart movie premiered last night around the country and about 40 people showed up to watch it on the UF campus here including me and three other friends.  A fourth friend declined to come because he “already knew Wal-Mart was bad”.  I thought about that too.  But I’m glad I went for a couple of reasons: I got more up-to-date facts and figures in my head now and a good review of all the arguments that make up the case against the corporate giant, not just the ones that particularly irk me.  And I learned some new stuff too, so I'll start with a correction.  I said in one of my previous posts that I knew of no community who had successfully organized against the store.  The last part of the movie included a list of many communities who they said had victories against Wal-Mart and they profiled a couple in detail showing how they did it.  Now they did include my own city on that list and ours was only a partial victory. [Wal-Mart wanted to bulldoze a park on the prosperous west side of town to build a new supercenter (we already have two regular Wal-Marts) and people on the poorer east side wanted one over there so Wal-Mart said they’d grace their part of town with one of their little miracle stores ONLY if we let them bulldoze the park on the other side.  The city said no and now Wal-Mart is building only the east-side store. Which is still fine with me because as much as I hate Wal-Mart for its negative impact on communities I believe in self-determination more and not patronizing poor people of color on the East side who think this will help them economically.] so who knows what the nature of those "victories" against Wal-Mart actually were in those other cases cited.   

The movie was followed by a discussion (moderated, by the way, by the prof whose class I was considering taking next semester which was a good introduction to what he’s like in case I change my mind).  Most people thought it was a pretty harsh condemnation of the corporate giant; one College Republican complained that it wasn’t “objective” which was pretty stupid because the movie never said it was objective.  GIL responded that that’s not what documentaries are supposed to do.  And it’s true.  Wal-Mart has a huge PR firm behind them.  They can spend millions on comercials promoting an image of a warm, snuggly, corporation that "gives back" to the communities [prompting some to wonder just how much it takes out of a community it wants to "give back" to]. 

An independent filmmaker on his own budget is under no obligation to help Wal-Mart spread false information about themselves.  The more interesting critique was voiced by the moderator who gained a lot of points with me when he said that it could be argued that the film’s flaw was that by focussing on how bad Wal-Mart is, it might suggest that they are somehow an aberration in an otherwise benevolent system.  Good point for what it's worth.

Walking home GIL and I were talking about presidents, past and present.  He’s more of a Democrat than I am and he liked Clinton a lot more than I did at the time but we both think Bush Jr is the worst president ever.  And I thought of a good analogy with the Wal-Mart movie.  I said that Bush is like Wal-Mart, an example of the worst excesses of the system.  But even if Clinton is like the Body Shop and looks nice in comparison, it still comes down to fact that we have a filthy, rotten system that is free market capitalism that relies on some people being exploited to a greater or lesser degree by other people and to the extent that we cannot yet replace this horrible system with a better more humanitarian form of economic organization we can and should do what we can to restrain it as much as possible because left to its own devices it will and it does crush people in the ruthless pursuit of profit. 

Wal-Mart is the best anti-capitalist argument I can think of.  Sweatshops for poor people in other countries.  Low wages and few benefits for poor people in this one.  Huge profits for the shareholders.  Sprawl.  Environmental damage.  The destruction of small business and downtown areas.  Because few things in this world are entirely good or bad I’m sure there must be some redeeming qualities to Wal-Mart.  I just can’t seem to find them.  Neither, apparently could the movie and for that I whole-heartedly loved it.

Walmart movie

I want to see this movie.  Click through to their website and you can watch the movie's trailer.  It takes a minute to load but it's worth it. 

And what's really scary/ridiculous is Wal-Mart's attack ad against the trailer.  Besides calling the public a "special interest group" it's such a load of PR crap, it'll make you laugh.  They can't actually lie so instead they mislead and twist the facts so you get distracted.  The ad says there are three factual "errors" in the trailer.  The trailer claims that WalMart puts small, locally-owned companies out of business.  Well, they can't deny that so what do they do?  They claim that the particular one featured in the trailer technically closed before Wal-Mart opened. 

Then they cut to the movie trailer again showing a black woman talking about being fired, saying that she was told point blank that there was no place in WalMart for people like her.  WalMart's response: that that they hire a lot of minorities.  The woman never said in the trailer why she was fired (but it could've been for organizing; Wal-Mart is notoriously anti-union).  So that one's a nonpoint for either side.

Finally in defense of attacks in the trailer on what they pay their employees, they confuse the minimum wage with a living wage and say that since they don't pay the minimum then they do pay a living one.  They say a fulltime worker earns $10.69/hr in the Chicago area.  What they don't say is that most of their employees are not hired on for fulltime.  If that's not twisted and dishonest, I don't know what is. 

Most WalMart jobs are "part-time, low-wage jobs that include little or no benefits. The average Wal-Mart worker makes $8.23 an hour and typically works less than 24 hours a week. The average Wal-Mart employee working 40 hours a week would earn only $17,118 a year, but a more realistic annual wage for a Wal-Mart worker is about $10,000. This is well below the poverty level for a family of two. Most Wal-Mart workers qualify for federal, state and local social services, i.e., welfare." (from Wakeup WalMart.com)

Beating down Wal-Mart

First, the GOOD NEWS!  Our town just defeated the evil corporation!  I'd be happier about this if I didn't know that these victories are usually only minor obstacles in the path of the corporate juggernaut and no town that I've ever heard of has ever sucessfully permanently kept Wal-Mart out of their community but it's still cause for celebration.  They actually wanted to build two supercenters here (they don't build anything but supercenters anymore).  One on the impoverished and undeveloped east side of town whose residents actually want the thing (because they are in such desperate need of jobs and economic development) and one on top of a park on the overdeveloped wealthier west side.  They were only going to build the east side one if we conceded to give them the park land for the west side.  (It should be noted by the way that we already have two regular sized Wal-Marts that seem to do just fine)  Now I have no objection to the east side one if that's what the residents want but there's no reason why they couldn't have just gone ahead with it without trying to get the city to agree to raize a city park on the other side of town.  Townspeople, rightly so, were outraged, organized and lobbied against it and they won.  Good for them.  Crap like this is why Wal-Mart has the reputation it does and why it's spending so much money these days on public relations ads to shiney up its image in the public eye.

Lest any of my readers be swayed by such public relations ads, I give you two pieces of advice, watch this episode of South Park (yes, it's got some potty humor but it's dead on, politically) and look around at what's happened at your own hometown since Wal-Mart moved in.  It's not difficult to see, no one wants to live in the land of Wal-Mart.  You know you shouldn't but you do it anyway, this is a good time to resolve (again) to stop shopping at Wal-Mart.  Go out and support a locally-owned business.  You'll feel better.

Taxing Walmart for paying slave wages: a great idea!

So we already know that Walmart is bad for our communities because they kill locally owned small business ("Studies in Iowa have shown that small towns lose up to 47 percent of their [local] retail trade after 10 years of Wal-Mart towns nearby"*) and we know that Walmart claims that it brings much needed minimum wage jobs into communities (it doesn't mention that those pay less than the jobs that would've otherwise been there if the megastore hadn't killed them).  But did you know that you and I have to pick up the tab so Walmart can pay their employees such low wages?  Those minimum wage jobs the world's largest retailer brings into a community pay so little that many employees have to supplement their income with state benefits like welfare because their jobs don't pay enough for them to live on.  This is a smart move for Walmart and part of the old capitalist money making scheme to outsource costs and privatize profits (basically getting the public sphere to help shoulder your costs, you get to keep more of your profits for yourself).  The state of Montana, however, is catching on to the megastore here and saying no.  Their state legislature is considering a plan to  tax big box retailers who pay less than a living wage to help subsidize the cost back onto Walmart.  If Walmart's going to pay their workers so little they have to rely on state benefits, then they're going to have to pay a little more into the state coffers to finance it.  To avoid the tax all the company has to do is raise the wages they pay.  What a great idea!   This isn't the first time this has been tried, it was attempted back in 2003 as well, but let's hope this time it passes.

Here are some links to more information:

--An editorial piece by one of those state legislators can be found here
--Or listen to an NPR News story on Morning Edition
--And the workers are fighting back.  Here's what the unions have to say...United Food and Commerical Workers International Union

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*1] Kenneth E. Stone, Impact of the Wal-Mart Phenomenon on Rural Communities, Published in Proceedings: Increasing Understanding of Public Problems and Policies – 1997 by Farm Foundation, Chicago, IL, p.3