The Light Brigade Network continues to grow, with actions like fireflies in an August night happening around the country. From Portland to Peoria, different groups came out last night, holding anti-consumerism slogans and aphorisms on cold city sidewalks trolled by cops, at the soulless Super Centers where shoppers fight for the right to cheap flat screens televisions, at strip malls where Sentra Security prowls like play policemen, eager to privilege private property over political expression. There are actions planned around the country all day today with more Light Brigades and other tactical media squads going out tonight.
Why Walmart? (to quote a Facebook post by Robert Reich):
Because it's the largest American employer with one of the worst labor records of all employers, because it pays its workers so little they have to rely on food stamps and Medicaid to make ends meet, because it could so easily afford to lead the way upward rather than lead the race to the bottom.
photo courtesy of Occupy Naperville
Will our collective actions matter? (to quote a Facebook post by our Portland, OR Light Brigade):
Tonight was such an amazing action, and not because of all the people we reached, but because of all the people we didn't reach. We took our protest to the same Walmart we did last year and talk about a difference a year makes. We're not talking about a few less people, we're talking about over 50% less people!! The lines last year were like a mile long and rapped around the corner and zigzagged, it took at least a half an hour for folks to get in there. This year though, no line at all, even the traffic on 82nd was like a ghost town. It was such a wonderful sight to see, and to know that so many folks decided it was more important to stay home with their families and not support billionaire CEOs and shareholders was such an amazing feeling. Keep fighting the good fight, y'all, and remember to shop local this holiday season. Thank you everyone for all your support and enjoy your holidays.
Causality is a complicated thing, and even as the testimonial of our Portland protestors resonates, we have other video evidence of who we are collectively, what America believes in, what values we put forth into the world.
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The only way we can make change is to get out and fight, to make the ethical case that how you treat your workers matters, no matter how much money you put into advertisements of happy people proclaiming their fealty to the Corporation. We need to make it clear that shopping at Walmart is an ethical issue, no matter how much they can undercut the prices at other stores.
To quote Reich again:
A few decades ago, when American companies were still American and when corporate profits still bore some relationship to the wages of most Americans, the nation fretted over the "competitiveness" of U.S. corporations. But now that the stock market has gone through the roof while most Americans are in the cellar, that old worry seems a bit quaint. For example, Walmart, America's largest employer,is highly competitive internationally. Yet it claims it can't afford to pay its U.S. workers more than the miniscule wages it doles out to them. The claim is dubious. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Walmart has bought back about $36 billion of its stock over the past four years, and in June announced another $15 billion of stock repurchases. The effect is to bolster the value of the remaining shares of stock. This is nice for the Walton family, which now owns slightly more than half of the company's stock. Not incidentally, the Walton family has more wealth than the bottom third of all Americans put together. As Walmart goes, so does the nation.
On a related note, yesterday in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when the massive balloon effigy of Ronald McDonald floated by, the crowd began to chant
"Pay Your Workers… Pay Your Workers." This was picked up and moved along with the moving float. The parade, a decidedly apolitical event, was turned into a massive spontaneous political protest.
There is something in the air, and it hovers there as big as Ronald McDonald on tethers.
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