Fwd: Wal-Mart and the Strip-Mining of America, Corporate Watch

[Dena Marchant <denam@fsr.com>]

>From the Corporate Focus Mailing List:

Walk into any Wal-Mart and marvel. One near us is open 24 hours. 
Never closes. Consumer goods as far as the eye can see. Quality product at 
a low price. Friendly workers greeting eager consumers at the door. 
	
In 1997, Wal-Mart had sales of $118 billion and is on course to
become, within 10 years or so, the world's largest corporation. 
	
Wal-Mart is three times bigger than Sears, its nearest competitor,
and larger than all three of its main rivals (Sears, Target, and 
Kmart) combined. 
	
Wal-Mart now has 3,400 stores on four continents. "Our priorities
are that we want to dominate North America first, then South America, 
and then Asia and then Europe," Wal-Mart's President and CEO David Glass 
told USA Today business reporter Lorrie Grant recently. 
	
And given the history of steady rise of the Bentonville, Arkansas
retailer, who would doubt it? 
	
Certainly not USA Today, which last week ran Grant's glowing
review of Wal-Mart's worldwide operation under the headline: "An
Unstoppable Marketing Force: Wal-Mart Aims for Domination of the 
Retail Industry -- Worldwide." 
	
But Bob Ortega, a Wall Street Journal reporter, reveals a
different side of the Wal-Mart phenomenon in his recently released 
book, In Sam We Trust: The Untold Story of Sam Walton and How Wal-Mart Is
Devouring America, (Times Business, 1998). 
	
Ortega documents how Sam Walton -- perhaps the most driven
corporate executive ever to walk the face of the planet -- built his
empire. Wal-Mart has used Asian child labor to make blouses for sale 
under "Made in America" signs in his stores. When he began his operation in
Bentonville, Arkansas, Sam Walton hired a union-busting attorney to 
quash worker organizing. Outer city Wal-Marts have steamrolled inner city
shopkeepers.  	

Ortega speaks to Kathleen Baker of Hastings, Minnesota, who was
fired after talking with other workers about asking for a pay raise. 
He speaks to Mike and Paula Ianuzzo, of Cottage Grove, Oregon, who
blamed Wal-Mart for wiping out their photo-shop business. 
	
In Guatemala, he interviewed Flor de Maria Salguedo, a union
organizer who arranged for Ortega to talk with workers making clothes 
for Wal-Mart and other giant retailers. 
	
Salguedo, whose husband was murdered during an organizing drive in
Guatemala City, was herself kidnapped, beaten and raped shortly after
Ortega left Guatemala City. After the attack, one of her attackers 
told her, "This is what you get for messing about with foreigners." 
	
Ortega documents how communities around the country have revolted
against Wal-Mart's plans to plunk down giant superstores in their
communities, ripping apart the fabric of small town life. 
	
In Oklahoma, the owner of a television and record store adversely
affected and eventually closed down after a Wal-Mart moved into the 
area, told reporters, "Wal-Mart really craters a little town's downtown." 
	
Shelby Robinson, a self-employed clothing designer from Fort
Collins tells Ortega that she "really hates Wal-Mart." Why? 
	
"Everything's starting to look the same, everybody buys all the
same things -- a lot of small-town character is being lost," Robinson
says. "They dislocate communities, they hurt small businesses, they 
add to our sprawl and pollution because everybody drives farther, they don't 
pay a living wage, and visually, they're atrocious." 
	
James Howard Kunstler, an ardent Wal-Mart foe from upstate New
York, talks about what he calls the $7 hair dryer fallacy. 
	
Kunstler argues to Ortega that "people who shop at a giant
discounter to save $7 on a hair dryer don't realize that they pay a 
hidden price by taking that business from local merchants, because those
merchants are the people who sit on school boards, sponsor little 
league teams and support the civic institutions that create a community." 
	
Kunstler calls Wal-Mart "the exemplar of a form of corporate
colonialism, which is to say, organizations from one place going into
distant places and strip-mining them culturally and economically." 
	
Ortega documents how communities around the country are rising up
to slap down Wal-Mart's plans at expansion. 
	
But Ortega questions whether, given the amazing popularity of
Wal-Mart among consumers worldwide, anything will stop this 
juggernaut. 
	
As Ortega points out, consumerism has not always held sway on this
soil. Back 200 years ago, in the United States, "one did not shop for
pleasure." 
	
"The very idea of coveting goods ran counter to a broad
Puritanical streak in American society, and to its proclaimed values 
of living simply, working hard (the famous 'work ethic'), being thrifty, 
and seeking salvation through faith," Ortega writes. 
	
Ortega closes the book with a story of how Tibetans believe,
depending on their past actions, people can come back to other realms
besides this one. 
	
"Among the worst of the realms is the realm of the hungry ghosts
-- a place reminiscent of certain neighborhoods of Dante's Inferno," 
he writes. "The hungry ghosts are the reincarnations of people who were
covetous or greedy in this life. In the realm of the hungry ghosts, 
they are constantly ravenous but can never be satisfied. They despoil and
devour everything around them. They consume endlessly and insatiably. 
It struck me immediately as a metaphor for our own mass culture." 
	
On April 6, 1992, Sam Walton died one of the wealthiest men in
America. Ortega says that he cannot presume to know where Walton went
after he passed on. "But I can't help but think, at times, that his 
hungry ghost is still with us, in the form of Wal-Mart itself."

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate 
Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based
Multinational Monitor.

(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

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