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Re: Fwd: Wal-Mart and the Strip-Mining of America, Corporate Watch
When I forwarded Dena Marchant's posting on Wal-Mart to someone whose
opinion I value, I fully expected a sympathetic response. Instead, I
received a "I bet people forced to exist on minimum
wage are glad to have a Wal-Mart. What's the problem?" It shed some new
light on the situation for me and raised a whole lot of questions.
Is it because we, citizens of Moscow and its environs, perceive ourselves to
be a white collar community, with its attendant values of preferring an
up-scale range of shopping options to the more pedestrian one which includes
the likes of Wal-Mart? Was there an equal outcry in Lewiston when Wal-Mart
opened its doors there? If not, why not? Are the employees of the Bon or
Creightons or any downtown business really much better paid than Wal-Mart
employees? How do we, enlightened citizens of the Palouse that we are,
reconcile our distaste for a mega-predator like Wal-Mart with the clear need
for affordable shopping for our students and so many others living on meagre
salaries.
These are genuine questions for me. Lori Keenan
>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
>
>Focus on the Corporation is a weekly column written by Russell
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>
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>=====================================================
>
>Tim Hermach
>Native Forest Council
>PO Box 2190
>Eugene, OR 97402
>541.688.2600; fax 689.9835 or 461.2156
>
>web page: http://www.forestcouncil.org
>
>
>
>
Lori Keenan, Director
Latah County Library District
110 S. Jefferson Street
Moscow, ID 83843
tel: (208)882-3923
fax: (208) 882-5098
e-mail: lkeenan@norby.latah.lib.id.us
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