Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: Demanding Net Neutrality

Problem:

Right now, we have a free and open Internet. Sure, it can cost you a pretty penny to access the Web, but it’s an open sourced environment in many, many ways, and no one website is inherently faster than another. Sure some load faster because of the demands of Flash, or HTML5, or videos, but that’s about it.

However, there’s a major push being made by the country’s biggest and ugliest cable and telephone companies – Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT & T – you know, the ones that we have to fork it over to in order to find our favorite recipes, poems, news, social networking sites, chat, email…. (Wait… you’re on the Internet right now, so I can probably stop listing everything that’s on the Internet. That is, unless, you’re my 89-year-old grandmother—who makes a mean meatloaf—and I’ve finally convinced you to hop on the WWW with promises of my verbal acumen. Hi, Nonna! )  Anyway, they want to be “gatekeepers,” deciding which sites go fast, slow, or not at all. Read that last clause again: not at all. That’s the kind of control they literally want to have. Why? To stifle competition. To sell speedier connections to the highest bidders. To control content.  The result? An end to the most significant information revolution that has ever happened.

Anyway, Net Neutrality is the issue this week. What is it, exactly? Net Neutrality essentially means that WWW service providers cannot discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online. In other words, all websites and Internet tech all will continue to exist on a level playing field.

Net Neutrality drives technological innovation, free speech, economic growth, and a democratic sharing of information. Net Neutrality prevents service providers from interfering with our Internet experiences.  In the words of The Free Press Action Fund, “With Net Neutrality, the network’s only job is to move data — not to choose which data to privilege with higher quality service.”

Where do we come in? We need to fight back against the aforementioned behemoths that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying the FCC and Congress. And because there are many more of us than there are of them, and because we hold the power of our votes, and because tens of thousands of small and large businesses want Net Neutrality, too, we have a real chance to retain a freedom we’ve come to expect. And that’s a key thing about America: we can’t ever assume we’ll retain a freedom just because it exists now.

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Make Progress:

• Sign
• Donate
• Watch
• Share

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Sign:

This doesn’t get much easier people.

Click the logo to the right. Sign your name to a petition put together by the aforementioned Free Press Action Fund. Join over 1.9 million Americans who are openly speaking to Congress, insisting that they act according to the freedoms we deserve.

Net Neutrality is the most important First Amendment issue facing this country.

It follows that staying silent on Net Neutrality is a demonstration that you don’t care about the freedom that you’d be choosing not to exercise. Wait. That sentence is a little confusing. Just sign the sucker, okay? You’ll thank us in ten years.

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Donate:

Five bucks. Half of a trip to see a lousy movie starring Ashton Kutcher (I realize this is redundant). A super-sized sack of crap from a fast-food “restaurant.” Hell, you can re-wear some socks and underwear and go another week without doing laundry.

The point is that you might not think that five bucks is much, but when enough people care enough to give five bucks, you’d be amazed at how quickly it adds up. Let’s go back to the movies for a second: a trip to a flick will set you back about ten bucks; just think of the insane totals that movies rake in every weekend. Those small amounts of money, collected together, make the news every single Monday!

Worried the Free Press Action Fund won’t use your money wisely? Worry not, my progressive grasshopper. 87 cents of every dollar donated supports their core campaign and movement building work to make the U.S. media system more democratic, diverse, and accountable.

Just click this sentence to help keep your voice in the ears of those who control what happens next.

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Watch:

Okay, so this video is a little dated (but barely), and yes, sure, it’s even a little goofy (I mean, there are cartoon alien spacecraft zapping the Internet with lasers), but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t explain what I’ve tried to explain in ways that cannot be misunderstood. So if you’re at all confused, please, please, please watch this video. (If nothing else, my favorite REM song off my favorite REM album makes a guest appearance.)

Net Neutrality is about power and who will have it: us or them. And yes, this is an either-or situation.

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Share:

Right now, as the Internet exists, consumers –you and me—have the control. We choose content, applications, and services available anywhere, regardless of who we use to log on. If we lose Net Neutrality, we’ll be faced with an Internet that lacks the freedoms we’ve come to expect, and it will look much more like cable TV. Websites, content, applications will be like channels, and we’ll be forced to pay to choose what we want to see (if we can see what we want at all, that is).

Right now, the Internet is a place of freedom, and it bucks the tradition of previous forms of media in that any site (including Progressive Wednesday) has the possibility of having the popularity, scope, and reach of a TV station. We value freedom of expression so much that it appears at the beginning of our list of rights. Rights we lacked and we can lack again. This isn’t a scare tactic on our part. This is the reality we face from big businesses right now, today, and tomorrow, until they give up or get their ugly way.

So this action is the simplest of all. See that “Share” button on the left-hand side of this post? It’s about an inch and change below this sentence. Click it and share this Wednesday with your friends. You can send it along on your social network of choice through that button or you can even email it.

The choices we make now, the actions we chose to take, will determine if Net Neutrality continues to exist or if decisions about content are decided in boardrooms. I think you know which one is more progressive.

Downsizing Wal-Mart Some More

Problem:

A scant few weeks after we opened our P.O. Box in Model City, New York, we received our first piece of junk mail, the kind of junk mail that makes us believe in a god of irony (okay, we don't actually believe in a god of irony, but, well, sometimes we find it difficult to rule it out): a circular from Wal-Mart. Not just any flyer, mind you. This one promised, amongst other things, “instant savings,– “the season's best savings,– and “brilliant holiday savings.–

At Progressive Wednesday, we're all about saving and even savings, but we're also about taking action to protect our tax dollars, our families, our environment, and our small businesses. And we could use your help. It's time to stop the Walton family from harming our country more than it helps. It's time to downsize Wal-Mart.

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Make Progress:

• Watch
• Stop
• Write
• Donate & Replace
• Sign

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Watch:

To witness an even-handed and wonderfully heartbreaking documentary, check out the PBS Frontline flick Is WAL-MART Good for America? by clicking here. It's conveniently broken into five segments, so you don't even need to watch the whole thing straight through. You can watch ten minutes, then fix a sandwich (we dig Monte Cristos, by the way). You can watch another diez minutos, and buzz your grandma–she misses you and you never call. You get the picture.

While this film does fill us with pit-bull rage, it also leaves us feeling empowered. We realized that we could change things in our own small ways, because, despite what Wal-Mart would like you to think, we aren't actually a bunch of wishy-washy wimps when we come face-to-face with even the largest, richest, and arguably most despicable, American company.

After watching the film, maybe take the time to send an email from the Frontline page to three friends (the email link is on the far left margin of the page). You might indicate which section you thought was the most interesting, so that folks could just take a few minutes to educate themselves about Wal-Mart and the ways they harm America's hard-working families. You can always click the Share This button at the bottom left-hand corner of this post and email from there.

If you dug this documentary (though “dug– might be too generous a word), you might want to check out The Wal-Mart Movie, a flick by Robert Greenwald, who's produced several other charged and progressive movies. This one takes a more sharply critical eye to the company than does the PBS program. You can buy the sucker here or check out the trailer first:

There are even more videos you could tell your pals about from the folks at Wakeup Wal-Mart.

Why do you want you to watch these films? Why do we want you to get your peeps (that's right, we said “peeps– ) to watch these films? Because, quite frankly, we want everyone to stop shopping there until they change their ways.

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Stop:

We ain't never claimed to be perfect, people (read all about it in our FAQ), and we'll never do so. And we'll admit it: we've shopped at Wal-Mart; we've shopped at Sam's Club.

There are few powers our general citizenry possess to fight major conglomerations, at least not many that don't involve our arrests. But there's always the b-word, and we don't mean bulldogs or bananas or bills; we mean boycott, baby, boy-cott.

So we'll also admit this: barring a fluke of nature or tequila-induced drunkenness, we'll never shop at any Wal-Mart owned company again. If you haven't already, join us. There will be very few times where we beg at Progressive Wednesday. But we do beg of you: stop going there. Wal-Mart isn't saving you money, both in the short term or the long term.

So quit cold turkey, yo, because shopping in bulk does seem like some kind of addiction. And how many three-gallon tubs of mayo do we really need? (The answer rhymes with “hero.– )

But here's the deal–today, this Wednesday or whenever you're reading this, try to convince one other person to stop. We'll provide you with additional resources to educate yourself or the educate this other person. Explain to them gently what you've learned and how disgusted you are with the company. Or click the “Share This– button at the bottom of any of these posts, and email the sucker.

And now comes the big question: where should we shop instead? Well, we don't exactly have the answer to that because we don't know where you live. But here are three suggestions:

1. Whenever possible, buy American products.
2. Shop locally at privately owned businesses. You can always try the Yellow Pages online.
3. Only buy items of significance or necessity; stuff doesn't make us happy. (If you’ve got to read it to believe it, check out this University of Colorado study or this CNN article.) Of course, Progressive Wednesday swag will bring ebullient joy to your life whether you're 9 or 90.

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Write:

We believe that one of the most powerful ways to make progress is to be the voice of progress and to state your case publicly. One of the most effective means of doing this is writing letters to the editor of your local newspaper. (For advice on writing letters to the editor, check out our brief tool or our full tool.) We'd like to encourage you to write one of two different letters.

1. If there's a Wal-Mart in your area, we'd like you to consider writing a letter that tackles one of the following topics:

• Wal-Mart fails to be a good steward of the environment. The EPA has consistently fined Wal-Mart, including a 2004 penalty to the tune of $3.1 million for violating the Clean Water Act.
• Wal-Mart costs tax-payers billions of dollars in subsidies from state and local governments. And according to a recent study, “more than 90 percent of the company’s distribution centers have been subsidized.–
• Wal-Mart “bulldozes– local businesses. A recent decade-long Iowa State University study has shown that “some small towns lose up to 47% of their retail trade after ten years of Wal-Mart stores nearby.–
• Wal-Mart hurts hard-working families. Besides violating family leave laws and forcing employees to work off the clock, there’s this: in 2006 Wal-Mart was found liable of (of all things) meal break violations; the court ruling dictated that Wal-Mart had to fork over $172 million.
• Wal-Mart violates child-labor laws. In 2002, thanks to the 1,436 child labor infractions Wal-Mart committed in Maine alone, the Maine Department of Labor levied the largest fine in state history for violating child labor laws. And in 2005, the Department of Labor fined Wal-Mart because the company permitted teens “to operate hazardous equipment– including chainsaws, scrap paper balers, and fork lifts.
• Wal-Mart, of course, knowingly hires illegal immigrants. Check it out for yourself.

We think these frames are strong as well, so feel free to use our language. You might ask readers why Wal-Mart is so morally irresponsible. You can find other talking points and info here and here and here and here and here. The thing is, you're going to want to localize the problem of Wal-Mart in your area so you can better reach the audience. You might express concern that one of the problems you read about in the above links might happen in your area.

As we mention in our letters to the editor how-to tool, we recommend offering a solution. This solution might be urging folks to support local businesses and to stop shopping at Wal-Mart. You can probably come up with solutions of your own.

2. If there's not a Wal-Mart in your area–after you thank your luckiest of stars–we'd like to suggest writing a letter expressing how grateful you are, and how much you're hoping it will stay that way. You might want to pick one of the aforementioned topics to explain why you feel this way.

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If you're swamped and still want to yawp a bit to your community, there's a simpler approach to writing a letter to your local newspaper's editors. Wakeup Wal-Mart has a section of their webpage dedicated to just such writing. You choose the topic you'd like to address, select your state, click on your newspaper or newspapers, then tweak your letter.

We applaud the ease of this, but find that more personalized letters have a better shot of getting published (though you could easily add some personal narrative to the form letter they've created). We also think it's good to get into practice writing letters, as they play an integral role in making progress.

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Donate & Replace:

This act of progress is really pretty straight-forward. We'd like to suggest you donate just one thing (though a dozen would be even better) which you don't need or don't want or dig but want to update somehow, and replace it with something else or something new.

This will achieve several aims. By helping others in poverty, you very well might help reduce the odds someone will to go to Wal-Mart. And you'll help another person in need. And you'll help the economy by making a purchase. And you'll help small businesses or blue-collar American workers or both. And you can even get a tax break for your donation. It's one of the gifts that, much like the Energizer Bunny, keeps giving and giving and giving and– ¦.

Here's how donations help Salvation Army. Here's how to find a Salvation Army near you.

And what to buy? And where? You'll find a few links and ideas in the Stop section of this Wednesday topic, but below you'll find even more of our favorite progressive venders:

Shop Union Made
Pangea
CD Baby
Powells
The Book Corner
One Good Bumblebee
The Progressive Wednesday Store

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Sign:

Talk about an easy way to make some progress: ask Wal-Mart to hold itself to moral responsibility. How? Sign this message to Wal-Mart, then print, sign, and send the letter to the C.E.O. of Wal-Mart.

You can also sign up for more information about Wal-Mart here.

You might also consider printing this letter, signing your John Hancock at the bottom, and sending it off to your local and state legislators. If they use the resources at Wal-Mart Watch, they'll be better at waging a strong fight against this unethical company.

Your voice matters in a very real way. The goal is to reach a tipping point so that we can have more progress made.

The Case Against Bottled Water, Part I

Let me start by saying this: for nearly a decade now I’ve regularly consumed bottled water (hell, I’m drinking one right now). Let me continue by saying this: I think it’s safe to say that that’s about to change. Why? Well, this topic’s so big it’ll take a few posts, but how about this sobering statistic, courtesy of the fine rag Fast Company, about bottled water consumption in this here U.S. of A. of ours:

We–a generation raised on tap water and water fountains–drink a billion bottles of water a week, and we’re raising a generation that views tap water with disdain and water fountains with suspicion.

Wait, there’s more:

We’re moving 1 billion bottles of water around a week in ships, trains, and trucks in the United States alone. That’s a weekly convoy equivalent to 37,800 18-wheelers delivering water.

Oh, and here’s another factoid for the factoid fanatics out there:

Last year, we spent more on [bottled water] than we spent on movie tickets–$15 billion.

So, we spend more money each year on bottled H2O than the Gross Domestic Product of the Kingdom of Jordan. And the problem’s not really the money (though it costs us “two or three or four times the cost of gasoline“), but the environmental damage: carting water around on big-rigs pumps oodles of fossil-fuel greenhouse gas into ye ole atmosphere.

So, here’s reason numero uno to cool it with the bottled water: by drinking it, we damage the air we’re all trying to breath. Thankfully, there’s an easy alternative that we’ve already covered: filtered or distilled tap water. Just click this sentence to learn more.

Photo c/o this picture-clicker.

One Flew Over the Google’s Nest

Okay, I gotta say it: Google is starting to drive me a little crazy. Before I go into the details, let me start by saying that I’m very aware of two things: 1. Google is trying, in many ways, to break the near monopoly that Microsoft had on software, searching, and email. 2. Google.org, Google’s charity site, gives and gives and gives –they really do. Now, wait for it, here comes the but…

But Google’s starting to spread a little too much like a virus for my liking. How so and why? Well, Google keeps growing into areas that mean that they can know more and more about us. As we’ve covered before:

• Google literally knows where we live.
• Google remembers all of our searches.
• Google has broken trademark laws.
• Google has apparently adjusted search results based on location of IP address to protect itself against litigation.
• Gmail, Google’s free email service, shows users ads relevant to the content in the emails. This means, of course, that Google’s computers are essentially reading your email.
• Google Desktop Search is “a program that indexes your entire hard drive.” Again, Google is learning what you have on your computer.
• Google Talk, their chat service, keeps a log of your chatting and remembers the words you’ve used, which then translates into ads relevant to the content of your chatting.

There’s more, but we’ll let you head over to a fantastic website, Mashable.com, to learn a few more details. We will share one more with you: Google, besides knowing who we email, what we email about, what we search for, what we chat about, who we chat with, and what we like to watch (they own YouTube), Google now is buying Feedburner, which is a software used to have the content of blogs, like ours, sent to you via email. We, in fact, have been (I should say “had been”) using Feedburner. We’ll be changing that shortly.

The problem we see with this goes beyond evidence that once a company, even a good company, goes from privately owned to publicly traded on the stock exchange, they have no choice but to spread and grow and expand deeper into our lives. In the case with Google, which makes most of their revenue off targeted advertising, this means they need to know more and more about us to refine their ads, and they need more and more ways to advertise to us.

Feedburner is just the latest example of this — knowing what blogs you or I read, means that Google knows that much more about what interests us, and it could be an additional way we can be further bombarded with ads. Don’t get us wrong — we believe that people, including us, have every right to advertise. We’re just a little bothered by the speed and efficiency with which Google learns about us, and uses that knowledge, in a weird way, against us.

So, maybe try using GoodSearch.com instead of Google. Maybe try using Trillian instead of Google Talk. Maybe buy your own email address instead of relying on Gmail. Maybe we should, as progressives, try to free ourselves, if only a bit, from the big businesses that want to slowly swallow us up.

Shopping for American workers.

More and more jobs (particularly manufacturing jobs) are being shipped overseas to countries where working conditions can be disgusting at best, criminal at worst. But there’s another problem with the way we all tend to shop: we’re hurting hard-working Americans, those with the bluest of collars. And this is particular evident in my corner of Western New York.

Maybe you’d like to get a big-time jump on your Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa shopping. Maybe you forgot all about Mother’s Day, and you’d like to make up for it in a jiffy (and not this kind of Jiffy). Maybe you’re snagging some new duds for the summer. Maybe you’re a union worker yourself, worried your gig might go the way of China.

So what can you do? We can buy American-made stuff. This, unfortunately, sounds easier said than done, because if you’re like me and tend to shop at places like Kohls or Target, the odds of finding much made here in the Red, White, and Blue are about as good as winning a whole mess of coin on a slot machine at the Seneca Niagara Casino. In other words, you’ll find some, but not a whole heck of a lot.

But at Progressive Wednesday, we’re all about making progressivism simple, and we’re all about helping you help this country. And we believe we’ve found you some answers to the sometimes tricky question of how to best lend a hand to America’s hardest working or those out-of-work folks pining for a chance to earn a decent paycheck once again.

So, here goes:

1. First up is Shop Union Made, a website with a vast array of resources to help us all support American union workers protect the security of their jobs, and therefore, their families. The site offers up categories readers can search to help find stores and companies that employ union workers, and Shop Union Made covers everything from clothing to tools, food to finances, travel to books. Basically, they’ve got it all, baby. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, consumer spending on everyday stuff adds up to 68 percent of all wealth created each year in the U. S. of A. It’s time more of that moolah stayed right here. You can learn more about the importance of supporting U.S. workers by clicking this sentence.
2. No Sweat Apparel is an online shopping stop where we can buy guaranteed sweatshop-free made in the U.S., Canada, and the developing world. By using this site, you can be sure you’re protecting the rights of workers who make what you buy. You needn’t just buy online, though — there are a bevy of local retailers hocking no-sweat goods.
3. Because I walk a lot, and because I’m not a dress shoes kind of guy, I go through sneakers pretty quickly. Unfortunately, most of the sneakers sold here are sewn together by child workers in other countries. Through a company called Pangea, I’ve been able to find New Balance footwear made in America. Pangea also sells a variety of other items — from cosmetics to belts. I’ve shopped with them in the past, and can vouch for them as a speedy and honest privately-owned company.

So help your fellow Americans out, and, well, go shop, daddy-o.

Photo by this picture-clicker.

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Editor’s note: We’ve covered the needs of hard-working families on a previous Wednesday. Just click this sentence to learn other ways you can help those American’s who slug, like you, through the 9-5 for the rest of us.

Corn, from Ascorbates to Zein: Learn

With most issues, progressive or otherwise, people usually realize that a problem exists or at least that improvements can be made. We squabble over whether or not it's worth fixing, how to go about doing that, how important the issue is, what side effects our actions might have, etc. But at least we know that there is a problem. Not so with corn. Here are some of the impacts the over subsidizing and overproduction of corn has on our society, in bullet form for your convenience:

• Corn is the most subsidized crop in our country. From 1995-2005, over 51 billion dollars were given to farmers in the US of A, more than twice that of the next closest crop.
• Cows are ruminants whose stomachs are designed to eat grass, not corn. They are given antibiotics to stave off infection until they go off to slaughter. This promotes antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can be transmitted to humans that eat corn-fed beef.
• Corn strips the soil of more nutrients than any other mainstream crop and therefore requires much more fertilizer and pesticides, and consequently, more gas and oil to produce.
• Hormones and antibiotics given to cows to make them grow faster and bigger end up in our meat, soil, and water.
• Corn acidifies a cow's stomach, providing a haven for bacteria like E. Coli. Most of these animals are raised in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) where these diseases are easily spread.
• Compared to 1970, farms (which grow corn) today produce 500 more calories per person each day. We pack away an average of 200 of those calories.
• By many formulas, ethanol made from corn burns nearly as much fossil fuel, if not more to produce the crop as it would to just burn it in our car. Ethanol made from other plants such as sugar beets is much more efficient. Making ethanol is good; making it good is better.
• High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is the most common sweetener in the country. It is cheaper and easier to make than sugar from beets or sugar cane. But (there's always a “but– ), it doesn't stimulate the pancreas to make insulin or leptin to let us know when we are satisfied. The result? We crave more, eat more, get fatter, and get sicker. We are literally subsidizing obesity.
• Many scientists are now attributing the latest honeybee die-off to chemical pesticides used in fields of sweet corn.
• Corn is Iowa’s number one crop. Iowa has the earliest Presidential Primary. Need I say more?

A pizza place practicing progressive environmentalism

We've asked you to do a lot of things for the environment: use compact fluorescent light bulbs, drive hybrid cars, purchase “green– energy, buy local organic food, recycle, use “green– credit cards. Heck, we even suggested that you change your bank for the environment. But this one tops them all: buy pizza.

That's if you live in Florida. More specifically, if you live in or visit Deerfield Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, Boca Raton, or Coral Springs. These are the current locations of Pizza Fusion, an all-organic, earth friendly pizza place, and model small business in southern Florida. Here's their goal, in their own words:

Pizza Fusion was founded in the best interest of the environment and the individual. By serving healthy, organic food with a commitment to the preservation of our fragile ecosystem, we hope to set an example for others to follow.

Here are some of the ways Pizza Fusion is “saving the Earth, one pizza at a time– :

• Their delivery vehicles are all hybrid cars. The Toyota Prius, to be exact.
• They purchase wind energy certificates to offset 100% of their energy use and have plans to soon be completely powered by solar energy.
• Their ingredients are all 100% organic, mostly grown within 60 miles of the restaurants, saving on fuel to get them there.
• All of their menus, napkins, and plates are printed on recycled paper.
• As a bonus they split energy savings with their employees resulting in 20% less energy used.
• Those employees are decked out in 100% organic cotton uniforms.
• They even use Sustainable Websites to host their website, which uses 100% wind energy for its web hosting
• For the kids, they host free classes every Saturday to teach them about increasingly popular organic food and other things they can do for the environment.

Not progressive enough? Chew on this organic info. They also offer health insurance to all employees working more than 20 hours a week and even have deals for their employees at local fitness centers. It's a healthy place to eat and work.

These progressive practices don't seem to be holding them down financially either. For you entrepreneurs, they are currently offering franchise opportunities, with plans to expand across the country. So if you're looking to start a business– ¦ Even if you're not, we could all stand to live our lives and run our businesses a little more like Pizza Fusion.