Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: Downsizing Wal-Mart

Problem:

Back in December of 2006, 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, our safety, and our small businesses. And we could use your help. It’s time to stop the Walton family from harming our country far, far, far more than it helps (since, you know, it essentially doesn’t help us at all). 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 ten minutes worth, and then buzz your grandma (she misses you and you never call). You get the picture.

While this film filled us with pit-bull rage, it also left 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 it harms America’s hard-working families.

You can always click the Share button at the bottom left-hand corner of this post and email from there.

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 friends to watch these films? Because, quite frankly, we want everyone to stop shopping there until Wal-Mart radically changes its 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 or baklava; we mean boycott, baby, boy-cott.

So we’ll also promise 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, please consider joining 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, because shopping in bulk does seem like some kind of addiction. And how many three-gallon tubs of mayo do we really need?

But here’s the deal–today, this Wednesday or whenever you’re reading this–try to convince one other person to stop. A little ways down this page, we’ll provide you with additional resources to educate yourself or educate this other person. Explain to them gently what you’ve learned and how disgusted you are with the company.

Or click the Share button at the bottom of this post, and email them this Wednesday’s info.

And now we’ve arrived at 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 that care about the planet. You can always try the Yellow Pages online. (Remember: to cancel getting the hard copy just click this sentence.)
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 stuff will bring ebullient joy to your life whether you’re 9 or 99.

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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 such as a chain saw, paper bailers and fork lifts.” (We know, we know: this sounds made up. Follow the link: it ain’t.)
• Wal-Mart, the largest corporation and private employer in the United States, knowingly hires illegal immigrants. Check it out for yourself.
• Wal-Mart does not view, treat, promote, or pay women as equals to men. Read about it by clicking this sentence.

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. 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.

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, and 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.

One last thing to keep in mind: the opinion section of a newspaper is actually the most read section of the newspaper. You read that right.

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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, if you have to, replace it with something else used or something new.

This will achieve several aims. By helping others in poverty, you very well might help reduce the odds someone else 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 when you replace the item or items with something not sold at Wal-Mart. And you can even get a tax break for your donation. It’s one of the gifts that 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
• Powell’s
• The Book Corner
• Etsy
• The Progressive Wednesday Store (Hint, hint.)

Editor’s Note: Think Target’s better? Maybe so. But we read that they recently donated over $150,000 to help support a candidate running for governor in Minnesota who has taken a strong stance against gay rights. (As an aside, Best Buy recently donated $100,000 to support the same regressive candidate.) What is Target doing to rectify this? Like cowards, they’re just shutting up.

Want to help make marriage equality for all a reality in a country who supposed ethos is to offer equal rights to all? Consider making even the smallest of donations to the Human Rights Campaign.

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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 Jane or 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.

Poverty and politics

Our purpose here at Progressive Wednesday is to provide ways to make it easier for Joe Average and Suzie Creamcheese to make progress, to encourage progressive social activism rather than wait for our elected leaders to put the needs of the people over the needs of the corporations who fund their campaigns. But we also encourage political activism, and with many issues, politics has a far greater impact and a far broader scope than with others. The issue that is most influenced by and reliant upon politics is poverty.

We've stated here from day one that we would not endorse any political candidate, but since he is no longer in the race, I think it's safe to say that John Edwards was the candidate with the best plan and the proper priority regarding this issue. As he said in a speech at the National Press Club:

Restoring our moral authority means leading by example and making clear that the hard challenges don’t frighten us. There is no better opportunity than the challenge of poverty – “ the great moral issue of our time.

But Senator Edwards is no longer in the race; it's down to just three. I won't endorse one of these candidates, even with regards to this issue alone. All I ask is that for those of you who hang your hat in one of the 21 states, commonwealths, districts, or territories that has yet to vote in the presidential primary or caucus, understand the candidates' positions on this issue. Here they are, courtesy of a little thing we like to call “The Internet”

Senator Barack Obama
Senator Hillary Clinton
Senator John McCain

Oh yea, and then VOTE!

Thanks for the picture go here.

The “Gap” in Christian values

I am a Christian. While I don't wear it on my sleeve in that I'm-holier-than-thou-and-judging-you-for-not-thinking-like-me way (at least I try not to), I have a very strong faith, and I'm proud to say that my religion gives me a very different worldview than many religious leaders whose faces appear so frequently on the TV screen next to Pat Robertson.

When a group from my church asked me if I would allow my daughter to participate in a children's fashion show, I said I would. After all, showing off my daughter is the only vanity I allow myself. It wasn't until after the show started that I learned that this “Fashion Show of Modesty– was themed around a few narrowly-interpreted Bible passages demanding that women be submissive to men.

But it wasn't the encouragement of modesty in dress or the poorly translated and inaccurately transcribed words of a chauvinist apostle that had me biting my tongue. The fashion show was sponsored by GAP, which is consistently sited for gross human rights violations, including last week when the British paper, The Observer, described working conditions in GAP factories:

The Observer spoke to children as young as 10 who said they were working 16 hours a day for no pay. The paper described the workplace as a “derelict industrial unit” where the hallways were flowing with excrement from a flooded toilet.

A boy, 12, said he worked from dawn until 1 a.m. and was so tired he felt sick, according to the paper. But if any of the children cried, he told The Observer, they would be hit with a rubber pipe or punished with an oily cloth stuffed in their mouths.

The bitter irony is that much of the clothing in these sweatshops had inventory tags that matched up with the Christmas line for GapKids.

Any atheist can see that this is one of the most vile practices ever to stain our world of our conscience; they just call it “natural law– instead of “Christian values.– I know that other corporate clothing companies are likely no better than The Gap, but it seems to me that religious energy and activism is better spent fighting these atrocities than covering up belly buttons.

Do I have a problem with young people showing a little modesty in the way that they dress? Of course not. But when I'm standing at the Pearly Gates and Saint Peter asks me why I knowingly supported a company and a system that keeps millions of people living in abject poverty and violates human rights in astounding ways, I want to have a better response than, “Well, at least you couldn't see my daughter's midriff.–

Photo credit goes here.

iPhone = Capitalism as it should be

In case your television went out last week and your newspaper deliverer has been sick and unable to do his job, Apple released their iPhone yesterday. This cell phone/web browser/personal desktop assistant/calendar/email machine/camera/mp3 player/satellite navigation system/video conference caller/instant messenger/pizza cooker (I'm not 100% certain about that last one) had people lined up outside Apple Store doors for hours before it officially went on sale on iDay.

These people are affectionately called the iCult. While I am a big fan of Apple products as well as their business practices, I don't consider myself a member of this group. I was not in this line and will probably not own an iPhone for a couple of years; I simply don't need it.

But I have always and will always use an apple computer and support them over just about any other corporation. To me, they represent what capitalism should be.

I believe capitalism has two purposes: to create an opportunity for personal financial betterment, and to drive innovation through competition, to move society forward. Unfortunately the free market has rendered each of these nearly obsolete. It has allowed the few to absolutely control the financial wellbeing of the many, and rather than a push toward new innovation, companies in this country have reverted to making products cheaper instead of better.

Apple is one of the few exceptions to the second rule. Instead of putting an electronic terd in a box and selling it for 15% less, they aren't afraid to offer a high-quality, innovative product at a reasonable price. They push the technological envelope and are one of the last to represent capitalism as it should be.

If you want to see what will become industry standard tomorrow, just take a look at what Apple introduced yesterday. If all corporations took the approach that Apple takes, the United States might not lag so far behind the rest of the developed world in every field other than national defense.

Speaking from pretty vast experience, their products almost always work as advertised. I'm not the only one who thinks so either. I leave you today with two quotes about Apple from none other than Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates:

-The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the PC.

-To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination – ” and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

Photo c/o this lucky iPhone owner

It’s everywhere your dog wants to be

Last Wednesday you read about five ways that you can improve the lives of companion animals, stop animal cruelty, and even a little about how those animals can improve the lives of others. We asked you to join us (and several of you did), in donating just two bucks to the Humane Society of Louisiana. There's a way you can donate more, and it won't cost you a nickel.

Before I go on, I should say again that we're not great advocates of credit card companies. I think it's safe to say that we rather despise them and the lack of government regulation to keep them from charging 35% interest rates and $50 late fees. But a lot of people have them; there are 641 million of them in circulation. While I wish I were not a part of this statistic, the four I have do offer benefits other than the ability to drive my family into unrecoverable debt.

So, if you are thinking about applying for a new credit card, don't. But if you do, consider this one: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) Visa card from Chase bank, aka: “Kitty Kard.– Here's the skinny from the ASPCA website:

Become a card-carrying member of the ASPCA and Chase will donate $75 upon first use of your new card – at no extra cost to you. In addition, each time you use your ASPCA credit card to make a purchase, the ASPCA receives 0.2% of the sale, with a minimum guaranteed payment from Chase of $2.4 million.

With Americans charging $1.5 trillion on their credit card every year, if everyone switched to this card the ASPCA would get $348,075,000,000 in total one-time donations and sales percentages from Chase. Since that would make Chase either file for bankruptcy or drop the program, we'll shoot for a lower number. In fact, I'll ask you to shoot for just one: you.

I'll hold you to the same intellectual standard as high schoolers that are taught, “Don't have sex, but if you do, use a condom,– when I say, don't apply for credit cards, but if you do, apply for this one. It might just save the life of a creature of this world, and it doesn't cost you a nickel. Just remember to pay off the balance every month.

Wal-Mart Sucks (the system dry)

Since day one in the life of the phenomenon that is Progressive Wednesday, we have chosen to provide you with a running count in our sidebar of just how much money Wal-Mart costs the taxpayers each year. As of this post on June 6, Wal-Mart's total United States taxpayer burden is almost $4 billion and will average roughly $8 billion over the year. That could fund the occupation of Iraq for two months, though I can think of a few better ways to spend that moolah. The problems with Wal-Mart go a lot further than this though. In fact, our very first Wednesday topic ever was dedicated to the negative social and economic impact Wal-Mart's business practices have on our great nation. You can and should check it out here.

This hasn't gotten nearly as much press as it should. I can only assume that this is because the news stations don't want to seem too “lefty,– too anti-Wal-Mart. It seems to me that not reporting about this would give them a “righty– bias. But, setting that bit of irony aside for the moment, I'm happy to report, the Buffalo News has broken the silence.

This is bit of a hot topic in Western New York; Wal-Mart is trying to open a Super Center in the city of North Tonawanda. Fortunately, they have faced a lot of resistance. Here's why. According to the Buffalo News:

Next time you shop at Wal-Mart– ¦ chances are good – ” about 1 in 10 – ” you will run into a man or woman on Medicaid or some other public health care program.

More than half of (Wal-Mart's) workers either go without health insurance or get it through another source. And of those, about 1 in 5 receives benefits from Medicaid, Medicare, the military or other state programs funded by taxpayers.

How much does this cost John Q. and Suzie Taxpayer? Try a cool $61 mil. The best thing (and by “best,– I mean worst) is that they don't even try to polish this terd; these are Wal-Mart's own numbers. And those numbers have proven to be, yep, you guessed it, conservative. Actual numbers show that more than 13% of employees are on publicly funded programs, not the ten percent that they are admitting to.

But it don't stop there, Daddy-O. This is the one that really frosts my American-made cookies:

A leaked internal memo in 2005 revealed that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.3 million employees remain uninsured or on Medicaid.

Again, that's from the horse's mouth. We can squabble over how important that extra one penny savings is, or how many local businesses go under when Wally Word rolls into town like the Halliburton float in the Iraq Liberation Day parade, but let's all hold hands and agree that this is unacceptable.

So boycott, boycott, and boycott some more. Boycott every day. Maybe twice a day. Besides, those made-in-the-USA socks are not only more comfortable physically, it's more comfortable mentally knowing that kids in China didn't put more sweat into them than your feet are, all for a measly 10 cents a day.

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.