To dos, talk and tools to get America over the hump.
Us in 48 Words
At Progressive Wednesday, we believe that the end of big problems begins with small solutions, and we're striving for a gradual and continuous progressive shift in this country. With your help, PW will create a community of like-minded folks looking to make change through ideas, art, and action.
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.
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.
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.
. 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:
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 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.
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.
. 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….
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:
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.
What do we think drives the kind progressivism we need to bring to this country? Ideas, art, and action.
File this one under “Art.”
As far as I’m concerned, MTV is a waste of electricity. I say this as someone who didn’t have cable growing up, and therefore, I say this as someone who would watch MTV until the wee hours when I was hanging out at TV-enhanced friends’ houses. I say this as someone who actually went to hear The Real World’s Judd Winick speak when I was a freshman at Ohio University. But nowadays, if I want to watch a music video, I can see them on demand, and I turn to YouTube, I turn to VEVO, I get recommendations from my friends on Facebook and Twitter. (By the way, you can follow us on Facebook here and on Twitter here.)
And now, thanks to HTML5, a “replacement” for Flash, we can have music videos in ways that traditional cable TV can’t, won’t, doesn’t, wouldn’t, etc.
Here’s how it works: preferably, you enter your childhood address when prompted, and the multimedia “event” will then include Google Street Views and Google Maps images of your house and neighborhood. The experience is stunning. Multiple windows will open, layered over the top of one another, and you might feel compelled to move them around. Don’t. The experience is supposed to look a little jagged, and the videos open, close, and move along with the music. Crank some external speakers or plug in some ear buds. The music is the heart of the matter here. One final thing: I’d close all programs save Chrome (which you can download here). This is a RAM-demanding creation; I’d give it all the juice it wants.
Even though I’m from the city of Niagara Falls (see our Wednesday, Reviving Niagara), I spent most of my youth in Ransomville, New York, population 1,488. We had one stop light, and, as best as I can figure, it was for decoration only. We didn’t have a high school. I think the fact that we had a post office was an act of federal philanthropy. The point is that the town is still incredibly remote, too remote for even the far-reaching arm of Google, so I ended up plugging in my current address instead. It was still fascinating.
This video… wait. Calling it a video is an insult. This is an interactive visual and musical and textual experience, and it is well worth the few minutes it’ll take to fire this baby up. It’s like seeing an art installation on your computer, designed for your computer.
It is calculated by the Global Footprint Network. This organization figures out the amount of resources the planet creates and compares this data to the demand humans make. So they figure out “the amount it takes to produce all the living resources we consume and absorb our carbon dioxide emissions.” So Earth Overshoot Day (a concept that was devised by the New Economics Foundation) is the day when “the demand on ecological services begins to exceed the renewable supply.”
When was Earth Overshoot Day this year? August 21.
While the GFN seems passionate and detailed, they don’t really share their methodology. Nonetheless, they raise an interesting dilemma: we’re using more than we should be if we want the planet to, well, continue to sustain life. (In particular, I’m concerned about the planet sustaining my life. I mean, sustaining your life would be great, too, because without you I’d be pretty, I don’t know, I’d be pretty bored.)
I took the quiz, and I was a littleincredibly disturbed and, frankly, mortified. If everyone lived like me, which after taking this quiz I don’t recommend doing, if everyone lived like me, we’d need 4.8 planet earths to provide enough resources. It gets uglier. To support my lifestyle, it takes 21.1 global acres of the earth’s productive area. What is a global acre? I’m glad you asked. According to the Global Footprint Network:
A global acre is the unit we use to measure the productivity of an average acre of land. More specifically, it represents an aggregate, world-average productivity for all biologically productive land and water in a given year.
Ugh. I’m disgusting. No offense, but odds are that you’re a little disgusting, too.
Before you say, “Screw it, Matt–I’m buying a Hummer that runs on bald eagle skulls and the dreams of small children,” read a little more. We’ve covered, on multiple Wednesdays, ways we can reduce our impact on the planet. If we can keep it around a little longer, well, all the better. Sure, we might destroy ourselves eventually. But maybe we could make that eventually a little farther down the road. And maybe, just maybe, we won’t end ourselves after all.
We’ve previously written a Wednesday about quitting smoking (see “Butt Out, Buddy”), but there’s some new news, this time about something called “thirdhand smoke.”
Editor’s Note: I’ve started and stopped smoking several times in my life. (Sorry, Mom.) So in no way is this post placing judgement. I liked smoking. I really, really liked smoking. But I will never smoke ‘em if I got ‘em again. I relied on the counselors mentioned at the end of this post and on my doctor’s support and advice.
What is thirdhand smoke? According to Live Science, it’s “the residue that can persist for months after a cigarette is put out.” So what’s the problem, pray tell? Well, this:
Thirdhand smoke … can react with pollutant ozone to form tiny, potentially harmful particles.
These “ultrafine” particles, less than 100 nanometers wide, can make their way deep into a person’s lungs and could present a bigger threat to asthma sufferers than nicotine itself. (A nanometer is 1 billionth of a meter. The diameter of a human hair is about 80,000 nanometers.)
It has been well established by others that the elderly and the very young are at greatest risk from these types of particles.
In a recent study by Mohamad Sleiman, a chemist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, it was discovered that:
[Thirdhand smoke] was shown to react with nitrous acid, a common indoor air pollutant, to produce dangerous carcinogens.
Until now, however, no studies have looked at the reaction of nicotine with ozone.
Released as a vapor by the burning of tobacco, nicotine is a strong and persistent adsorbent onto indoor surfaces that can be released back into the indoor air for a period of months after smoking has ceased. Ozone is a common urban pollutant that infiltrates from outdoor air through ventilation and has been linked to health problems, including asthma and respiratory ailments.
The researchers found that when nicotine reacts with ozone, some of the products place higher up on a scale of particles hazardous to asthma sufferers than nicotine itself, said study researcher Lara Gundel, also of Berkeley National Laboratory.
So is smoking outside the answer? If you guess, “No, Matt,” then you win. (Um, we don’t have any actual prizes, per se, but we’d love it if you took a bumper sticker. Just shoot us a line through our Contact page.) Check it:
“Smoking outside is better than smoking indoors but nicotine residues will stick to a smoker’s skin and clothing,” said Gundel. “Those residues follow a smoker back inside and get spread everywhere.”
Do you smoke? Want to stop? Don’t know how?
First, consider this: 84 percent of smokers smoke at least half a pack of cigarettes per day. (This data comes from the Office of Applied Science, a U.S. federal department.)
Then, there’s this: according to Forbes, kicking the habit would save the average smoker more that $300 per year. In many states, the total would be much higher. This savings does not include the plethora of other costs smokers face, such as jacked-up healthcare costs, dry-cleaning expenses, and life insurance premiums that can skyrocket compared to those of nonsmokers. Plus, you know, you’ll probably die sooner, so there’s that, too.
Let me put it another way. Let’s say that you paid $5 per pack (which is on the low-end) and that you were on the low-end of the aforementioned average American smoker and smoked a half of a pack a day. In one year, if you quit, you’d save, just from the cost of cigarettes, $912.50. To calculate your own cost, click this sentence.
Not sure where to start? What to do? Who to talk to? Friends, I’d start by picking up a phone and pushing ten numbers: 800-QUIT-NOW. Believe me when I say that I know it’s not easy, but these folks won’t make it any harder.
Editor’s Note, Redux: Again, I’m not placing any judgement. I don’t think nonsmokers are better people, or some such nonsense, than smokers. If you’d like to know more about why I smoked, why I quit, or how I quit for the final time, feel free to shoot me a line through our Contact page.
There’s been so much written, most of it appropriately scathing, about the BP oil spill disaster, that I wasn’t sure if there was much more that I could contribute to the conversation. Of course, this monstrous company has proven me wrong, terribly, terribly wrong.
According to Mother Jones (a magazine you ought to subscribe to if you don’t already), between July 13 and July 23, BP fired about 10,000 clean-up workers. You read that right. That amounts to one quarter of all their paid members of their cleanup force.
In Grand Isle, Louisiana, cleanup workers (none of whom can be named; you know this drill by now) say their coworkers were either told to go home for Tropical Storm Bonnie and then never called back or fired in a massive and sudden drug test.
“Friday, the day before Bonnie, they sent a bunch of people home until further notice, and a lot of people didn’t get the further notice,” one supervisor told me. “Then last week, they shut the whole [cleanup operation] down. It was ‘Piss in a cup or throw your ID in the bucket.’ This was a BP drug test, not a [subcontracting] company drug test. It’s the first time BP tested us.”
BP claims that all subcontractors are required by the company to use drug testing on their employees and that BP can do the testing if they so choose.
We’ll be covering fossil fuels in a later Wednesday, but we thought it right to get cracking now. What’s a progressive to do? Write letters to the editor? Absolutely. Call representatives in Congress? Definitely. But speaking with our cold hard cash can inflict harm like little else can.
According to the good people at Democracy for America, the best way for the average citizen to help out — besides making donations to relevant organizations or volunteering along the Gulf Coast — is to boycott BP. But it doesn’t stop with boycotting BP-named gas stations. BP has a network of brands. These include the following: Castrol, Arco, Aral, AM/PM, and Wild Bean Café. So if you really want to stick to the head-honchos and the shareholders of BP, you’ll want to boycott all of those brands.
- – - – -
Editor’s Note: I received a 2010 Democracy for America Netroots Nation Scholarship. I’ve also been trained by DFA during their Campaign Academy held in Eugene, Oregon. So, I’m a fan. This post is not necessarily an endorsement of all of DFA’s positions, candidate endorsements, activities, or members. But, you know, it kinda is.
The War Room, a 1993 documentary which was nominated for an Oscar, focuses on the first Bill Clinton campaign for president. That’s the fact of the matter. But The War Room is really about one of the biggest underdogs in presidential history coming out of a certain kind of obscurity (I mean no offense, but seriously, who pays attention [and this is truly a problem for the rest of the country] to Arkansas politics except for people from Arkansas? I can say this because I live in Idaho, the land that MSNBC–the self-proclaimed “Place for Politics”–forgot.) And yes, many speculated Clinton would run in 1988. And yes, he spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 1988. But, outside of the people who watched that, which meant people who were diehard Democrats, no one else really knew who in the hell he was. The bulk of the movie follows James Carville (lead strategist) and George Stephanopoulos (communications director) from a stunning come-from-behind second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary to the Clinton campaign headquarters in Little Rock.
Quite frankly, it’s sort of amazing to see video of President Clinton taken nearly 20 years ago. Now he seems markedly different, because health problems and eight years of stress we can’t even fathom have taken their collective toll and left him looking slightly defeated despite leaving office with the highest approval ratings of any president since World War II. (Editor’s Note: I don’t kowtow to Clinton. See NAFTA if nothing else.)
And quite frankly, it’s odd to see a Bush who showed a modicum of wisdom when it comes to Iraq. But it’s delightful to listen to Carville’s banter: when describing President George H. W. Bush, and how “yesterday” he is, Carville says, “If I think of an old calendar, I see George Bush’s face on it.”
But the heart of this movie, and the heart of passionate campaign work, might be best summed up by the speech Carville gives to the staff the day before Election Day: “Outside of a person’s love, the most sacred thing that they can give is their labor. And somehow or another along the way, we tend to forget that. And labor is a very precious thing that you have. And any time you can combine labor with love, you’ve made a merger.”
Whether or not you’ve worked in politics like Eric and me, I think this movie will resonate, because we’ve all cared utterly ridiculously (definitely jubilantly, almost deathly) about something that average people maybe, sort of, barely cared about.
And we return stocked to the hilt with beefed up ideas. And we return with a bevy of writers from across the country that comes at progressivism from a variety of points of view. And we return with a covenant: barring shark attacks, hairdryer-in-the-bathtub mishaps, or horribly ironic appearances on The Dick Cavett Show, we’re back for good.
Can you believe it’s been about two years? Dear sisters, dear brothers, we’ve missed you.
As was true before, Progressive Wednesday, with your help, will be a community of progressive people looking to make change through ideas, art, and action. Why? Because we believe the end of big problems starts with small solutions, and we believe in a gradual and continuous progressive shift in this country. We’re pretty damned sure that we’re not alone.
Every Wednesday, we’ll provide a brief explanation of a problem in our culture: say Wal-Mart, the lack of true support for Iraq War vets, or the destruction of the coral reefs. These problems are so large they tend to overwhelm folks. So, we’ll offer up three to five simple actions (a to-do list of sorts) you can take that day to help make progress. Our belief is that progressive actions are contagious, and once people get active in small ways, their activism grows.
But our content isn’t limited to Wednesdays. We’re also going to toss the following your way: daily entries on progressive topics as well as commentary on news items, both demonstrating progress made and places where we might want more progress; daily photographs of our beautiful world; reviews of progressive books, albums, magazines, and movies; “How-to” tools; conversations with important progressive leaders; photo essays; and guest columns.
We’re pumped, stoked, revved, jacked-to-the-max, and generally jazzed about being back in binary code, so thanks for stopping by. All of the previous content is up and running, so please do tool around.
Friends, we’re looking forward to making sweet, sweet progress with you. And afterwards, all warm and wonderful, we can cuddle.
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.”
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.
You read that right. Ain’t no typo.
Make this your homepage 
Add this to your favorites