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.

.
Make Progress:

• Sign
• Donate
• Watch
• Share

.

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.

.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

- – - – -

Wal-Mart destroys. That’s the message at the heart of the documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. It’s rather simple. Wal-Mart destroys. That’s what it’s designed to do, and boy, it does it well. Wal-Mart is our Golem. Wal-Mart is the Godzilla of our market-driven creation, eating Tokyo after Tokyo after Tokyo. Only Wal-Mart ain’t no myth, and it ain’t no movie.

But this flick about Wal-Mart makes a new and well-defended argument against the behemoth. What is this larger claim? Wal-Mart is a form of what could be described as, in the film’s words, contemporary “plantation capitalism.” How so? Wal-Mart is all about profit at the expense of all parts of every kind of individual—shoppers, employees, widget-makers alike. Profit at the expense of small, long-lasting, family businesses. Profit at the expense of safety from crime (trust me: it’s in the movie, and it’s peel-your-eyelids-back messed up). Profit at the expense of the environment. Profit at the expense of drinking water. Profit at the expense of public education. For crying out loud, profit at the expense of fire departments. Profit at the expense of health and healthcare. Profit at the expense of various cultures. Profit at the expense of workers’ rights. Profit at the expense of the world economy. Profit at the expense of public funds.

Using data, shocking firsthand accounts by current and former employees, news reports, and absolutely heartbreaking interviews with private business owners, this film deftly argues that everything is expendable to Wal-Mart except for the exchange of money from your wallet to their registers, and it will do just about anything to make that exchange keep happening. Everything else, in the minds of everyone from the lower management (who are taught to spy on and scare potential union leaders, and who are taught to fudge hours so that people who’ve earned overtime don’t receive overtime) to the board members, everything else can, almost literally, go to hell.

At this point the movie takes a turn, and it shows how the people of Inglewood, California, when told by Wal-Mart that they could go to hell said, “Wait. No. You go to hell.” And then a list of city after city scrolls over the screen, each one a place that told Wal-Mart to do the same and won.

This is a movie about activism. This is a movie with a ray of hope. Since many local governments kowtow to Wal-Mart, we can’t trust elected officials to fight for us. We have to do it ourselves. We have almost no other choice. But that choice? It is simple and it is ours: we can choose to shop at Wal-Mart or we can choose not to shop at Wal-Mart. If we can start hacking away at the only thing that Wal-Mart cares about, then we can win. Only then. But then.

We can choose to put a scary parable to rest. We can choose to click off the monster picture before it ends badly for all the characters. Please take a look and choose for yourself:

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.

*

Make Progress:

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

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

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.

*

Make Progress:

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

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

*

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.

.

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

.

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.

* * *

Preamble:

I'm sure my grandmother is going to be thrilled that I'm writing this story, but I'm apologizing in advance to the woman rode a filthy boat for weeks so she could move to this country so that, decades later, I could live, and breathe, and you know, write this story, which I like to call “Everything I didn't want to know about sex because I was afraid to ask.– Here goes– ¦.

My grandmother suffers from some pretty debilitating arthritis, but is still able to walk, though with limitation. Despite our protests, she still drives regularly, and a couple of years ago she was driving along a highway in Niagara Falls, New York, when her car started to ka-thunk. She pulled of at the nearest exit, where the car completely died. The exit is fairly removed from, well, just about anything. As with most octogenarians, she didn't have a cell phone (this incident proved to be a fairly powerful impetus behind getting one). The only building close enough for her to hike to? If you guessed a porno shop, then you guessed right. This one was creatively named “Talk of the Town.–

I couldn't help but picture my sweet, sweet grandmother walking past row after row of pocket vibrators, double-sided dildos, and blow-up dolls, row after row of girl-on-girl, barely legal, and anal adventure videos. It didn't help matters that, after picking her up some said adult establishment, I had the following conversation while hightailing her home:

“I couldn't believe how many cars were in the parking lot,– said my grandmother.

“I bet,– I said.

“I think they show movies in the back or something. Right?–

“Um– ¦ I wouldn't really know, but that makes sense.”

“For twenty-five cents I think the sign said.”

“I suppose if someone had an extra roll of quarters– ¦.–

“I mean, in the middle of the day? Really? Who does that? Who's that horny that they don't want to eat lunch instead?–

“Grandma, that sounds like a trick question.–

What's the moral of the story? I guess it's that a cell phone is your friend, and that if you pick your grandmother up at a porno store when her car breaks down, you might hear her say the word “horny.–

* * *

Problem:

And after that light, ambling preamble, here's where we get as serious as a stroke. Porn is everywhere. And this might not be a problem in and of itself if it weren't for some of the disconcerting side effects. Like the damaging impact on children and teens who don't know a world without pornography available on a whim. Like the damaging impacts on adult sexuality. Like the damaging impact on the performers and the dehumanization of sexuality as a result. Like the damaging desire for more violent pornography.[1]

Our culture tries to hide it's addiction to pornography, which we do amazingly well considering it's a 10-15 billion dollar industry (that's billion with a “b– ) in the U.S. (Feel free to check out that sentence again.)

We have a problem with sex in America, from viewing to educating, and something needs to be done. Why? Because we live in a culture where, increasingly, Americans are watching videos that include fake rape scenes, bestiality, gangbangs, men spitting on women[2], men urinating and having bowel movements on women[3], double penetrations, multiple oral sex performances[4], fisting, unprotected anal sex[5]. We live in a culture where pornographic sex makes women into subordinate, submissive body parts and men into superficial, heartless, violent animals, morphing sex into something violently robotic, clinical and feculent.

Our love of pornography is selfish. It's damaging. And we at Progressive Wednesday now think, after doing enough research, that much of it (maybe most if it) is dangerous.

* * *

Make Progress:

Let's just cut to the adult-entertainment chase.

• Read
• Protect
• Watch
• Stop
• End

- – - – -

[1] According to study done by Michael Barron and Michael Kimmel published in the Journal of Sex Research: “The more pornography is consumer at one level, the less arousing this material becomes, as the consumer becomes used to — satisfied with — the material. This satiation leads the consumer to seek out newer, more explicit, and more violent form of sexual material that will again arouse him/her.–
[2] Amis, Martin. “Sex in America: XXX Marks the Spot.” Talk Feb 2001: 100.
[3] Paul, Pamela. Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families. 1st ed. New York: Times Books, 2005. p. 88.
[4] Ibid. p. 85.
[5] Ibid. p. 87.

.

Read:

We thought we ought to let porn speak for itself (“porn on porn,– if you will), so here's a series of actual quotations by adult film actors and directors on their experiences, their beliefs, their profession, and their concerns:

“[Wicked Pictures, one of the largest adult video production companies, doesn't] cater so much to the raincoat crowd, your hard-edged, hardcore viewers. There are companies where that's all they cater to– ”the nasty shit. We don't do that. There's still lots of anals, and facial come shots, but it's not usually degrading to women.– — Brad Armstrong[1]

*

“I was the first to shoot Rocco [Siffredi]. Together we evolved toward rougher stuff. He started to spit on girls. A strong, male-dominant thing, with women being pushed to their limit.– — John Stagliano[2]

*

“I don't have relationships anymore. They make life unstable. The only sex I have is the sex I have on screen.– — Temptress[3]

*

“Some girls are used up in nine months or a year.– — Jonathan Morgan[4]

*

“But at least if a guy is unhappy with the way his wife is performing, he can watch porno and jerk off maybe, rather than have an affair.– — Brad Armstrong[5]

*

“I had actually never had anal sex before the business. I tried it and loved it so much that I went a little crazy. I got hurt doing it. I stopped doing it and we are going to wait a bit until I heal and then go back to it.– — Alicia Alighatti[6]

*

“There's tons of girls who think it's way hot and desperately want to make or see a movie featuring– ¦ tentacle rape, gagging on cum, girls getting the shit beat out of them, whatever it is, there is some girl somewhere who is way into it and just wants to be able to get her hands on it.– — Zak Sabbath[7]

*

“You're not going to be arrested. You are not going to be hit. You are not going to end up in a car truck somewhere.– — Nina Hartley[8]

*

“I got the shit kicked out of me, but that was not in the program. I was not prepared to be roughed up that much. I couldn’t stop crying for the rest of the day. I was traumatized from that video. They did not tell me that they were going to be literally hurting me. This is the worst line ever put out there. It’s right up there with snuff videos. [The actor] choked me while lifting me off the ground. I couldn't breathe. I was being hit and choked. I was really upset, and they didn't stop. They kept filming. You can hear me say, – ˜Turn the fucking camera off,' and they kept going. If they think women are into that, they’re dead wrong.– — Regan Starr[9]

*

“Nearly everyone has STDs. I had 10 different venereal diseases during my first year in the industry.– — Chloe[10]

*

“The tests we take only test for AIDS. We've contained AIDS in the industry, but what about all the others? You know we're now up to hepatitis G?– — Chloe[11]

*

“Yeah, a fourteen year old look.– — Alicia Alighatti, when asked about her glasses and braces.[12]

*

“Men take advantage of women in every industry. We live in a patriarchy. But that being said, when you want to do porn, you go to an agent and they ask you what you will do and what you won't do — will you do girls? Will you do boys and girls? It's not like that in the real world. They don't give you options like that.– — Joanna Angel[13]

*

“We're prostitutes. There are differences. You can choose your partners, and they're tested for AIDS — you won't get your john to do that. But we're prostitutes: We exchange sex for money.– — Chloe[14]

*

“There’s a little bit of Jenna Jameson in every woman out there.– — Jenna Jameson[15]

*

“To this day, I still can't watch my own sex scenes.– — Jenna Jameson[16]

- – - – -

[1] Bowe, John, Marisa Bowe, and Sabin Streeter. Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium. 1st ed. New York: Crown, 2000. p. 360.

[2] Amis, Martin. “Sex in America: XXX Marks the Spot.” Talk Feb 2001: 100.
[3] Ibid. p. 101.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Turn of the Millennium. p. 364.
[6] “Alicia Alighatti Interview.” Rog Reviews. 10 Feb 2007 <http://www.rogreviews.com/interviews/alicia_alighatti.asp>.
[7] DiMattia, M. “Zak Sabbath alt.porn Q&A.” BME: Body Modification Ezine. 28 Feb 2007 <http://www.bmezine.com/news/guest/20060920.html>.
[8] Schlosser, Eric. Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. 1st ed.. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. p. 181.
[9] “Regan Starr.” Adult Video News. 10 Feb 2007 <http://www.avn.com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Articles&Action=View_Article&Content_ID=18391>.
[10] Amis, Martin. “Sex in America: XXX Marks the Spot.” Talk Feb 2001: 103.
[11] Ibid. p. 134
[12] “Alicia Alighatti Interview.” Rog Reviews. 10 Feb 2007 <http://www.rogreviews.com/interviews/alicia_alighatti.asp>.
[13] Dworken, Arye. “Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth? Part II.” Jewcy.com : What Matters Now 15 Nov 2006 21 Jan 2007 <http://www.jewcy.com/interview/kiss_your_mother_with_that_mouth_part_2>.
[14] Amis, Martin. “Sex in America: XXX Marks the Spot.” Talk Feb 2001: 134.
[15] Cooper, Anderson. “Jenna Jameson: ‘I chose the right profession’.” CNN 28 Aug 2004 10 Jan 2007 <http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/books/08/27/jenna.jameson/>.
[16] Jameson, Jenna, and Neil Strauss. How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale. 1st ed. New York: Regan Books, 2004.

.

Protect:

If you're a parent and you let your kids have access to the Internet, there are a variety of parental controls available to protect your kids from pornography. Why do we need them? Because according to a study run by the London School of Economics, 60% of children using the Internet happen upon pornography regularly.[1] Most Internet service providers, like MSN, AOL, and Earthlink, have built-in parental controls available, but if your provider doesn't offer these protections or if you'd like to double-up the safety, you can turn to some of the tools listed below:

• B Safe Online
• Cyber Patrol
• Free Shield
• Optenet PC Parental Control Software
• Spector Pro

This is just a small sampling and not an endorsement or a statement of efficacy in regards to any of this software in particular, though Optenet did receive a five-star rating from the reviewers at c|net.

We owe it to our kids to protect them this much more.

* * *

You can also find a ton of free (Did you just say free? We did.) downloads here from, of all places, Download.com.

You can find reviews of parental control software by clicking this sentence.

You can also learn more about protecting your kids on the Internet (in terms of instant messages, MySpace, blogging, etc.) at the NetSmartz Workshop, a informational resource put together by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

- – - – -

[1]Prigg, Mark, and Paul Sims. “Truth About Dangers of Net as Half of Children Are Exposed to Porn.” The Evening Standard 03 Sept 2004

.

Watch:

“American Porn– is a FRONTLINE documentary put together by the generous and somewhat genius folks over at PBS. When I first watched it in 2003, it left me shocked and a little sick to my stomach. Apparently, I want to spread the acid indigestion. But seriously — this film, given the rise of pornography in both our popular and private cultures, is a must see. Just click the PBS logo to be taken to the film.

Here are three of the highlights (or lowlights, depending on how you look at them):

1. AT & T, GE, AOL, hotel chains, and other companies make hundreds of millions of the cash-register cha-ching off adult films every year. The numbers are only rising.
2. Some pornography (and we're not just talking about child pornography) appears to break criminal laws.
3. September 11, 2001 greatly diminished the way the federal government prosecutes criminal pornography.

If nothing else, check out section five, “A Demand Driven Business,– to witness some seriously screwed up shit (pardon our lack of French, but there's really no other word for it).

When you're done watching, please tell someone else about it. Just click the green “Share This– button in the lower, left hand corner of this post, and then click “E-mail.–

.

Stop:

Because we're social libertarians (we believe we have a right, as odd as it might be, to harm ourselves but not others), we can't quite bring ourselves to think that “pornography” should be completely banned (because some consider erotica pornographic, and, well, we don’t). There are valid arguments that porn increases rates of rape, pedophilia, general misogyny and misandry, distorted sexual expectations, and addiction, amongst other problems. But the issue remains too pervasive and complex, too gray around some of its edges. We've at least come to believe that greater governmental oversight is required. If pornography should be shut down, and there is a great deal of research to suggest that the societal damage it creates would permit the government to enact such a ban without being too paternalistic, we really can’t rely on the government to do it.

We are going to recommend, however, that you take one simple action: stop.

Odds are, given the fact you're an Internet user and likely a citizen of a country that spends 10-15 billion dollars each year on pornography, that you have or do watch pornography.[1] But stopping can seriously improve your life and the lives of others.

Why? As the author Pamela Paul argues, “the all-pornography, all-the-time mentality is everywhere in today's pornified culture.– She's painfully right. We live in a culture where stores hock Hello Kitty thongs, a piece of clothing which is “literally a byproduct of the sex industry.– [2] A culture where between 1992 and 2004, “breast augmentation procedures in this country went from 32,607 a year to 264, 041 a year.– [3] A culture where Paris Hilton is celebrated by teens because “she is our mascot.– [4] A culture where a porn star's book tops the best-seller list (a porn star, we should add, that according to her own book, “was beaten unconscious with a rock, gang-raped, and left for dead– ¦her sophomore year of high school– [5]). A culture where, according to a 2004 study, porno websites get three times the traffic as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search combined.[6]

But this isn't “a– culture. This is our culture, and not for the sexually better, but for the worse.

In her 2005 book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, Ariel Levy describes the problem of pornography this way: “porn stars are selling something more than a skill — they are giving up the most private part of their being for public consumption.– Some might respond by saying, “Well, they're choosing to do it.– This, of course, doesn't mean we have to participate in it by viewing and purchasing the material. According to Dr. Melissa Farley, a psychologist and researcher at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, “the vast majority of women in the sex industry have experienced incest or other childhood sexual abuse– (180 FCP). As she points out, “there is something twisted about using a predominately sexually traumatized group of people as our erotic role models. It's like using a bunch of shark attack victims as our lifeguards.–

We think that what we've written in our opening salvo (and the Read, Protect, and Watch sections of this Wednesday topic) do a good job of supporting the simple argument we're making now: stop, people, stop.

Picture clicked this fine-eyed photographer.

- – - – -

[1] We're not going to be holier-than-thou: we've watched pornography; we've owned pornography.
[2] Levy, Ariel. Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. 1st. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005. p. 142.
[3] Ibid. p. 20.
[4] Ibid. p. 28.
[5] Ibid. p. 182.
[6] Baertlein, Lisa . “Study: Web porn entices far more surfers than search.” USA Today 03 June 2004 12 Feb 2007 <http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2004-06-03-popular-porn_x.htm>.

.

End:

Child pornography is an insult to humanity. It must be stopped. And it's much more pervasive than you might think. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 20% of all Internet pornography involves children. This organization also indicates that the “global sales of illegal pornography that exploits children–including those under 4 years old–are about $3 billion a year.– If that doesn't churn your stomach, we're not sure what will.

Well, maybe this will: according to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, “of the juvenille victims identified in conjuction with pornography crimes, 25% were members of the offender’s family, 59% were teens, 28% were elementary school age, and 13% were preschoolers.– Additionally, “by the end of 2003, the CyberTipline was receiving more than 1,500 reports on child pornography per week.– (Emphasis added.)

Or maybe this info from the NCMEC will do the trick: “according to investigators who handled the cases of estimated arrestees, “most had images of children who had not yet reached puberty. Specifically 83% had images of children between ages 6 and 12; 39% had images of 3 to 5 year old children; and 19% had images of toddlers or infants younger than age 3.–

Need more? Unfortunately, we've got it: “between 1996 and 2004 the total number of child porn cases handled by the FBI's cyber-crime investigators increased 23 fold.– [1]

One of the largest organizations trying to battle the sexual exploitation of children is ECPAT International. According to their website, this stand-up, and unfortunately necessary, organization does the following and more:

We follow what governments are doing, and have done, to combat commercial sexual exploitation of children, and we publish the results. We explore good models for prevention work, and share those models and experiences. We find and develop training modules to help caregivers to do their work better. We develop learning tools for police training curricula. We provide advice and information to groups who are trying to make a national plan for their country, or to implement an existing plan. We carry out research and develop research methodologies. We promote the participation of young people in seeking solutions to the problems and in providing support to victims.

As far as child pornography is concerned, ECPAT “seeks to develop positive cooperative relationships with the ISPs and the software and search engine production industries in order to find answers to the technological problems concerning the transmission of child pornography via computer and the Internet.– But, as they indicate, this battle is an uphill one due to technology changes, definitions of “child,– and legal practices.

What we've learned is that this is an international problem, not just an American one. But all children deserve respect, kindness, and caring, not sexual exploitation and abuse. If there's ever been an organization that needs and deserves your help, it's this one. No child should suffer at the hands of these predators.

You can help. And since you've got more than ventricles and atriums — I'm saying you've got heart, man – “ you will help. Here's how:

• Donate to ECPAT
• Donate to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
• Report potential child pornography to the CyberTipline
• Host a banner for the CyberTipline on your blog or website (as we do now)

- – - – -

[1] Paul, Pamela. Pornified: How Pornography is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families. 1st ed. New York: Times Books, 2005. p. 190.

.

Postscript:

We realize this may have been a disturbing Wednesday to read. But we live in a somewhat disturbing world in need of our help and in need of the progress we can make.

Toward the end of his article about pornography in Talk Magazine, Martin Amis writes: “porno is littered — porno is heaped — with the death of feelings.– In an issue of Walrus, Charles Foran makes the case more specifically. He writes that:

Pornography may be stalking one emotion more than any other. That would be the shared feelings we have for fellow humans, along with the inclination to recognize kindred suffering and even lend aid. Porn may yet be the death of empathy.

Because life is, quite possibly, the thing we desire most of all, life itself is progress. So it might be time we considered a slightly different way of living. It might be time we, as individuals and as a culture, made a different choice.