Earlier this week, I received a direct mailing card from a corporate behemoth, asking me to “Join Walmart’s Community Action Network” and help bring the store to the metro area.
In enormous type, the flyer reads “Some New Yorkers have plenty of choices when it comes to shopping…WE THINK YOU SHOULD TOO!” And their bite-sized slogan for this contemptible move is MY MONEY. MY CHOICE.
Yes, my wee nestlings, they are co-opting progressive political language to get their hooks in NYC and bring their poisonous atmosphere and “low-price” plasticrap to a new market of approximately 8 million people.
I grew up in Walmart-land–the Super Walmart was one of the only retail centers in my little college town, and my mother still does a lot of her shopping at her local store, despite my regular protests. And yes, she “chooses” to shop there: no one is forcing her, and there are other places she could buy cereal and shampoo and light bulbs. I understand the appeal of cheap goods: I am (for a New Yorker, particularly) really fucking poor, after all.
But for a company whose PAC spent $3.2 million in 2010 playing both sides of the political aisle (make no mistake, the Dems are in corporate pockets as surely as the Repubs) while proclaiming to be on the side of the poor and/or budget conscious, and whose anti-environment, anti-labor, anti-women policies (and this is just the beginning; 30 seconds of basic google-fu will reveal many more abuses) are fucking ruining local economies to co-opt the rhetoric of choice?
Fucking disgusting. Unacceptable.
So: choice, eh? Okay. I’ll choose…
- to not shop at your hideous big boxes, even if they could–on the surface–save me a few pennies.
- to write my local lawmakers and speak out against allowing you in my city
- to educate myself about the many abuses your company has perpetrated against individuals, groups, and communities in the name of increased corporate profits
- to ask my friends and neighbors and reader to do the same.
If you don’t desperately need to shop at Walmart, please don’t. If you want more ideas on how to speak out against Smilin’ Evil, go here.
We got a Wal-Mart in my town a couple of years back. K-Mart had been and gone about a decade previously, and the other one-stop-shop store in town had its prices going throught the roof. The arrival of Wal-Mart brought those prices back down to a reasonable level, even though everyone still shops there instead of Wal-Mart. So, it did my community some good…
Sing it, PHDork!
I would echo Rabbit in that in some places, WalMart is the *only* place to get basic household items. I spent about six months on an internship in rural Indiana and the big box retailers were the only option for shopping for some items if you didn’t want to go online or rely on boutique shops catering to tourists and up-market clientelle.
If we’re going to try and stop WalMart from setting up shop in a place, we need to think about where people on extremely limited incomes are going to get their goods and services.
I try to avoid shopping at WalMart because of their conservative politics (they wouldn’t sell my sister PlanB despite a perscription in hand, among other things). But I have the option of going other places. Not everyone has the luxury of that choice.
Yes, I know. I’ve lived in those places, too, and I’ve shopped at Walmart when that was what was available to me. As I wrote, very clearly: “If you don’t desperately need to shop at Walmart, please don’t.” I know not everyone has a choice.
But if you do, I want you to choose better.
I FUCKING HATE WAL-MART.
I reserve my deepest hatred for the (extensively documented) way they exploit their workers, particularly women and PoC, and but then create some feel-good bullshit propaganda advertising featuring women and PoC talking about how great it is to have a career at Wal-Mart.
YOU’RE NOT FOOLING ANYONE, WAL-MART!
I live in Northern VA. Populated enough that I can get my groceries at a grocery store, but close enough to more rural areas that there are two Wal-Marts in town. A lot of my in-laws prefer to shop at Wal-Mart, which has led to some interesting conversations. They’re listening to what I have to say about Wal-Mart, which is great. But it’s hard to defeat the advertising blitz.
Wally World will go down eventually, like Sears, K-mart, GM, IBM, Dell.. I also feel sorry for their employees
Sadly my son only seems to take in their Parent’s Choice formula, so I’m stuck there for another 9 months.
…and I was doing SO WELL not shopping there….
Heh, we have 3 here, I think, and I don’t patronize them at all. Except to buy condoms, because I think it’s funny. Prophylactics are so cheap there I like to pretend they’re not making any money off them, so they’re supporting my sinful barren lifestyle. Ha!
@PhDork I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t aware of the class/region issues. Just putting in my 2cents
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The documentary “Walmart: the High Cost of Low Prices” is good watch for anyone who wants to educate themselves about the evil behemoth.
In the book _Nickeled and Dimed_ by Barbara Ehrenreich, she discusses working at Walmart. It’s pretty horrifying.
This is the only issue I have with my MIL. My in-laws are solidly upper middle class but she shops there all the time. She usually takes the tags off the things she buys us at Wal Mart because she knows how I feel but she can’t hide it when she buys my son clothes from their label (which get stuffed in the back of the drawer to be donated later). I wish she’d change but I’m not willing to damage the relationship over it. My mother on the other hand gets “the look” and a “you know how I feel” when she slips and shops there.
I live in China and I would like to share two stories about WalMart:
First is that: when Walmart says that they aren’t using child labor, it’s complete and utter crap. When my friend who works in the clothing industry went to the factory that makes jeans for him, he discovered that the factory was completely empty. Long story short, he, being a big foreign man, bullies the manager into taking him to where his clothing was REALLY BEING made. Turns out that they outsourced it all to this small little rural village, where it was all old people and young children at the sewing marchines, because it was cheaper. My friend said that he saw that the other clothing that was being made had WalMart tags.
Now China is the land of knock offs, but I can’t really think of anybody that wants WalMart clothing knockoffs..
The other story is a bit funnier. I used to live in this beautiful little town called Sebastapol, in Sonoma (wine country/aka land of the rich hippies). On April 1st (April Fools Day) some joker decided to put a sign up on a lot that been empty a really long time. What did that sign say? Walmart: Coming Soon. Apparently the local police/government office got so many calls that morning that, before noon, they sent somebody to take the sign down.
Totally evil hateful place. I am proud to say that I’ve only been in there once in my life, and never bought anything. But again, privilege, I’m also really really lucky that it hasn’t been necessary in my life.
I used to live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, where Walmart was the only place within 70 miles to buy underwear or pillowcases. So I shopped at Walmart. I think, however, that before Walmart moved in, residents of said small town must have had some local store to buy their underwear and pillowcases. (Perhaps even underwear and pillowcases that didn’t start coming apart after three washings.) Walmart just drove that store out of business.
Even when I had no choice, though, I still had a basic concern about spending money with a company that relies on government social programs to supplement its low wages, and has an atrocious environmental record. Seriously. If you enjoy clean groundwater at all, and you have a choice, don’t give Walmart any money.
melody: Yikes. I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m still horrified. They abuse workers in the US, where are at least some nominal protection rules, so why not elsewhere, where workers are even more vulnerable?
Gross, gross, gross.
Wal mart was the only store in town. When they’re tax-free lease came up, they vacated the enormous shop and built a behemoth super wal mart less than a mile with a once again negotiated 15 year tax free lease. Then Target wants to move in but they want the same cush tax-free deal. Townsfolk whine incessantly for the mayor and city council to approve the deal. Other people point out the lost tax revenue an then the fight is on like Donkey Kong. Those who want the store at all costs claim the other side is backward and opposed to progress. The other side are screaming that the lost taxes will be why truly keeps the town from progressing. In the end, Target threatens to sue because they want the same deal as walmart and the town caves. We now have a walmart whose lease is up in 5 years already allegedly scouting a new tax-free pad and a brand new Target on a hill top that was once covered in old growth hardwoods.
The old walmart building is now office space for the state prison system. If the town wasnt the seat for the prison system, it would sit vacant.
Wow–when Target was making overtures to enter the city, one of the things they did was purchase all of the advertising space in an issue of The New Yorker and filled it with rather aesthetically pleasing artwork, with the bullseye worked in here and there, of course. I know Target isn’t perfect either, but it is telling in how they made their way into NYC with relatively little fanfare and didn’t need to co-op political language to boot.