walmart boycott... for real

I am boycotting walmart & other major corporations for my new years resolution. I am asking you to join me.

 

I have never purchased any product from Wal-Mart and do not plan on doing so any time soon. It's been about 6 years since I set foot in one and that was to play in the toy section with this guy I hadn't seen in a while.

 

I am all for purchasing stuff in the small mom and pop stores, rather than wal-mart or whatever. If I could I would rather buy a product made in Lexington than in Guangdong, or something. But sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

 

Problem is wal-mart is cheap and I'm poor

 

I work for a union grocer and we're always on the defensive against walmart. Just as the union says, DO NOT SHOP WALMART !

 

but it's cheap, wal mart-1 mom and pop stores-0

 

Why are you boycotting Wal-Mart and other big corporations? They could be the government of the future.

 

I also refuse to buy from walmart, I dont care if I save money or live better its not worth it. I'd rather be poor and live shitty

 

There are plenty of giant chains that ignore human rights, the environment, and morality but wal-mart is the largest of them and has a business model that many other companies are now trying to duplicate. I urge any human to get involved in a boycott whether your American, Chinese, indian, ect.. Wal-mart is unfair to everyone, replaces good wage jobs at local companies with minimum wage & bad benefits. Wal-mart also knocks property value off of other businesses. Walmarts profits are in the billions annually yet they pay their employees unfair wages and even promote the use of welfare and other government programs, they have even been accused of using these government assistance programs as they’re benefit package. In California alone wal-mart cost taxpayers $84 million dollars by not providing adequate healthcare for their employees. Wal-mart is the most actively and aggressively anti-union corporation. If union activity is suspected at a certain wal-mart location they send in the corporate executives in private jets to actually take control of the store & fire anyone they think is conspiring. Wal-mart training videos have been known to be full of anti-union propaganda, and they have even been able to use unions to turn employees against one another by freezing raises for all employees when any union activity is taking place. Wal-mart has spent up to $7,000 in some locations for camera packages, $30,000 for undercover spyvans, and $100,000 for anti-union hotlines all to keep unions out of their stores & even more out of their employees minds. When employees ask their higher-ups for advice or help, some have been told to use their tax dollars & even given a list of government programs. If employees begin to lobby for a union then wal-mart execs take over that location and weed out anyone troublesome. They seem to be on a mission to destroy unions altogether. In Alabamba over 3800 children of wal-mart employees are currently on medicaid. In Florida that number is over 12,000. Wal-mart employees that have unions in some parts of Europe ore promised 36 vacation days a year & competitive benefits. Many previous wal-mart managers have said they were told by regional managers to manipulate peoples work hours so they don’t get overtime by putting any extra hours toward the next week. In one particular case wal-mart settled out of court for $50 million dollars in overtime that was robbed from employees. Multiple lawsuits are currently underway. Managers are under constant pressure to cut expenses & have even been known to hire illegal immigrants and make them work overtime unpaid. Under our current tax system wal-mart recieves massive subsidies from taxpayers to help them finance building new stores, while at the same time they are putting those very taxpayers out of work by forcing local businesses to shut down. Wal-mart annually gets over 1 billion dollars in taxpayer money. Therefore you could argue that wal-mart is a literal cause for the lack of fireman/police/schools,ect. Sadly there are even 26 million square feet of empty walmarts just in the United States. They have also been fined multiple times in multiple states for enviromental violations including dumping hazardous chemicals into local rivers and lakes. In 2004 walmart was fined $3.1 million for clean water violations in multiple states. Thats not even the worst of it. In Chinese walmart factories people work all day for about $3. Toys that cost as little as 18 cents to assemble in China sell for nearly $15 dollars in the U.S.. In Bangledesh women work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week at 13 to 17 cents an hour and are even beaten by supervisors at walmart factories. Now you don’t have to be of my political persuasion to be upset by these numbers. Walmarts CEO made $27.2 million dollars in 2005. The average walmart sales employee made about $13,800. You can argue trickle down economics all you want but the fact is its not fair. Five members of the Walton family together are worth over 100 billion dollars. Just 10 billion of that could cover every walmart employees healthcare & make sure they get fair wages, but instead it goes toward things like an underground bunker for the family in case of a cataclysmic event such as a nuclear attack. Walmart has a fund set up to help their employees in case of an emergency. This fund is strictly donations. Walmart employees donated millions of dollars toward this fund themselves & the waltons gave a measly $6,000. The waltons recieved a federal taxcut of $91,500 an hour in 2004. They have given less than 1% of their earnings to charity, whereas Bill Gates has given over 50%. Oh but I must not forget to mention that they had enough to spare for some $3.2 million in political contributions in 2004. I beg the rest of the world to wake up to these atrocities. The Walton family is a success, they no longer need our support & continuing to give it to them will continue harming the enviromnent, the economy, and our freedom. When you only go to one store for everything you need, every other store begins to go out of business, and the more we give into these corporations the more control they have over us as a whole. Eventually if we continue down this path we’ll all be living in a giant ant colony in the shape of a W with no rights or power to change it back. Just remember that you get things so cheaply at walmart because chinese,indonesian,indian,ect. people work day and night for almost nothing in unfair and unsafe conditions. This company takes the easy way out in every situation they can, they have many people believing that they are there to help, but all they seem to do is grow, make more money, and give less of it. If for nothing else, you should stop shopping at walmart because they don’t care about you, the most precious resource they have, their customers. It seems that once you leave the store after spending your money they couldn’t care less what happens to you. 80% of crimes at walmarts (many of which are robberies, rapes, and even murders) take place in the parking lot. This is a statistic walmart is well aware of, yet they have only four cameras in most parking lots(mostly concerned with stopping union activity)and 200+ cameras inside and security. Even after finding that employees in golf carts patrolling the parking lots helped drop the crime rate to near zero, they still are yet to have regular parking lot security for a miniscule cost of probably 10 dollars an hour at their stores. So I ask you again.. how can anyone support a corporation that steals our taxmoney, cripples local schools, pollutes our waters, puts our locals out of business, treats workers unfairly, and provides us with lower quality goods then we could make ourselves? Well thats America… corporations flex their muscles and are proving to be too much even for our government to stop.. I’ve heard it said that “you can save a little money at walmart, but the quality of your product goes down, and then once walmarts in & the locals close shop you cannot get the quality back. Please my friends make the descision that a slight convenience is not worth all this..

 

i would boycott but they are the only place i can work around here.
its so very lame.

 

This is too funny! you would boycott but your part of the opposing team, I had to laugh.

Having lived many places and traveled the u.s. exstensively, it is my opinion that a boycott of walmart in the u.s. would be like boycotting your very life.twenty years ago a boycott would have provided a response from the management of walmart but now they are a kingdom unto themselves.

I joined a boycott of walmart when they were found to be using native american burial grounds for new sites and the boycott was ignored by the masses because they cared more for cheap goods than they cared about "some dead indians" and thus we were laughed down the road.

Abbie Hoffman said to choose your battles carefully,you may have to die for them. Although I applaud your efforts I believe walmart is so dug in,you'll not dig them out.You'll being fighting walmart on their ground.

 

I agree that walmart is now to big to give a shit if I dont buy stuff there. But for me its more a personal thing, a small feeling of satisfaction knowing that they will never get any of my money, not that they need it.

 

Oh yes,yes
By all means continue your boycott, this is simply one persons view. I continue to seek peace and the end of the senseless killing in the middle east, but that monster roars on through republican and democratic admistrations.This too seems hopeless and yet I march on, go figure.

 

you know what... you are right, but thats no reason to give in & shop at wal mart. I like your abbie hoffman quote but he's not exactly someone I'd ask for advice. I mean I know ignorance is bliss, but I just don't understand how you cannot feel wrong when you put your money down on the counter at walmart. While I applaud your attempt to boycott as well, I know these are different times. Alot changes in a little while these days, and we may actually be coming to a point in which a conciousness revolution happens & within the younger generations there is potential to win these battles. I know I cannot personally stop wal-mart & obviously its not all that easy to start a revolution on hipforums... lol, but I know personally in my own life my actions are already influencing freinds and family. I know a bunch of people that are really waking up these days. So many people that wouldn't have questioned anything a few years ago are finally understanding the effect of corporations on our lives & in turn they are doing things like using less, changing their diets, and thinking of others. I wish people could realize that there is a level of satisfaction in doing the right thing, similar to any good deed. If your in the know, if you consider yourself hip or cool, and if others look up to you then you probably have more influencial power than you think & just voicing your opinions and then acting accordingly will have an effect on those close to you. Most of us intellectual beings have people in our lives that respect and/or look up to us, and if we show people that certain things are very important to us in a non-condescending way, we can certainly at least spark their interest. I thank all of you for engaging in this conversation because that alone is a step in the right direction.

 

Where I used to live, walmart was this ugly little thing that they built on a bunch of "clean fill" (aka parking lot bits and whatever else they could find) in the middle of a wetland.... And then after destroying the wetlands, they decided to move up and buldozed the top of a mountain (with multipule trees over 100 years old on it) overlooking the whole town and put walmart there. (thankfully a local salvage style store took over the ex-wetlands property after wall mart abandoned it for a few years)

 

I don't believe that I said anything about putting money down on the counter at walmart. I am saying that without the masses of the population assisting in a boycott, you would be swatting flies in a dark room no one will ever know.
BTW,perhaps you would be advised to take advice from the actions of Abbie Hoffman because he once dabbled in lsd for research in writting a book and was forced to live in the underground for years.What I am talking about is as someone that agrees with your stance,I looked at your other post and found post that "the man" could persue into your private life as they did with Hoffman and equalize you as a force of protest or boycott. He found that one needs to be spanking clean before attempting to fight the system,because they are only concerned with the opponents demise.

In no way do I intend to embattle you but I have rode in enough rodeos to know that if the people whom I stand with have a history that "the man" can besmirch at some point in time I will be left holding an empty bag.

Already you have assumed because of my opinion on walmart that I have taken a stance in opposition to yours,when infact I have been against walmart since the late 80's. If we don't even understand who may be on our side,even passively,then doesn't our real opponent strike while the infighting ensues ?

 

Mollyredmore, could you provide citations for all the things you have posted. Thanks.

 

wal mart documentary..http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/wal-mart-the-high-cost-of-low-price/.

 

Did you make that film?

 

No but I have entered walmarts many times in my life & you don't have to look too far to see that these allegations are true & largely ignored by the public. Honestly walmart doesn't even spend any time refutting most of it. I never thought it would be hard to convince the hipforums community about the evils of walmart. They have plenty of lobbyists, they don't need us being skeptics on their behalf. Look they even got a lobbyist right here ..