The People vs. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

As more and more people learn about the inhuman ways in which Wal-Mart treats their employees, more and more people are starting to protest the global uprising. At the same time though, a LOT of people are still continuing to shop at their local Wal-Mart. Why? To save money of course. The majority of the American population is oblivious to what is going on within the confines of the corporation, and even when they do get informed, it is still about saving money. "If it's true...I do think they hurt small businesses..You can't stop free trade, unless the community rallies against it," said a Florida senior citizen. The truth really does hurt, because he is right. Unless an entire community (the United States in this case) rallies against Wal-Mart and their "everyday low prices," a business like Wal-Mart is going to continue to flourish in a capitalist society.

Now that people are starting to figure out Wal-Mart, the company is being forced to do things to keep their customers. One of their claims is that they are going to start providing health care to all their employees, which is true, but skewed to their liking. Yes, Wal-Mart will provide health care to their employees, but at a 30% cost to the employees. Workload is the same, paycheck even smaller; that is, if the employees decide to shoulder that 30% cost to receive health care. Since Wal-Mart is so ideologically driven, it will be that much harder to take down the beast that lives in a world where mainstream ideologies control people's everyday thoughts.

The numbers are mind-boggling; 10,000 cases against Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart being responsible for almost $100 billion of the $500 billion trade deficit, and yet the business itself continues to flourish. Is money really that important? The $100 billion that Wal-Mart "contributes" to the trade deficit comes from their exploits in China, where Wal-Mart continues to exploit the people for cheap labor in the name of "free trade."

Organizations across America are rising up to fight the globalizer; in New Jersey, the LETS group is trying to educate their residents on the dangers of Wal-Mart and how the company is satisfying the people's low cost needs. Wal-Mart is trying to push itself from the rural areas of the country to the urban cities, which would make their business flourish even more, but the people are trying to fight it. In 2004, Wal-Mart began talks of bringing a Wal-Mart into the Chicago area, but this came with great resistance. In '05, Wal-Mart tried to spread its influence to Portland with great resistance as well. Taro O'Sullivan, a journalist who writes for the Asian Reporter, wrote an article supporting the local businesses, using that as the main reason to not allow Wal-Mart into the community. Besides the fact that it is exploiting workers in Asia with cheap labor, Wal-Mart is taking away from the local businesses, the real community supporters. Within the Asian community, "small businesses are often the only way many families can survive," and Wal-Mart takes that away, all for that extra dollar.

It is getting to the point where people are putting so much importance on money that Wal-Mart is trying to buy out its naysayers, and the scary thing about it, is that Wal-Mart has enough money to do it, and it might actually work. This all stems from the constant driving of the capitalist ideology into our society's head.

So, now that we have figured out that Wal-Mart gets its power from the ideologies that drive our everyday society, we must not attack the business aspect of Wal-Mart itself (although this is the reason for debate). Like Cindy Lewinter, writer for the Jewish News said, "If Wal-Mart is the logical result of late-capitalist development-which seems obvious, then any 'movement' must seek to set in motion forces that will resist the encroachments of capital on society. So we must not attack Wal-Mart for what it is doing to society, but instead we must spearhead the bigger dragon of capitalism, because Wal-Mart is just another piece in the game of capitalist chess.

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