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Nationwide Protests Against Wal-Mart

Across the country this week, citizens and activists are taking a stand against Wal-Mart. It’s the busiest selling season for the reatiler, and local communities are standing up to its unfair practices, unsafe products and unacceptable behavior. From Wake Up Wal-Mart:

    Through its relentless pressure on suppliers to reduce costs, Wal-Mart fosters a corporate culture that encourages cheap manufactures to cut costs and cut corners. The result is that American children are literally placed in harms way when they play with cheaply-made toys from retailers like Wal-Mart.

Local papers have covered allied protests in Minnesota, several in California, and, below, Michigan.

Candlelight vigil against a Wal-Mart in Lincoln Park [Detroit News]

A candlelight vigil is slated for 6-7 p.m. tonight at the Lincoln Park Shopping Center on the northwest corner of Southfield and Dix-Toledo by a group that hopes to keep mega-retailer Wal-Mart from moving into center.

The group, called Wake up Wal-Mart Downriver, claims the discount chain destroys local businesses by undercutting prices, and sells unsafe products imported from China.

Nick Infante, Michigan spokesman for Wal-Mart, said the company now has no plans for a store at the site, which straddles the Allen Park/Lincoln Park border, with about 75 percent of the property in Lincoln Park.

“We’re always looking at opportunities throughout the state, and Lincoln Park/Allen Park is a good opportunity--but we don’t have any plans there yet,” Infante said.

Kelly Correy of Lincoln Park is among about 75 protesters expected at the vigil. She said she’s worried a Wal-Mart would drive the nearby Sears store out of business.

“I don’t like what it does to the neighborhoods,” Correy said. “And I don’t like the…tainted products, and what they do to the local businesses. It’s going to kill Sears.”

Infante said the company already has stores Downriver, in Taylor and Woodhaven, and that those stores are doing very well. He said Wal-Mart is good for Michigan, and for local businesses.

“We import products from all over the world, and we bought $3.8 billion worth of Michigan products last year from 1,497 supplier resulting in 60,304 supplier jobs, “ Infante said. “Businesses survive and thrive around us, because we bring in customers from other areas.”

Lincoln Park City Manager Steve Duchane said protesters have shown up at several City Council meetings to let their feelings about Wal-Mart be known. But if the city receives a site plan proposal from Wal-Mart, it will be treated like any other.

“This is a commercial development, there’s nothing special about it,” Duchane said. “If it’s a legal permitted use, we’d treat them the same as anybody, pursuant to law.”

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Click Here for a Printer-Friendly Version

COMMENTS

funny how is target,costco,fred meyer,k-mart,kay bee toys not putting children at risk by selling the same toys?where is the same argument on these places being held accountable?this is just more bs and picking at straws.

matthew vantress in gresham oregon
Wednesday, December 19 at 06:14 AM

“Nick Infante, Michigan spokesman for Wal-Mart, said the company now has no plans...”

Well...there you have it!  I guess everyone can sleep well.

Yeah, maybe not “now” Mr. Infante, but soon, right?

ScrewedbyWal-Mart in Anytown, America
Wednesday, December 19 at 06:53 AM

...and sells unsafe products imported from China.

Show me one large bricks-and-mortar retailer in the U.S. who is not selling products originating from China, and I’ll gladly start shopping there.

Until then, if I have little choice on what to buy, at least I still have a choice where I can buy it.

bbrd in
Wednesday, December 19 at 09:21 AM

vantress and bbrd-

I know the both of you are kicking yourselves over unabashedly buying into the WalMart Chinese trade practice and your deep regret for betraying American manufacturing workers by zooming in on Chinese made products and funding the Chinese Communist Party. It is a small comfort to you both in blaming other retailers for ‘doing it too’ in the WalMart propaganda ecology and evasion exercises.

However aside from you both wearing out your patriotic shoes from kicking yourselves, Jim Carrey called and said your arguments need to stop trying to show him up from the movie ‘Liar,Liar’ and abusing his line “I’m kicking my ass”.

SanDiegoView in
Wednesday, December 19 at 09:50 AM

...and your deep regret for betraying American manufacturing workers by zooming in on Chinese made products and funding the Chinese Communist Party

So, let me get this straight, SanDiegoView...if I buy something of Chinese origin from one of the other many big stores, am I still supporting the Chinese Communist Party?

I guess I could abandon buying Chinese-made goods, altogether, but the only effective means of doing that would be to live in a shack in the mountains…

...which sounds a little “silly”, doesn’t it?

SDV, sometimes a wet dish rag has more to offer than you do…

bbrd in
Wednesday, December 19 at 11:07 AM

sdv everywhere else you shop at including union grocery stores and other big box retailers like costco in san diego sell products from china.so that shoots down your lame full of it wm postings.i dont care where the stuff is made i really dont.

matthew vantress in gresham oregon
Wednesday, December 19 at 03:46 PM

SDV, I would love to see a list of the stores you frequent.  That’s of course unless you’ve living in a shack in the mountains

Mary in
Wednesday, December 19 at 05:45 PM

bbrd, vantress and mary-

You efforts in evading American made products are noted. The WalMart propaganda to attempt justification of their Chinese outsourcing of previously made American goods is a required feature of the WalMart worship package that you 3 share so conveniently. You can still very easily buy many American manufactured items with a sense and interest of patriotic effort. Obviously you 3 WalMart hymnal choir quislings have neither. It is not surprising that the ‘love of money’ has gotten the better of you in betraying the American workforce.

WalMart- When we say “jump”, our ‘war room’ internet frauds say “how high?”

SanDiegoView in
Thursday, December 20 at 02:46 AM

Show me one large bricks-and-mortar retailer in the U.S. who is not selling products originating from China...

How about showing you the largest brick-and-mortar retailer “selling products originating from China”?

Wal-Mart!

Ken V in Texas
Thursday, December 20 at 04:52 AM

Ken,

As I have seen you are very much a master of stating the obvious, how about answering my question.

I guess the cat really did get your tongue…

bbrd in
Thursday, December 20 at 10:33 AM

Yea… yea… SDV, up to the same old worn out posts of avoiding the topic and questions when the “heat” in the kitchen gets too hot for you.  But what else is new when you have no logical leg to stand on.

mary in
Thursday, December 20 at 06:32 PM

...you are very much a master of stating the obvious...

What’s obvious about your question, bbrd, is your lack of understanding about the phenomenon known in economic circles as “the race to the bottom” and Wal-Mart’s role in said race.

There is a fundamental and inevitable conflict between the interests of corporations, to whom wages are a cost, and most human beings, to whom wages are a means of survival. Nowhere in this society is that conflict better illustrated than at your local Wal-Mart. Most of its employees and most of its customers depend on their paychecks to pay the bills. But to keep its shareholders in the money, the company depends on hyper-consumption.

Wal-Mart could not survive in a town with good public transportation, where families all grow their own vegetables, cut one another’s hair, sew their own clothes, and borrow and lend tools. Like all retailers, it has to move vast quantities of merchandise at an ever-increasing pace. It does it, as the sign in the store says, by “Daring to Save You Even More.” And to drive prices to rock-bottom, they have to drive down the wages they pay. ~ Stan Cox

Ken V in Texas
Friday, December 21 at 07:37 AM

Global Labor Arbitrage WalMart ass kissing lackeys of the world unite! Mary wants to sing you a song from the ‘logical’ hymnal on poverty justifications for Americans.

WalMart- So what if we fund the Chinese Communist People’s Liberation Army. It’s not like mary will be vacationing in Taiwan anytime soon.

SanDiegoView in
Friday, December 21 at 10:06 AM

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