please give a warm welcome to lee scott, ourpresident and chief executive officer, walmart stores, incorporated. whoah! i know... thank you... thank you...i know... alright, alright. every year. okay, okay. it would be a pleasure for anybody to be theceo of this company because y'know it doesn't matter if you're sam walton, or you're davidglass, or you're lee scott. when you come to this meeting, year afteryear, you get to say -we had record sales.
we had record earnings. we had record reinvestmentback into our company. but you know i say all that, but let me tellyou my friends, you better be ready to be better. because today, for whatever reason,whether it's our success or our size -walmart stores, incorporated, has generated fear -ifnot envy, in some circles. and that makes it more important than everthat we focus on doing the right thing, and doing things right -every time. there are two things that we should do. numberone, is tell the walmart story. get the message out there. and the second thing is -stay the course.walmart is too important to individual families
who are stretching a budget. we're too importantto the suppliers who employ millions of people. we're too important to our associates -forwhom we have so much love, and value so much. and your company will continue to demonstrateour citizenship as a good employer -and a member of the communities that we serve sowell around this world. ladies and gentlemen, i'll promise you this -we're going to staythe course. and this company is going to continue to grow. actually [we] started in 1962. started onmain street and middlefield. little country store that at that time was started in thefamily, and it was pretty difficult to know -it was a big decision. and my brother andlaw and i decided we were going to take that
step and we went into business. we startedin a little one room building that had a full basement but we didn't have any plumbing inthe basement -but the upstairs retail area was very small. we were there for a year and a half to twoyears, then we moved on to a larger store in a shopping center. we spent several yearsthere and proceeded in 1992 -we built this facility here. this gentleman here, that happens to be myson. he's been my right hand man for many years. it was much easier to retire in 1996when he was here to take over. one of the biggest parts of our store beingin a rural area is what we call our hardware
section -we've got the nuts and the boltsand the nails, and those types of fasteners. that's always been good because a lot of farmerswere always mending machinery and things around the farm. and some of the kids that were -kidswhen i was growing up, y'know, in here, now they've got families, they come in here forthe fix it up type things. since i was eight, come down on friday nightsafter school. i'd work until nine. i worked here since i was six. i swept, orhelped customers when i was young, too. at the end of the day, grandpa or dad would giveus their pocket change. i spent a lot of late nights in here, too. especially when we werebuilding it. i generally arrive here about 7:15 in themorning and i unlock the door. i come in and
turn the lights on, and i get the day moneyfor each drawer in the registers, and i open up the registers. and usually at that timetom is here, tom goes ahead and kind of tidies up the front of the store and sets out theamerican flag and the benches for our customers to sit on. a lot of times the amish fellason their way to work will stop here for things they need for their day's projects. they'llcome and get plumbing or electrical supplies -or a lot of times, sporting goods. we havea busy sporting goods division. john has been preparing for trying to changesome of the stock and inventory. keeping in mind basically to stay with service. if youcan't compete in one area, we're going to stay with something that is not offered, orthat you can compete in.
oh, i've been shopping here for 32 years orso. all my needs that i need for hardware. the mass merchandisers, to a great extent,do not provide excellence in service. i'll use walmart as an example. and you're reallylucky if they have anyone in the plumbing section who knows anything about plumbing. we've been trying to get ready for them, probably,for the last ten years. we had a meeting with all the guys, explainingthe purpose of our job, and to make sure we do everything right. explain what walmartdid, and what we do, and what we do different. this was brought to us by an amish customerof mine. he is so much against the walmart movement after reading this book that he wantedto start passing them out, or start selling
them to friends. so that's basically... i'vegot a few extra ones, and i'm getting rid of them, and he's doing the same. i have never been in a walmart store, andi never intend to go into a walmart store. i've never had the need, and i've never liketheir principles. that's not nice to say at all, probably, but i've seen a lot of smallcommunities crucified and forced out -ma and pa operations that had been in business foryears, that are out on the street. they just had to close their doors. just because ofone entity. and it appears that is their intent. to come into the community, and force everybodyout. they did nothing but lay down the red carpetfor them. i know how hard it was for my dad
and my grandfather to build this buildingon this lot. they went through everything to try to get the commissioners and stuffto allow them to build here. i mean, we had sign issues, they've gotta be a certain size.we had to make sure we had enough green around the area. i'm all for free enterprise, but when youlook at the big picture, the people that own the company are the richest people in theworld. so, the reality is they could spread that out. i'm curious to see how much they'llactually give back to the community. to even use american with walmart in the samesentence is just... i don't agree with at all. it's... it's like a chinese company tome, only with american board members.
it's not a mystery, they've come right outon record and say they don't buy american. and all it's done is give china better distributioncenters, where as before, they'd have to find contacts, who to sell to, and develop theirown markets. now they've got a pipeline into everybody's living room by going through walmart. i think the government should have more control.you talk about monopolies! if walmart is not a monopoly, i don't know what is. i'm not at all in favor of any kind of communismor socialism, i believe that america should always and forever remain free. however, ithink that there needs to be regulations established where... and y'know. they busted up standardoil. and they busted up ma bell. but walmart
seems to be going on a rampage through theamerican economy and nobody is even paying attention. the logic of it escapes me. and i spent alot of time thinking about it. i'm a republican, i'm a conservative, buti'm following very closely what is happening with the unions. it used to be that the unionwage was something that everybody would look up at and say, "wow, he's a union worker,he's making $18 or $20 per hour." and i realize, that's what we're paying our people. we'renot union. yeah, i'm all for the unions doing whatever they can do and y'know... whetherit be walmart or k-mart, or any story that's not gonna pay a fair wage.
i'm a staunch american, i love america -it'sthe finest, free-est country in the world. and i'd still, at my age, i'd fight and diefor this country. but it seems that there are things going on within this country -particularlyfrom a business and economic standpoint that aren't for the good of the people. i mean,the people en masse. y'know, small segment of the population is doing well by what ishappening, but the greater majority of the people are being made subservient. i mean, sam walton, i don't think would becomfortable with the way things are going right now. i don't think this is why he startedthe store, it wasn't to crush other competition. we have people in this town -families whocan't feed their children. and families who
have their entire belongings in a car or ina trailer, and are spending most of their life in their car or at the mall because they'vebeen evicted from their homes. because they can't find work. they can't find work. and i think there's a lot of people that don'trealize there are those people in town. you say that's in milderford, and they say no,that's not the case. i was dreaming, all of the sudden that thepeople in this town caught on to a great extent and we were all out in the street, protesting.but i think the likelihood of that happening is... we'll probably see pigs fly before then. i put this business plan together with thehelp of different hardware organizations.
i went to several different banks to checkon some funding, and when i got an appraisal on my business and the buildings, the appraiseractually came in and devalued the building. here, i figured it'd be appreciating afterlike ten years... and he came in and said a lower value, and i questioned myself -isaid "how could this be?" because y'know, with inflation, and the economy isn't great,but... it still should at least be holding it's value. he said no, any time a walmartcomes into town, they knock the values down because sooner or later, there's going tobe a bunch of empty buildings and none of them are going to be able to sell. any community in a grand opening is goingto see a change. a drop in sales, it happens,
regardless of whether it's walmart or somebodyelse. you'll get a drop in sales. so there'll be a dramatic change in something. how longit'll last? it can't last forever, because you can't stand the overhead if you don'thave the business. so something has to happen. unless you just hope it doesn't come to thatpoint. but you never know. well right now, after we liquidate product,i'm in the process of trying to sell the building, as well as get somebody in here that'll beable to lease... i've got a couple of people on the line right now that want to talk tome within the next couple of days. and hopefully we'll work something out. we're going to sellthe property and i'll be able to pay all of my bills and walk away without any debt. that'sif it all works out right. i pray that it
will. i remember that like it was yesterday. tohell with it. walmart'll buy the whole damn town. we'll shut them down. we used to drivethrough towns, going "6 months, 3 months, 6 months", and then they'd be closing. drive up all the way to new york city on route80, you can pull off to clarion on or any of those towns up there, and you'll see awalmart up in the hill. you'll see a perkins, maybe a burger king. and then you'll drivefurther into the town, and you'll see an empty town. it looks like a neutron bomb hit it.
they don't get it. we start talking aboutquality of life, they start talking about cheap underwear. i keep saying, "you can'tbuy small town quality of life at a walmart, they don't sell it." but once they steal itfrom you, you can't get it back at any price. we thought it was the most fantastic thingin the world when walmart was coming to hearne, texas. i mean, it was like they bestowed somegreat honor to the community. and we welcomed them literally with open arms. we could not say enough good about them. wecould not do enough for them to help them come. when walmart first made the decisionto come here, you could come to town on a saturday evening, and not find a parking place,anywhere.
i came to downtown hearne on saturday beforechristmas, and there was twelve cars in downtown hearne. i counted them. twelve cars in downtownhearne. that is pathetic. walmart was a great thing for our community.it's really awakened the west side of our i think sam walton would tell us, just ashe did before he passed away, that the number one thing in this company is our associates.and we've got stores that aren't treating associates as well as they should be treated. and, you know, it's a community college. ididn't have much for anything else. and i was doing really well. y'know, i had a 4.0average, but life happens, y'know. my dad got sick, my mom got sick -and things happen,and it just didn't work out the way i thought
it was going to. when i started working there, i had so muchpride in my job. i did. um, i didn't mind being there when they needed me. i didn'tmind doing -i knew that we were short staffed -at that time i didn't know it was a purposefulthing that um, that's their intention. they had stacks like this of applicationsin the back. they just didn't hire them. and then we're told, "we don't know what to do,we don't have the people. we don't have this, we don't have that." and i really did, atfirst, i was really, i felt bad for them, i was like "okay, 'l'll give you an extrahour here, i'll come in early tomorrow, okay, i won't take my day off."
always having to stay late. you're supposedto work until eleven, you stay until twelve, twelve thirty. keep the number of associates from being fulltime as many as you can, you keep them part time as much as you can. and just keep reducingthat expense. the company doesn't allow the stores enoughpayroll dollars on their budget to get this job done. and the job is enormous. this companyis rowing in the, raking in the dough in sales. i mean, my store alone did over 100 milliondollars in sales the year that ieft. having to get up with the kids, get them just-getting them out to school, after four hours sleep.
they don't care about what you sacrifice,it doesn't matter how many people lose their families. it doesn't matter if the associateshave good health care. it doesn't matter -anything, other than what the bottom line profit isfor that store that month. it just makes it really difficult to havea good family life at walmart. y'know, if you can squeeze every dime outof them, you go for it! and it doesn't matter what happens to their families, if they fallapart, they get sick, y'know. the hell with them. we're troubled by the fact that there arepeople who work full time, who in fact cannot provide enough for their families to livedecently.
it was just impossible for me to pay my billsand pay for day care, and work. you should have plenty of time to go intothe office. the money that i did get went right back intowalmart. i'd get my check, have it deposited, go shopping. i had -when i first started walmart, i hadmy kids on the um, walmart insurance. it got to the point where it just was too much forme to handle, i just couldn't afford it. i'd have to pay my premiums at work, and thenwhen i took them to the doctors, i still had to pay. i always had to pay a chunk of money.
i'm proud of the fact that we have the benefitsthat we have, and we have the wages we have. people that's making seven dollars an hourthat has to go to the doctor, they're not going to be able to meet their deductible. y'know, i have an eighteen month old baby,and he didn't have any kind of insurance. when he was sick, i would have to try andfix him myself, like get him medication myself. if he had to go to the doctor, i would haveto take him, and pay it as i could. sam walton believed that it was inappropriatefor an associate with illness in the family to have to worry about how are they goingto survive the financial impact. i was under my mom's insurance plan, witha local grocery store that she worked for.
and any prescription it was, it didn't matterwhat it was, it was five dollars. and now, through walmart, that one bottle of pillsi'm paying seventy dollars. but i can't afford to put my children on thewalmart insurance, because it's too expensive. there's no way i can afford to have seventyfive dollars taken out of each check, just for medical -that's why -because i'm suchlow income i am able to get the medicaid for the kids through colorado state. but they're a billion dollar corporation,so i don't see why they cannot offer a better medical package for their associates so thatwe can afford to uh, get our families on uh, insurance.
you start weighing, "okay, he's sick -we eat.which one do we do?" well, let's give him an aspirin. no matter what anybody says -they're at povertylevel. i watched so many people go without lunch in the lounges that i stopped eatingin the lounges because i just had my managers eating there because i just couldn't standit. they just wouldn't eat, and we weren't allowed to offer them any money. and, uh.there were people that didn't eat nothing. they'd take an hour lunch and they'd justsit there. we have full time employees that worked atwalmart. and they had medical. but the medical was so high, so they had to go out and getmedi-cal, some type of government medical.
while i was working at walmart i was on wic.it's an excellent program. it saved my life, really - because we got all the formula andcereal and stuff you needed for the baby, and i also went to the medicaid office. itcan be a real hassle, having to deal with the offices, but y'know, at least they'rethere. i'm thankful for the programs that are available,y'know. it's not a fun situation, it's demeaning. i always heard people say, well, they're justy'know, oh, there are so many people that just abuse the system... i can't imagine that,because there is no way i would want to spend any length of time having to do what you haveto do to get assistance. you talk about using the system. look at theway walmart is using the system. they're promoting
people to go to healthy kids, and to get foodstamps and section 8 housing. they're the ones that are using the system. yeah, it's pretty bad when you need to tellyour employees that all these programs are available for you, because we're not payingyou enough money. retail giant walmart is encouraging its workersto go on welfare. instead of paying for its employees to have health benefits, she sayswalmart is making the government take care of it. in florida, walmart has more employees andfamily members eligible for medicaid than any other company.
critics accuse the retail giant of using medicaidand state programs for the poor as it's health care plan. this report from uc berkeley concludes walmartcosts state taxpayers $86 million dollars per year, and county taxpayers as much asanother $25 million to pick up the tab for public healthcare, income tax credits, housingsubsidies, and food stamps. evelyn dee used to work full time for walmart,but didn't have company health care benefits. she literally couldn't afford to pay for it,so she turned to government assistance. what the public doesn't understand is thatthose everyday low prices are based on taxpayer subsidies. walmart is getting away with itbecause they can.
i talked to the regional personnel managerabout who is going to take care of the walmart associates, and their health care needs, andhe said -let the state do it. the personnel manager told me personally thatthere's assistance out there for people, they should be able to go use it. use your taxpayer'sdollars. i had a list of all the government agenciesand different places that people could go if they needed money for their utility bills,if they needed to apply for food stamps, or if they needed to apply for wic, or for medicaid. so your dignity is not there, your pride isnot there, you go to work knowing that you're not going to be making enough money to reallymake ends meet, but yet you've gotta go with
a smile on your face and fake it. yeah, that'spretty bad. come up with some type of health care thata full time person can afford, and don't have to put on the scale -health care, or feedmy family. why is it that a corporation that in 2003had announced over 240 billion in sales cannot provide a livable wage and affordable healthcare for their employees. there's nowhere around that there's a companythat makes this much money and still turns around and makes their associates go to thestate for aid. i think my company takes family very seriously.and they'll help you achieve anything you want. the possibilities are absolutely endlessat walmart.
think of the careers that get started in thiscompany and the difference it makes in people's lives. but most importantly to me, jobs thatcome with the opportunity for personal development. when i first started working at walmart, iwas still in high school, i didn't have any plans to go to college later on. the otherpeople i was working with were just so nice, and i just thought that was awesome. my job function is entirely express technician.its performing oil service, to tire changes, battery service, stocking the inside shelves.writing up work orders, which is greeting the customer. running the cash register. y'know,ringing people out for just groceries that they bought throughout the store. and theywant it all done at the same time.
all i'm worried about is the one 4 percentraise per year that you get from walmart. i've worked there three years, and i've gota $1.07 raise. i don't have good health benefits, and i can't afford to live on my own anymore.it just -most of it is poor treatment from management at walmart. i don't know, it's just weird -i've alwaysbeen kind of... quiet and shy. and now, y'know, i kind of need to stand up for myself andmy community. so i just y'know searched the internet fora while, and whatever i typed in brought up the same thing, y'know, i type in employeerights, and it'd bring up the union. fair labor practice -it'd bring up the union.
these corporate people in the walmart corporation-they don't even really like to say the word “unionâ€. to them, it's like a curse word.they just say "third party representation" is the way they put it. walmart is very opposed to unions, one ofthe most anti- if not the most aggressively anti-union companies in the history of theunited states. it's just relentless in their search for unionactivity, and try to squash it, kill it. look at that, ed dupontis. he gave you a call,right? he gave me a call. he said he didn't wantnothing to do with the union. he says there was no no no.
i had a worker that came to me with a pieceof paper that someone had typed up a computer in big bold black letters that said "we needa union!". no signatures, that's all it said. that in itself is enough to require me asa store manager to go and make a phone call. and the phone call comes to dentonville, andthat afternoon i had to personally drive to the airport and pick up three guys that flewin a corporate jet, and pick them up and take them back to my store. we have to do this for the reasons we startedit. what they do is they basically walk in andtell the store manager that you're no longer in charge of this store. every decision goesthrough us.
they taught me how to profile people. of course,i didn't know that was the term, then. and it was identifying people that were the strongestrepresenters of the petition to organize, or at least get a vote. anita, we need to contact, still. possibilitythere. you walk up to a couple of associates, andthey're both talking, they walk away from each other -they gotta go. they're conspiringto do something. be noisy, be happy, be boisterous. we're hereto support folks who are trying desperately to fight against the world's largest, richestand probably meanest corporation. the associates in the automotive departmentwere flooded with brainwashing material against
the union. i got fooled by a union. fooled bad. all theunions work at is taking a cut out of my pay. yeah, take your money and spend it on politicalcampaigns and help people i don't even vote for. because they know a union would just messit up. but don't take my word for it. just ask an associate working here in the building. i'm not going to get in the store even 50feet before somebody approaches me, or they're gonna send someone following me around thestore. i was never alone. i was followed whereveri went. truly, the managers would follow me.
during the process of intimidating them, theyjust make their lives miserable. they do illegal surveillance, they put cameras up in workstations, work areas, break rooms. you've got a target on your back and you leteverybody else know -i've got to stay away from this person because i can get fired fortalking to this person. they're targeting a lot of it at josh. y'know,they're like -cause they were talking about josh being like held up on their shouldersand parading him. they're like "yeah, he's just using it for uh, a way to get y'know,like attention." one of their favorite tactics is to come outand say, "we have to freeze all of our raises in the store because we can't appear to bebribing anybody.
it was a great political ploy by walmart inmy mind, to say that's why they weren't getting raises. because some of those employees startedputting pressure on the tle people -the tire lube express people. they said, "we can't get raises because ofyou". i was like so scared to go to the break room,because they made us all go to break together because it was really dead after that, sowe'd start walking through, and they'd like... customers and other associates were like givingus dirty looks, i'm like "i'm not going to sit in the break room, they'll jump me orsomething!" alicia is way good. i've talked with her quitea bit.
and cody, we know cody is good. rightcody is with us, here. they'll instruct the managers to start hiringassociates in the store. and what they do this for is to try to dissolve the percentagesof the people in the store that are for the union. see james. james is another new hire. i'm not even sure who that is. but you know, that's just -this is our store.this isn't their store. we're the ones -we're making them money. we're the little workerants, y'know.
so what is your prediction? uh, right now, i'd say fifty fifty. y'know,i mean the few people in the middle are just going to make it or break it right now. i think you lost alisha. no, i've talked with her quite a bit. she'sjust kind of hard to read type of person. i hang out with her and stuff on the weekends,but she's definitely into it. she's real strong. i believe it's just gonna go like - done.because y'know, cody isn't voting, ryan isn't voting yes, and i'm still kind of... i kindof really don't want to vote but then i kind of have to, because.
you're getting all freaked out because ofy'know, what they're saying -they're not going to know how you vote. all it's gonna be isjust a bunch of numbers. so we've got six for no, another six yes.so we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven on the fence. the company does everything that it can andthat means anything. and they will kill it -they'll kill the campaign. walmart winning out, as you said, seventeento one, but the union says- -it's not a fair battle, it's not accordingto the national labor relations act -but when they find that there's a campaign going on,everything that can be done -fair or unfair,
legal -maybe not so legal -is done to keepthe union out. walmart was very lucky to acquire two reallygood companies. but of course they were already unionized. walmart had no choice. because of the union, we get thirty six daysof vacation per year. usually people take three weeks in the summer, three weeks inthe spring. it depends. you can split your vacations into two or threetimes per year. or even more often, if you prefer. my job is very important and if i have tofear for my job, it's a bad thing. a very bad thing.
if walmart says we're all a big family, andwe have nothing to hide, everything is great -then... i don't understand why the colleaguesin america can't have a worker's council. can't establish a union. i can't understandthat. walmart is a career; it's not just a job.good quality of life, good educational opportunities for my children. it is right for the 1.2 million walmart associates,including more minorities and more seniors than work at any other company in america.walmart offers the right job at the right time in their lives and it gives them a stepup that economic ladder. my name is edith arama. i live here in southerncalifornia. i have two girls. i go to school
to be a preschool teacher. i worked for walmartfor six years. they explained to me the different things they offered and the type of companywalmart was. i said that's a company i want to work for. i always found it rewarding tome to help the customer find what they were looking for. i could work wonders. do more with less. i know the true meaningof doing more with less. they want the associates to do more and they are going to pay themless. they would come in the office or on the floorit didn't matter where you were working. they would say you know we have no overtime thereis to be no overtime whatsoever. you may have five baskets of clothes and merchandise thatneeds to be put back. you may have 30 minutes
left on your eight-hour shift; but we needthose baskets put away. and they usually do it with a smile. you would go along with itbecause you needed that job. and there was no if- ands- or buts- about it. they wouldlet you know, one way or another, if you can't do it, i'll just get somebody else to do it.you're not a person that cannot be replaced. and you know we're hiring all the time. andin your mind, you go look; i've got these kids at home; i'll just have to make thatsacrifice. and you will. they are asked to work off the clock withthe implication that if they don't work off the clock, that is what is expected at thisparticular store, they are going to lose their job, and they do it a matter of survival.
and it comes from the top. walmart is fighting legal battles with scoresof former employees in 31 states. hourly workers who say the company has cheated them out ofhundreds of millions of dollars in overtime pay. the walmart corporation paid approximately50 million dollars to settle an off-the-clock class action suit in colorado. in texas, itis estimated that they cheated workers out of up to 150 million dollars in unpaid wages. our policy is that we pay everyone for everyhour worked. you're the ceo of walmart and that's the bestyou can do?: "if you work here, we'll pay you!" that's it? "work at walmart, it's betterthan getting kicked in the nuts!"
our district manager actually explained tous how to cheat workers out of overtime. he said, this is how you can come in on yourpayroll budget on this week. he said say you have three workers that had overtime, maybean hour or even 20 mins over 40 hours, he explained to us how to go into the systemunder a false user id, to get into the computer and move that time to the next week. i've seen managers go in when someone worked41-42 hours and change it to 40 hours. the people that are struggling to live just onthe basics everyday or do without need that extra minute or two on their paycheck, andthose are the ones that are victimized the most. i'm not the only one that did it, iseen every manager except for one general
manager do it. walmart refuses to follow the very americanethic that to serve the country well over many years, people should be paid for thework they do. walmart currently faces lawsuits in 31 differentstates for wage and hour abuses, potentially involving hundreds of thousands of workers. as a store manager, you're responsible forreducing your expenses every single month, and the only way to do that is to keep theassociates numbers down. i was given about 19 hours a week, and that'sjust...you can't pay bills with that. i mean it's just, it's not right at all.
if you're not getting those fulltime hoursfor that week that's devastating. it may help them on their bottom line but it doesn't helpyou at home. when it comes to jobs, we have good jobs.seventy four percent of our people are full-time. most people in america don't know that. although most people in america also don'tknow that walmart considers full time employment 28 hours a week, which their starting wageworks out to under $12,000 a year. ice agents arrested 250 undocumented workersin 61 walmarts across america. i was working from 9 pm to 7:30 am. it wasa lot and the stores they could leave store until store manager come in the morning.
walmart is paying 11 million dollars to settlefederal allegations it used illegal immigrants to clean its stores. i’m stunned that theywould employ illegal immigrants. i'm stunned. you're stunned they hire illegal immigrantsfor nearly no pay; lady you just bought a sweatshirt there for 29 cents! walmart, the world's largest retailer couldbe facing the largest lawsuit ever brought against a private employer,. lawyers suingwalmart will file their motion today and if a judge agrees, the company could be facinga class-action lawsuit for discrimination against 1.6 million current and former femaleemployees. i had no idea about the lawsuit and therewere people in my store that had no idea about
it also. members of management in the upper echelonsof walmart management talk about how women at walmart are useless. i had been receiving manager, i was operationmanager, i was merchandise manager, so it's like i kinda did it all. i cleaned the bathroom every single day, kenwould come to me and he'd say to me "oh, it's your turn again." i looked at him and i saidit was my turn yesterday, you know, and he'd laugh and he's joke about it and we'd go backand forth and i'd say i know i'm the only female that's working out here, so hence,i'd have to clean the bathroom.
nobody said, so why had a woman been thisall these years, you look at the value, every general manager stated, she should be a gm,every evaluation, what's wrong with this picture. the company hides the fact that these practicesare very systemic, meaning that they come out of the home office. bottom line, if you were a female you justweren't worth it. you just weren't worth the time, the money, the effort, nothing. a blind man, my grandmother was blind, shecould see better than what you guys were seeing because you take it and put the blinders onyou didn't wanna see. when i called, i called to file a petition,.or to file a claim against them just to say
that they discriminated against me becausei was a woman. i'm betty, i'm a walmart associate, i loveworking at walmart. i love that they pay me less than men, because that means i can'tafford to eat as much. and i get to keep my figure. jim got promoted to management overme, but that's okay cause he's a cutie. you go get him, honey! when i applied for the asst. manager's trainingprogram, i didn't get any response back at all. i went through everything i had done for mystore manager, and i had done it like you would do a checklist, said you told me todo this, i did it,. he agreed on it, and i
said so now i want what you promised me, hejust bluntly told me "there's no place for people like you in management." and i saidwhat do you mean people like me? and i said because i'm a woman? or that i'm black? hesaid well two out of two ain't bad! i was called milk-boy, nigger, at this particularstore, there was an incident where this one guy's bicycle. they hung it form the ceilingand put a rope around it, you know they literally put the lynch bicycle, this is what they said.but i complained, because it was to me offensive, and it was unacceptable. what happened afterthat? nothing. i don't know if i was more devastated thanhumiliated. but in my mind, the way i love people, i just couldn't see another person,maybe they're not as strong as i am to be
able to take that. this woman walked through the hallway andsaid enie menie minie mo catch a nigger by the toe. i reported this incident, nothinghappened. if you complain about discrimination, they just see if they can get more peopleto try and work you out of there or whatever and that's basically what happened to me,i just got tired. i started going backwards in my mind of allthe different stuff, and it started clicking and clicking, and the more i thought, theworse i felt because i felt to myself, you're an idiot. how could you have not known. iwas devastated. the time that i spent on hose roads, i could've been at home with my husband.but i wasn't because i was doing my end of
the walmart promise you do this, we will dothis. and it was not worth my husband's life. the worst part about it is no one will everknow how big this is. what happens to people, there have got to be more people like me outthere, but they're too afraid to say anything. i love my job. it's challenging, but it'sreally satisfying. we truly are living the american dream. it'sout there, and it's at walmart. great citizenship also means that we're goingto support the communities that we're in to support our charities and the organizationsthat exist there. you know, by the time i was born out in hoover,i have lived under about 36% of the presidents of the united states. hoover and roosevelt,truman, eisenhower, kennedy, johnson, nixon,
ford, carter, reagan, clinton, sr. bush, andjr. bush. so that's 13 presidents out of 43 i've lived. we came here in 1959. and started an iga storewhich is independent grocers. they had approx. 150 employees and of these 150 the fulltimeemployees were a great number of them, they had full coverage insurance, health insurance.we also had 401k pension plans that they really appreciate it. you know, in small-town businesses, you dobecome attached to your employees and they're very important to you. we always had a christmas party or dinnerwhere all the employees came and we'd close
the stores. and every day after school i'dget off the bus and run up to the store because we lived a couple blocks from it. this was left over from when we closed downthe stores in the late 90’s. i don't believe it's fair the way that walmarthas come in with the funding that they get to put their sewers, roads, parking signals,grassy grass etc in compared to what the independent retailer gets, no i don't believe it's fair. certainly it isn't fair, and i think he atone time did go talk to them in cameron and say, if we're going to run a business herecan you help us? no they couldn't do that. i don't think it's fair to help them to buildroads for their business and at the same time
the store open puts others out of business.the competition we're up against hasn't caused a problem as much as the competition beinghelped by our government. from one level to the other they get all the breaks. walmart is coming in and is running us out.we know you give them tax abatements, will you give us tax abatements? and no they couldn'tdo that, so the county nor the city would do that. and everyone knew it was unfair,what can you do about it. i’m sure water, any of that stuff, as faras i know we didn't receive a dime from the city, county or any place like that. if you tell them that you don't want themin your city limits there's nothing to stop
them from buying five acres outside the citylimits, hooking up to rural water and having all the negative effects on the city and noneof the positive effects. they have a super center in cameron, it took40% of our business and about 1/3 of our business here in hamilton. in brookfield it took over50% of our business overnight. it's hard to make those payments with a wholesalerhaving problems themselves, so everything culminating in everyone having problem's.to pay employees you use the cash from the inventory and then you didn't have any inventory. in the process of all this i had to borrowmoney to put into stores and with the farm as collateral.
it went down hill from there. so we had norecourse but to just close em up. it was 40 years of hard work that seemed to disappearall at once. it wasn't very easy thing to adjust to. and now you can see erwin still saddened alot. it wasn't what he planned. but we had a lot of good times, he did a lot of things,he knows a lot of people, they respect him, and so i don't know what else you're goingto get out of life. on the closing of that store, it was a sundaymorning, and just.... i remember coming down stairs and sat downon the couch and mom told me and i started crying. it's like a family member, we werethere every day and it was very a part of
my life it was probably my favorite place. they wanted it from me. and i love him todeath for it, but they wanted it for me and my family. and if walmart gains ground and has a monopoly,where will our families and where will our children be and what will they have to doto work, and to be competitive, in ten years or so, it could be very, very serious forthe nation. it might happen that way and i hope it doesn't for our children's sake, butit could be real serious, be a revolution, i won't say it'd be a civil war but it'd bea revolution and i don't think anybody wants that.
i'm kim marcetta and i'm a 4th and 5th gradebilingual teacher in denver co at newman elementary school, and walmart received subsidies ofabout 1.7 million dollars and with that our denver metropolitan area, that could've keptthe three schools we closed this year open. i'm monica jefferson, i'm a speech/languagepathologist and i work for special school district of st. louis county. walmart receivesover 31 million dollars in subsidy from the mo. government. cathedral city made a 1.8 million dollar investmentbut because of walmart's lies and not stepping up to the plate with their commitments, we'reshort on policemen, we're short on fireman, we've eliminated the recreation commissionof the city, we're not able to provide the
services to our services to the residentsthat they need and deserve and we're going to have lives hanging in the balance becausewe're not going to be able to provide these services. my name is charles haas i've been a 4th gradeteacher in washington state for many years and when i think of the million dollars thatwalmart received for its distribution center, and what we could be don't there for studentsit's outrageous. taking revenue away from our community thatwill have a direct impact on our ability to continue to provide some level of service. in illinois, walmart has received 100 milliondollars in subsidies and that has affected
our school systems. that money could go intoour school systems to rehire all of the support teachers we need back, the support personnel,we could have our psychologist back our social workers back, our counselors back, we couldpick up and these programs are being cut because walmart has received subsidized. what we're facing currently is that walmarthas for business purposes have decided that they are going to leave our community. and not moving twenty miles away, they weremoving two miles away. not very far away, in fact one is being builton the property line of our city which we still will not receive any benefit from. justoutside the city limits. just as we were about
to start to receive a better part of the salestax revenue, from the deal, we found out that we'd been the chumps. to end it with a vacantbuilding of the size that most businesses cannot fill. so you have a huge building thatsits vacant for months and years. that’s why at walmart we give back $5 every secondto the communities we serve. throughout the holidays and all year long. to make the season,and every day a little brighter. you know, responsible citizenship also meanslooking out for the environment. we can make a difference in this area's sustainability. one of the most exciting things about theriverkeeper organization is working with the public. we have a lot of volunteers that volunteerto keep their part of the catawba river. because
the catawba river's dammed 11 times and has11 lakes on it. we have lakes with coves and so we call our volunteers cove-keepers. andthese cove-keepers want to safeguard and protect the catawba river. essentially what we did was an investigationand we visited about seven walmarts in the catawba river valley to see what their environmentalpractices were and judge whether their current environmental practices would have an impacton the drinking water of the town of belmont. and what we found in every single case wasthat walmart had a practice of storing herbicides pesticides and fertilizers in the parkinglots. what concerned us most about this particular case was the proximity of this walmart andthe creek running right by the walmart site
and that creek empties right here at the intakesite. for me when i'm out on patrol and i'm on the river and there's a drinking waterintake right there what i know is that there's a mom somewhere who's at a kitchen sink andshe's putting water in bottle to make for a baby and that baby is drinking...the labelson some of the herbicides and pesticides said "this product known to cause reproductiveharms by the state of california, and birth defects."these pallets with bags and bags of this material, many of them broke and busted and spillingon the pavement, when it rained all this material was washing right into the storm water, andeventually making it here to the catawba river, a source of drinking water for almost 2 millionpeople in the region. so we'd be calling walmart
to really express our concern about thesechemicals making their way into the public drinking water and they game me a name anda phone number for somebody in arkansas headquarters to call. and that person when i talked tohim it wasn't the right person they said they didn't think they had a person in charge ofenvironmental affairs but they would try and find out. they never called, so again i calledback, this time i called their attorneys and said look i'm not getting an answer from anyoneat corporate walmart and because i haven't i'm gonna start a web blog, and every contacti have with you i'm going to put on my website and report what your response is. and if there'sno response, that's what's going to be on our website. so that's what i did. two orthree days later, they still didn't call back
we then sent them the law, and i elevatedthe rhetoric and said it appears to us as if you're violating the storage laws, andwe're getting ready to contact our attorneys, still no one called, finally the attorneysfrom walmart gave me the name of a person that they thought was their contact and ifinally reached that person at walmart headquarters in arkansas, and he said he had just startedthe job. he has been in training for the last two weeks and he didn't know what to tellme. so at this time i started calling the newspaper media and asking them to do a story.we got a great local news station here in charlotte, north carolina that responded oncamera showing these pallets and pallets of chemicals, herbicides, fertilizers, storedin the parking lots right beside the storm
water drain. it ran in the morning. the noontimethe six o'clock and the evening news that day. it just so happens that the walmart managerfor the local store where most of the video was shot had 81 pallets of this material outin the parking lot saw the story. called his regional manager the next day and said youwon't believe what i saw on the news last night. for all his stores in the region, wehad them pull those chemicals from the parking lots and put them under cover. as i read thecase history and all the environmental crimes and particularly the consent decrees fromthe attorney general's office ordering walmart to establish better environmental protection,what flabbergasted me most about the lack of corporate response was their apparent disregardfor these consent decrees and they had not
taken them very seriously. it's only the localguys. i can say in my history as river keeper, i don't think i've ever encountered a corporation,be it a power company, an oil company, as unresponsive as walmart. wildlife conservationis very important to me, but it's really exciting when a company like walmart makes it a priority,too. wildlife conservation is very important tome. but it’s really exciting when a company like walmart makes it a priority too! we have a great relationship with the chinesegovernment. they have treated us very fairly in and what they have done. they actually,much like in the usa hold us to a higher standard -higher standard of sanitation, higher standardof employment.
my name is wendy. i am 21 years old. i amfrom the shenzhai province. my family plants corn, paddies and potato.i wanted to earn some money so that their life could be easier. at least, i didn't want their life to be toohard. they would work from dawn until night. they would begin to work on the farm at daybreak,and wouldn't get back until night. i thought about working in the factory wheni was in middle school. at the time, i thought it would be exciting and interesting to workin the factory. i left my home town on april 29 this year,and then began to look for a job in shenzhen.
at that time i had a friend working in thatfactory who also came from my hometown. so i went to see my friend each day at thefactory gate, which is just in front of wen yi's room. my name is wen yi, and i come from hunan province. he heard my dialect when i was talking withmy friend. then he spoke with me using the same dialecthe asked me where i was from. i didn't tell him the truth i said it wasfrom shawn king area he served for the army of shon king for acouple of years, so he can speak the dialect.
that's the way we've got to know each other. my girlfriend and i work in the same walmartfactory. she works in the old workshop and i work inthe new one. i'm on the night shift and finish work atseven in the morning.s she begins to work at 7:30 each morningand works overtime until 10 p.m. we don't have much time to spend together,but whenever there is an opportunity i'll cook some delicious food for her. we like singing karaoke, shopping around,and buying some little things. in that way, we feel more relaxed. most of the time wego to karaoke singing songs and listen to
music. we tend to rent a room outside and cook byourselves because the meals offered by the factory are really disgusting. however the dilemma is whether you livein the dorms at the factory allocated or not, they always deduct the rent for our wages-you have no choice but to live inside. if you're going to move out of the dorms thefactory will tell you - you can move out and we will not charge youelectricity or water, but rent will still be charged. you see, if we live inside the dorm we paynot only the rent, but also the utilities
- which is charged by how much you use. there are very few fans installed in my currentworkshop. it is extremely hot inside. if they plan to install a new fan, then the otherswill tell us that we can only have one fan, or the fans that are there. in my working position, there is no wind atall. can you imagine -i'm sitting there and dripping with sweat all day long. my bodynever gets dry. walmart informed the factory that it was goingto send people here for the inspection, and they will tell us how to lie for the inspection. for example, the workers must respond, "sixdays", when asked how many days they worked
- even though they actually worked for sevendays. the workers don't dare to say anything wrong,because we're really afraid of being punished by managers. management has a meeting in advance and hasa meeting to teach us how to lie. if you lie well, you'll be rewarded. if not, you'll bepunished or fired. the worker is given a fake pay slip, and theynever let you have the chance to speak out the truth, but threaten you to deliver falseinformation. we really worked day and night in order toget the wage of less than three dollars per day. my mom wants me back home because shefeels it's too toilsome, but i don't think
so. everybody else here has the same situationas me. if they can do this i can do it also. i'll think about my mom when i am very tired.it would be wonderful if she could be with me. she takes care of me very well when i'msick. she'll let me have a good rest, and cooks anything that i'd like to eat. she'sreally very nice to me. i would respectfully like to ask the bossof walmart to give the chinese workers some consideration, and a chance for a little timeoff. customers walmart -when you wear expensiveclothes, when your children play with high quality toysthink about china and the far east.
those profits you made and the wonderful lifeyou have are the sweat and tears and overtime workingof chinese people. if one day i encounter lady who just boughta toy from walmart, i'll say respectable customer -respectable walmart customer, "do you knowwhy you can buy such cheap toy from walmart? that's because we workers work all day everyday and night.†we added 125,000 new jobs around this worldthis past year. good jobs! jobs with benefits, jobs that have profitsharing and retirement savings accounts for associates. but most importantly to me, jobscome with the opportunity for personal development.
189,000 young women in bangladesh who aresewing garments for walmart. these workers are getting up at 5:30 in the morning, theybrush their teeth with their finger using ashes from the fire because they can't affordtoothbrush. forced to work from eight in the morning until ten o'clock at night, 14 hoursa day seven days a week on wages from 13 to 17 cents an hour. these are women who are hit by their supervisors,trapped in utter mystery - as the largest company in the world, walmart sets the standardthat other companies are going to follow. so walmart right now is sucking down standardsall across the world. these are workers who have no rights.
the outlook for this company today is verypositive. in every country that we operate in, the walmart model works. because once your associates know that youwill stand up for what is right, then when they see wrong occur they’re more likelyto contact you. and we have a we have very aggressive program underway to make sure -andhave had now for the last couple of years. i was global services manager for mexico,central and south america. my job function entitled three things. oversight of all factory certifications. whichmeans you go in there and you make sure there are humane working conditions. the big dealwith factor certifications is
to make sure that the workers are in a clean,safe, humane environment. when i was in the factory, you you talk tothe people and the people are so nice. and they'reso good; and they were just working for so little money, and without any condition offairness whatsoever, with their compensation and their working conditions. i went back to my hotel room and i just weptmy first time. and you know after dinner i picked up the phone to call my wife, and justtell her what i'd seen, y'know, i just started crying about that, telling her. and she was like "it's gonna be alright".i know we're doing the right thing, i just
couldn't imagine it was this way. i thought that a company like walmart -oncestarted reporting the truth of what was happening in the factory, would take quick action totry and make the working conditions better. i believed in the mission and the culturewhich i thought existed at walmart. i led more walmart cheers than just abouteverybody that i know. i didn't even mind being the squiggly. i mean, if you would have cut me, i wouldhave bled walmart blue blood. i didn't know that we weren't going to makeit the goal to correct the violations. and i didn't think that any retaliation wouldbe brought against me for doing my job. i
now realize i was pretty naive.but it just didn't occur to me that walmart would do anything except for the right thingonce they were faced with the truth. i kept going into other factories and seeingthe same things over and over again. and it became apparent to me that this was not anisolated issue. all you've got to do is follow the money,and the ones who are in power right now have tremendous pressure on them to perform likenever before. the system was designed to keep the goodsflowing to the united states. when push came to shove, they did not stand up and do theright thing. what really happened was -they were getting fired for telling the truth aboutthe factory certifications. and that was shocking.
it was embarrassing. ripped my heart out.to have all of that ripped from you and then to get sold out and lied to... walmart letme down when i needed somebody to look out for me. even though i was trying to look outfor walmart for years. we want to make sure that our suppliers complywith local country codes, with human rights standards, that people are not underage, thatthey're paid well... made in the usa. it means something.made in the usa. means a job for somebody. but we've made it our policy to find moreus suppliers who can compete. because american goods mean american jobs. at walmart. we pledgeto support american sources whenever we can. so you can too.
if we keep our prices low, and raised ouraverage wage substantially, we would, in fact, decrease our profitability disproportionally,and we would sacrifice a healthy chunk of what it is our shareholders expect from us. it is written in the new testament -the loveof money is the root of all evil. this does not say that money itself is evil. the factthat i shared a room last night with tom shooley, our cfo, while we were in new york -saved$200. the fact that my dinner was ten dollars last night, saved money. you shall not steal. doesn't this teach usthat keeping everything for ourselves is a form of stealing? or are we commanded to helpthose less fortunate to find enough to eat.
today i want you to know, however, the fivemembers of that family -together -are worth more 102 billion dollars. the widow and fourchildren have in the last twenty years, emerged on the list of the top ten wealthiest peoplein the united states. they could easily take ten billion of thatand see to it that every employee of walmart in the united states has health care, adequatepension, and adequate wages. walmart after the 9-11 attacks on the worldtrade center and pentagon, they apparently decided that they needed to have a bunker.there is a facility for the walton family in case of an apocalyptic attack -a residencethat they can live in and reside in, in case they had to do that. there's a helipad behindthe facility back there, where they can come
in by helicopter, and there's satellites dishesbehind the facility. and most of it is underground. as you can see, you can't really see muchfrom the gate, which is all fortified. faith means nothing at all, if it does notinvolve us loving one another as neighbors, in compassion for the poor. when you hear these bells at walmart, do youremember the people who they're ringing for? they remind us of our friends and neighborswho could use a little help. that's why at walmart, we give back throughoutthe holidays and all year long. of course the most important beneficiary ofthis store is our customer. it's the customer who lives in that neighborhood.
i was actually selling cars for about sixmonths, but prior to that i actually had my own business, i was doing my own wood finishingon boats. and i actually did quite well at that. so, i'm getting a little too old forthat. if i was going to go through all that i wentthrough, i want something to come out of it. something good. there was a truck on one sidethat had a camp shell and there was a van to one side, and i thought, y'know. i've alwayssaid you know you don't want to be in the spot where nobody can see you. but i thought,"four car spaces from the front door." and i thought they had security outside. okay,well i should be fine. and uh, when i got out, there was two of them.
unfortunately he caught me. i got outsidebut he caught me. and thats when i realized he had a gun, because he had a gun and hewas holding me. and thats when they told me, "get back in the car or i'm going to blowyour head off". the year before, when i worked at the phonecompany, we had a safety meeting. and it was around christmas time. and they had the sheriff'sdepartment out there. and they were talking about, if you're ever in a parking lot andthis happens, what do you do? don't go with them. if you go with them, you're likely notgoing to live. because statistically, that's what happens. they'll kill you. that's whatfirst went through my mind -that i'm not going to survive this. um... sorry. um... so thatis why the decision to jump out, y'know, i
wanted to choose. i didn't want. i thoughthe was going to rape me, too. he said he didn't want the car. i thought they were going torape me. so when they got me back in the car after looking at the gun, i just kind of resignedto y'know, like there was nothing i could do. and i just kind of went you know, kindof cold inside. this is the parking lot where laura tanakafaced her attacker. inside the store, walmart had more than two hundred security cameras,and four security guards on patrol. outside, there was nothing. the police did recommend on site security.and that there was none. that they had assured the people in the neighborhood that they wouldprovide security and make sure it was safe
for the neighborhood, and that wasn't done. it was evident that walmart knew they hadsubstantial problems in their parking lot. walmart was aware that the majority of thecrime throughout the state occurred in their parking lot, despite the fact that 80% ofthe crime that occurred in the parking lot, they had done almost nothing to protect thecustomers in the lots. rape, murder, kidnapping -all of these shockingallegations, and they come from walmart shoppers. report of a walmart parking lot attack tonight-north texas police are on the hunt for a would-be kidnapper. a violent attack in the parking lot of anorange county walmart -at least one man tried
to carjack, rob, and shoot a woman. who shot and killed 33-year-old mark korenekin the store's parking lot. a bold and deadly shooting -it happened thismorning at the walmart. a taylor woman is recovering tonight afterfighting a thief in a walmart parking lot. a man is arrested after a tire iron attack-it happened in a parking lot of this walmart. two teenaged workers shot while gatheringcarts in the parking lot yesterday at this glendale walmart. it happened at 1:48 this morning in the walmartparking lot in riverdale. she turned to run from this subject and wasshot in the back.
walmart has conducted research on crime inits parking lots, and critics accuse the company of a nationwide pattern of covering up thatresearch -of failing to turn it over in lawsuits. here's what walmart did not want to show.as early as 1994, as you can see in this internal document, a walmart study showed that 80 percentof crime at walmart locations occurred in the parking lot. and when the company addedroving patrols at several sites, the crime rate dropped to as low as zero. a district judge is filing walmart storeseighteen million dollars. judge james mahathey is sanctioning walmart for what the courtbelieves is a pattern of deception. it involves the case of a southeast texas woman who wassexually assaulted and raped in the parking
lot of walmart. the court found that walmart did not disclosethat it had conducted a safety study -a study that found if walmart put employees in golfcarts patrolling its parking lots, crime there would drop to zero. judge sharolyn wood heard a case against walmartin houston, texas in 1999, involving an assault in a walmart parking lot. she says that inseventeen years on the bench, and over twenty-five thousand cases, she's rarely seen such flagrantabuse of the system. it was very disturbing. to see such an intentionalcourse of conduct -it was corrupt. she is charging walmart with cheating in court-and she is not the only one.
this is one judge. is there something in thedrinking water in arkansas that says perjury is alright? another judge -rarely has thiscourt seen such a pattern of deliberate confiscation, delay, misrepresentation, and downright lying. true. unfortunately for the customer, they reallydon't care what goes on after you spend your money in there and come out into the parkinglot to go home. police found holden shot to death along theside of a road in stanton, texas. four hundred miles from where she was abducted. megan was uh, very special. we grew up together;,we lived together.
she is really going to be missed a whole lot,because she had a lot of people that loved her. she was just a very sweet person. she neverwanted a whole lot out of life, she just wanted to live, y'know, be happy. that's all shewanted. just recently, before she died. we were inher room. listening to a cd. we were singing together. and we could just be open with eachother. we didn't care. police say megan holden was chosen at randomon the way to her pickup truck in the walmart parking lot just before midnight. after thatcrime was caught on surveillance video, police say williams - a marine veteran with a historyof drug offenses, sped off in holden's truck,
heading west -where he apparently murderedthe 19-year old junior college student and dumped her body near some railroad tracksin the west texas town of stanton. i just think that there's a lot of thingswalmart could have done. there should be somebody watching the cameras. somebody should have been watching the cameras. walmart has those cameras out there in theirparking lot, and i thought that they were watching. a security camera, without someone watchingit, is of no use at all. the abduction and murder that happened intexas happened at a store where the loss prevention
team was sent in to set up a security systemoutside that would track the union activity in that store. and the only reason they hadthe pictures that they did, was because they had the union package on the outside of thestore. walmart focuses on protecting their property,and not their patrons. when you're a multi-million dollar companycan't you pay somebody like $12 an hour to watch the camera? if people are putting profits before safety,they're putting profits before uh, human life, i don't think there's anything you can sayto them. a man is suing the walmart in new castle,saying his mother died after a botched robbery
attempt in a store's parking lot. a random shooting happened here, three peopleare dead, and three others injured. the shooting happened right in the middleof a busy shopping day. at least one man tried to car jack, rob, andshoot a woman. report of a walmart parking lot attack. tonight, north texas police are on the huntfor a would-be kidnapper. bold and deadly shooting.shooting rampage. it happened at 1:48pm. random shooting.
(montage of newsreel audio) walmart stores has a responsibility to societyto make sure that what we do fits in and represents what it is society expects from a big company. we need to figure out, how do we in fact worktogether to cause them to want to have a walmart. on december 6th, there was an article on thefront page of our local paper, and it said that walmart was going to build a supercenteron the corner of queen creek, just a short distance from my house. and this particular location was within ourplanned community and it was within walking distance of an elementary school and a juniorhigh school.
and i felt it was an inappropriate locationfor something of that magnitude. so, i decided to form a campaign and say, "no walmart inour neighborhood". living as christ has taught us, we begin totransform the world. this transformation is visible in the reading that we have from acts. we're really trying to show why the work thatwe're doing is the work of the gospel. the lesson that we learned in inglewould wasthat we have the ability, through our democracy, to take power. and take control. and actuallyhold the companies accountable. as a nation in this world, the most powerful, the mostaffluent -we have the power to make sure that all have what they need.
that this is not some pie in the sky vision,but instead -this is our call as christians to make this happen. my neighbors and i wentand handmade some little posters and we decided that we were going to have a meeting in thelocal park, which was about a block from here. we had no idea how many people would showup. we were absolutely amazed -and all of them wanted to do something. in the beginning, there was only a few ofus -not a lot of people came to the meetings, only some supermarket workers, and a coupleof churches - remember? and then, little by little, more people, until they started feelingthe pressure. they wanted to build a walmart in this wholeparking lot -it was going to be two hundred
and fifteen thousand square feet. and therewas going to be- walmart was going to take this whole space,and like seventeen football fields big. and they were going to build one big box thatwas walmart, and then little stores in between. and then another big box with sam's club. we volunteer to do the various chores thatwe had, and then we solicited what i call a core committee, that was a group of peoplewho would be responsible for the strategy, the press releases, it was everything thatneeded to be done to organize our campaign. so then the coalition started getting biggerand bigger, and before you knew it -everybody signed up, like they were part of a coalitionfor a better inglewood. they were standing
up to defend the community. and i think the other lesson learned in inglewoodis that there's no magic potion to suddenly put this together and suddenly you're goingto win. it's a hard process, there are a lot of things that you have to put in place -butwhen you put those things in place, you can win. it includes the ability to organize regularpeople -small business owners, workers. we got our message focused, we've hammeredaway on the phones, hammered away on doors, people saw us coming and going when they wentto church. every time they went to a store in inglewood, there was a flyer about ourefforts. we held rallies.
a legal strategy enough resources to havethe research to be able to make your case. to be able to have the materials. it includes the ability to get your messageto the press, and to do media events. we grew to 187 volunteers, and we had plotcaptains, and we had an area chairman, we proceeded to collect signatures on our petitions. and we started out with fifteen hundred signatures,and by the time we got through, we had four thousand signatures. and they were all frompeople within our -what i call our area code. zip code. inglewood is the first test for walmart'sambitious plans in california, and activists
say the stakes here are huge. this is like godzilla eats tokyo. this ismuch bigger than david and goliath. all of the information that was coming fromwalmart kept saying its a done deal, there's nothing you can do about, we have our zoning,don't waste your time. but we knew better. then, we had numerous public meetings to letthe public know what was happening, what the status was. it was not like they came into the small townsin the south, or towns that have no business, and they brought in business. no, no no, thisis something completely different. they represent from bentonville, arkansas,plantation capitalism. the future of this
community depends on our ability to stop themonster in its tracks. walmart sponsored the ballot initiative afteringlewood city council opposed building a walmart super center on the site. today, walmartopponents charged the initiative, measure 4a, hijacks the city's planning process. it is seventy-one pages of legal fine printthat seeks to cut the community out of its own development process. what they did was essentially tell the cityof inglewood -get out of here. we are the biggest corporation in the world, we can goin and essentially buy an election. we held public meetings, we did our letters,we held private meetings with city council
members. we went out on the streets and doing the workto ensure the people understood that to those who much has been given, much will be expected. i'm sure the walton family believes that they'rea good, christian family. but i think they're going to make billions at the expense of poorworkers. and i'm sure there's a lot of people who think that they're good, christian companies.not if they're going to make money off the backs of the people who are suffering. a lot of people sacrificed an awful lot tohave the freedoms that we have. and that flag to me represents all of our freedoms. ourfreedom to fight walmart, our freedom to live
where we want to, work where we want to, havea say in our government. they can say and believe whatever they wantabout y'know, trickle down theories of capital, and whatever nonsense they want to invent,to hold onto their capital. but, um, that's not our option. but as christians we don'thave that option. that's not our option. that we're not about capital. that we're aboutpeople. we came before city council for the finalvote, and the council voted six, nothing to deny walmart and the developer the right tobuild the store on that property. residents of inglewood, california, are votingtoday. on whether to approve the construction of a new shopping development dominated bywalmart.
the other night we gathered at a local restaurant,hoping for a miracle. but braced to go back to court if the measure passed. and now, the votes were coming in on a proposedwalmart superstore in inglewood. (cheers) this one group of people took on a giant andwon. i think it was really meaningful. david beat goliath! david beat goliath! the city council of monroeville, pennsylvania handed walmarttheir hat today.
walmart packs its bags in cobb county, georgia. community resistance paid off in hickory,north carolina, walmart hit the road. anti-walmart candidates sweep the helotes,texas election. another trip down the long and dusty for walmartin biloxi, mississippi. when you have a group of people, a small groupof people, who don't want you in a community -does that mean you aren't going to go there? thornton, colorado defeated walmart. plainfield, illinois. las vegas, nevada defeated walmart.
when you have a small group of people thatdon't want you in a community. (montage) victory!