Voice of the Environment | Campaigns | Standing Up To Wal-Mart

Voice of the Environment | Campaigns | Standing Up To Wal-Mart

Standing Up To Wal-Mart


	Voice of the Environment's mission is to educate the public regarding the transfer of public trust assets into private, mostly corporate, hands.
	Ukiah office: 1330 Boonville Rd Ukiah, CA 95482 707-467-0329
	Marin office: 270 Beach Rd Belvedere, CA 94920 415-435-2007
	For more than a decade, Voice of the Environment has stood up for the people and our communities against the avarice of corporations and the misguided policies of the corporate-dominated state.

Article Archive

October 21, 2004
The Reality of Empire and Campaign Rhetoric
Try to digest radio blasts of campaign rhetoric amidst nerve-wracking traffic jams and insistent billboards. In a massive mall parking lot, designed to divert the brain from human themes, I try to understand my country's empire.
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August 30, 2004
Ghost-Town Britain
Supermarkets are doing irreversible damage to our towns and communities. A revolution in the way they are regulated is needed immediately.
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August 18, 2004
New Rivalries Mirror Old in Wal-Mart Free Speech Suit
Dan Hamburg and Wal-Mart seemed destined to clash.
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August 11, 2004
L.A. Council Votes to Restrict Superstores
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday overwhelmingly backed a proposed law that would make it harder for Wal-Mart to erect superstores in the city by requiring the company to study whether surrounding areas would be harmed by the addition of the mammoth centers.
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August 3, 2004
Wal-Marts cost state, study says
Employment practices at Wal-Mart, the nation's largest employer with relatively lower labor costs in the retail sector, cost California taxpayers about $86 million annually in public assistance to company workers, according to a study released Monday by a UC Berkeley research institute.
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June 22, 2004
Judge OKs Wal-Mart Class-Action Lawsuit
SAN FRANCISCO - Creating the largest private civil rights case in U.S. history, a federal judge approved a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. representing as many as 1.6 million current and former women workers.
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June 10, 2004
Will Labor Take the Wal-Mart Challenge?
Staying union free is a full-time commitment. Unless union prevention is a goal equal to other objectives within an organization, the goal will usually not be attained. The commitment to stay union free must exist at all levels of management--from the Chairperson of the "Board" down to the front-line manager.
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June 10, 2004
The Wal-Mart Effect
Walter “The General” Brooks stood amid the vacant buildings of a former Reyerson Steel plant on Chicago’s South Side, the projected site of a shopping center anchored by a Wal-Mart discount store. “We need jobs,” exclaimed Brooks, owner of a nearby fried chicken restaurant. “There are no industrial jobs around. They’re all overseas.”
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June 4, 2004
Wal-Mart Asks Workers to 'Tell Our Story'
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT - news) on Friday used its annual meeting to tout worker benefits and called on employees to counter critics who say the world's biggest retailer mistreats its staff.
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May 25, 2004
Wal-Mart Wants Stores Throughout Europe
Wal-Mart wants stores in every country in Europe and will consider opening its own outlets as well as making large acquisitions, according to the retail giant's chief executive.
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May 24, 2004
State of Vermont listed among most endangered places
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Famous for its fall foliage, quaint towns and covered bridges, the state of Vermont -- and its charm -- is threatened by a corporate behemoth, a nonprofit preservation group warned on Monday.
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May 21, 2004
Taking on Wal-Mart and Its Subcontractors
The evil effects of Wal-Mart's low wages and union busting is becoming well understood among progressive activists. What's less well understood is that the problem is far larger than the 1.1 million workers directly employed by Wal-Mart. In fact, given its network of suppliers and contractors, Wal-Mart's influence is far-reaching in driving down wages in its manufacturers and service suppliers across our nation and the world.
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April 23, 2004
New Rivalries Mirror Old in Wal-Mart Free Speech Suit
Dan Hamburg and Wal-Mart seemed destined to clash. Hamburg is a former Democratic congressman from Mendocino County who once ran for governor on the Green Party ticket. Wal-Mart's 104,000-square-foot big box store in Ukiah represents the antithesis of Hamburg's slow-growth environmentalism.
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April 16, 2004
'Maligned' Wal-Mart Launches PR Offensive in Chicago
Wal-Mart's love offensive has begun. The message: Wal-Mart offers better-paying jobs with better benefits than most retailers. Wal-Mart does not hurt other businesses in a community. Wal-Mart hasn't decimated small-town America.
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April 8, 2004
Voters in Los Angeles Suburb Say No to a Big Wal-Mart
INGLEWOOD, Calif., April 7 — Voters in Inglewood, a racially diverse working-class suburb of Los Angeles, have soundly rejected a ballot initiative to permit the building of a 60-acre Wal-Mart shopping complex exempt from virtually all state and local regulation.
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April 7, 2004
Voters in Los Angeles suburb reject Wal-Mart measure
Voters rejected a ballot measure designed to allow Wal-Mart to build a giant Supercenter store in this Los Angeles suburb without environmental review, siding with activists who said the retailer's plans would hurt the community.
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March 25, 2004
America's largest retailer takes its tidal wave to Washington by taxing its managers
In Washington, Wal-Mart has five lobbyists on its payroll, and a bench of hired guns led by Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., one of Capitol Hill's best-known lawyer-lobbyists. The company's political action committee was the biggest corporate donor to federal parties and candidates in 2003, with more than $1 million in contributions -- up from $182,000 during the 1997-98 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission disclosure reports.
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February 14, 2004
State appeals court overturns Mendocino judge's upholding of arrests of 8 demonstrators
Eight Mendocino County activists who were arrested at a protest in front of Ukiah's Wal-Mart four years ago can sue the retail giant, which they accused of violating their constitutional rights, a state appellate court ruled.
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November 24, 2003
Scouring the Globe to Give Shoppers an $8.63 Polo Shirt
When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. demands a lower price for the shirts and shorts it sells by the millions, the consequences are felt in a remote Chinese industrial town, at a port in Bangladesh and here in Honduras, under the corrugated metal roof of the Cosmos clothing factory.
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November 14, 2003
Wal-Mart Is Not a Business, It's an Economic Disease
The Wal-Mart department store chain, which employs 1.3 million people at 4,700 stores worldwide, and in 2002 became the largest corporation in the world, is levelling economies of the U.S., industrial nations, and the Third World.
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February 14, 2002
Going Down the Road
In my Texas politicking period, I was able to score a couple of underdog victories for statewide office simply by going down the road. Instead of another high-tech, made-for-television campaign, I crisscrossed this far-flung state with high-touch populist politics, visiting with folks in just about every place that has a ZIP code.
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January 31, 2002
Taking on Wal-Mart
Even among its friends, few would say that the United Food and Commercial Workers is a radical powerhouse of a union. Yet alone among US labor organizations it has the honor of knowing that every day 2,000 people are warned of its cunning and muscle, of the threat it poses to individualism, free enterprise and the American way.
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April 5, 2000
Pruneyard & The Walmart 9
On February 18, Richard Johnson, a Mendocino County newspaper publisher and Green Party activist, was handcuffed, placed under arrest, and held in the county jail for six hours for the crime of gathering signatures at the Ukiah Walmart. Although his violation was of the trespass law, Walmart officials were candid about their displeasure with the content of the petition, decriminalization of marijuana. Four days later, eight of us were arrested for protesting Walmart’s treatment of Mr. Johnson. We were taken to jail, booked, and released.
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Voice of the Environment is a 501 (c-3) not-for-profit Montana-based corporation formed in 1991.