Wal-Mart

Jeff Milchen
November 15, 2005



Jeff Milchen directs ReclaimDemocracy.org, a non-profit organization working to restore citizen authority over corporations. Their extensive library of information on Wal-Mart and big box stores includes a discussion guide just created for screenings of the Wal-Mart movie.

When I took a current-issues course in high school (before standardized testing drove many such courses from the curriculum), our teacher started by providing ideas for critically evaluating the media we used. He considered such skills a prerequisite for intelligent analysis of public affairs. Among more obvious points, like watching for biased language, was asking a question of whatever we saw: “What’s missing?”

That question came to mind watching Robert’s Greenwald’s new film, “Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price,” as the film wrapped up without addressing any chain other than Wal-Mart Corporation and its Sam’s Club subsidiary. What was missing, as in most anti-Wal-Mart campaigning, was the bigger picture.

For example, Wal-Mart’s most direct competitor—Target Corporation—escapes any scrutiny for paying similarly poor wages, extracting public subsidies, weakening downtowns, and selling clothes from Chinese sweatshops.

Of course, Greenwald’s focus is obvious from the title, and the film skillfully nails its intended target with compelling and disturbing stories—many from former company executives. The focus on Wal-Mart is appropriate to a point because the corporation is in a class by itself for its sheer size and its power to drive industry trends. Yet we need to acknowledge that dozens of big box chains operate on the same exploitative business model.

Even Costco—justifiably praised for providing above-normal wages and benefits (but over-hyped by corporate media as an “anti-Wal-Mart”) follows the Wal-Mart model closely in most other realms. And though Costco has avoided the publicity many Wal-Mart lawsuits generate, it, too, faces a class-action lawsuit alleging systemic discrimination against women.

The Greenwald film mirrors media coverage and labor activism, which both have focused overwhelmingly on this single corporation.

Don’t get me wrong, Wal-Mart richly deserves the public-relations beating it’s getting, and I’ve spoken in more than a dozen communities about why they should slam the door in the company’s smiley face. But campaigns portraying Wal-Mart as a singular problem, rather than as a particularly vile symptom of a larger disease, obscure the real problem we face.

Suppose the campaigns against Wal-Mart succeed in diverting customers to Target or Kmart. Or perhaps they win a few labor concessions from Wal-Mart that help smooth the way for the corporation’s continued dominance and evisceration of community-based businesses. Would that be a victory?

Those who have broader concerns about the concentration of power in the hands of giant corporations should consider where else our dollars could be going. As I argued in an article for TomPaine.com one year ago, “dispersing economic power among millions of small, independent businesses is one key to restraining corporate power and sustaining democracy.”

Working toward that end, some 200 communities, organizations and businesses are participating this Saturday in “America Unchained,” a campaign created by the American Independent Business Alliance (disclosure: I’m a co-founder). Unchained and the growing network of Independent Business Alliances seek to go beyond damage control to persuade people to keep their dollars recirculating in their local economy rather than sending them to distant corporate headquarters.

In my home of Montana, citizens of Plentywood, Malta and Glendive all recently decided they had no need to lure a big-box store or drive out of town to shop. Instead, they re-tooled the corporate model of pooling investments in order to build community-owned and operated department stores. These are true anti-Wal-Marts in many ways, promoting democracy, community stability and cohesiveness. All of the profit goes to the locals who invested in themselves and their neighbors.

Notably, these truly progressive alternatives are arising largely in conservative, rural communities. The two newest Independent Business Alliances hail from El Paso, Texas and Reno, Nev. (Several progressive communities are home to these alliances, too).

Citizens in these places aren’t buying the defeatist mentality of accepting Target or Kmart as the “better alternative.” They’ve recognized that communities are perfectly capable of meeting their needs without depending on absentee-owned businesses.

Digging Deeper

The backlash against chain stores clearly cuts across partisan and ideological divides and provides great opportunity for the political party that first decides to tap into it. But once that occurs, the positive grassroots alternatives are likely to take a back seat to attacks on individual corporate behaviors and band-aid “solutions.”

We should demand a deeper discussion. Is Wal-Mart a scapegoat for some larger societal failures? After all, there will always be corporations ready to evade taxes or cheat employees if given the chance. To stop such activity, we need to generate political pressure for certain and substantial punishment of corporate criminals—not rely on pressuring one company at a time to reform itself.

To move from critiquing the practices of individual corporations to tackling these root-level questions is the core challenge for those striving to reclaim our country from corporate domination. Hopefully, viewers of the Wal-Mart film and organizers of public screenings will seize the opportunity to do just that