Largest Civil Disobedience In Walmart History Leads To More Than 50 Arrests

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Huffington Post

Surrounded by about 100 police officers in riot gear and a helicopter circling above, more than 50 Walmart workers and supporters were arrested in downtown Los Angeles Thursday night as they sat in the street protesting what they called the retailer's "poverty wages."

Organizers said it was the largest single act of civil disobedience in Walmart's 50-year history. The 54 arrestees, with about 500 protesting Walmart workers, clergy and supporters, demonstrated outside LA's Chinatown Walmart. Those who refused police orders to clear the street after their permit expired were arrested without incident. Those who fail to post $5,000 bail would be jailed overnight, Detective Gus Villanueva, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman, told The Huffington Post.

Their primary demand to Walmart: pay every full-time worker at least $25,000 a year.

One of the protesting Walmart workers, Anthony Goytia, a 31-year-old father of two, said he believes he will make about $12,000 this year. It's a daily struggle, he said, "to make sure my family doesn't go hungry."

FULL story AND video at link.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/08/walmart-arrests_n_4227411.html

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Updated: 11/08/2013 3:15 pm EST

[IrishAyes]

1. Good grief, my SS is more than Goytia makes and I don't have kids to feed!

And despite my lifelong super thrifty ways, it's hard enough for me to squeak by.

My kudos and prayers to all those protesters. Good, brave people.

[LiberalEsto]

2. Awesome - more power to them!

In addition to sucking the life out of its wage slaves, Mall-Wart is a national disgrace and a huge drain on taxpayers.

[bread_and_roses]

7. +1000's (n/t)

[rug]

3. Walmart is a laboratory testing how long human beings can live on subsistence wages.

[flying rabbit]

4. I don't think they even pay that much...

... more a test to see how low society will allow a corporation to go in the pursuit of profits.

[mountain grammy]

5. This is the LARGEST employer in America.. this is a huge problem.

An immensely profitable company paying substandard wages, that' s NOT the way it's supposed to work.

[packman]

6. Tennessee Ernie Ford sang-

"Sold my soul to the company store" in his song about coal miners who HAD to buy their food at the company store and were kept in perpetual servitude because of a basic corrupt system. Wal-mart advises and encourages its employees to seek government subsidies to put food on the table and where do they buy their food at-the company store because its the cheapest place . What a despicable, corrupt , evil cycle The hell with Wal-mart.

[Laelth]

11. +1. Well said. n/t

-Laelth

[Dustlawyer]

8. BOYCOTT!!!!!!!

[seabeckind]

9. As said by Maher,

how do you boycott a place you never go?

In the case of walmart a situation has been created where this class of people have no alternative. None.

walmart has done more to destroy our standard of living than any other entity. There was a special done quite a while ago by frontline. It bears watching. It should be required watching:

Is Wal-Mart Good for America?

"Wal-Mart's power and influence are awesome," Smith says. "By figuring out how to exploit two powerful forces that converged in the 1990s -- the rise of information technology and the explosion of the global economy -- Wal-Mart has dramatically changed the balance of power in the world of business. Retailers are now more powerful than manufacturers, and they are forcing the decision to move production offshore."

"Wal-Mart has reversed a hundred-year history that had the retailer dependent on the manufacturer," explains Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. "Now the retailer is the center, the power, and the manufacturer becomes the serf, the vassal, the underling who has to do the bidding of the retailer. That's a new thing."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/

[Glimmer of Hope]

10. Walmart should take whatever they are spending on that ridiculous self promoting ad and pay their

workers more.