Contact Michael via e-mail.
What is a Whirl-Mart?
The action is comprised of a group of anti-shoppers ranging in size from 1 to 50 members. The ritual consists of activists/actors arriving at a Wal-Mart, Toys-R-Us or another chain superstore at 12-noon on the first Saturday or Sunday of the month and proceeding to push empty shopping carts slowly and silently through the aisles. Eventually, all of the participants locate one another and form a single-file chain of anti-shoppers which weaves, wanders, and whirls throughout the store for about an hour. It is a collective reclamation of space that is otherwise only used for buying and selling. It is a symbolic display of the will to resist the capitalist ideology.
'Whirl-Mart' is an experiment that can be approached from several different angles. As a work of art, it examines and blurs the boundaries that have been established between performance art, protest, living sculpture, and direct action. As an action of resistance, it utilizes the power of silence in occupying private consumer-dominated space with a symbolic spectacle. As a ceremony, it is a counter-ritual to shopping that transforms the super-store and its wall-to-wall array of products into a surreal and colorful cathedral. And what the heck-- it's just darned fun!
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Regional (NEPA)
Rally of One Peace can begin with YOU NEPA BLOG Blog by & about Northeastern Pennsylvania: issues, events, discussion, photos WatermelonPunch.com NEPA Whirl-Mart's web host xradiograph what Michael does when he's not "fightin' the man" SurfScranton.com 1,000+ regional links
National & Worldwide
Whirl-Mart Ritual Resistance International Whirl-Mart HQ World Changing Models, Tools, and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future Critical Mass Critical Mass is not an organization, it's an unorganized
coincidence. It's a movement ... of bicycles, in the streets. Rev Billy's Church of Stop Shopping Lots of great scripts from/for performance interventions
with a heavy focus on Starbucks. Commerce
Jamming Commerce Jamming source page. AdBusters A global network of those who want to advance the new social
activist movement of the information age. Commercial Alert wants to keep commercial culture within
its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting
the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and
democracy. No Media Kings Jim Munroe's guide to doin' it for yourself Booksense.com Internet book search that sends your order to your nearest
independent bookstore. Starbucks Delocator Search that helps you locate locally owned alternatives to Starbucks
Media
The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media
outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth Project of the Independent Media Institute, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to strengthening and supporting independent and
alternative journalism. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the first to identify
threats to our basic rights online and to advocate on behalf of free expression
in the digital age. Declan
McCullagh's Politech Politech is the moderated mailing list of politics and technology.
Topics include privacy, free speech, the role of government and corporations,
antitrust, and more. MediaChannel.org The global network for democratic media.
PLUS the News Dissector's Weblog. CorpWatch.org counters corporate-led globalization through education,
network-building and activism.
Yahoo News: Barbie's long-time pal, Midge -- now married and
pregnant -- was yanked from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. shelves earlier this
month after customers complained about the doll, a company spokeswoman
said.
Melissa Berryhill, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, declined to comment on
whether shoppers objected specifically to the doll being sold alone,
which may suggest teenage pregnancy, rather than being sold with the
rest of the family.
"We make every decision on which items to carry based on customer
demand, and that was the reason for this. Customers were unhappy with
the offering," Berryhill said.
Some shoppers said they were not convinced Wal-Mart's priorities were
on target. "Wal-Mart pulling Barbie because she's pregnant, but they
still sell guns and ammo?" said Laura Jamieson of San Francisco.
Jan 6 Update
You can order one
from KBtoys.com (although they are sold out as I type this). [This is
NOT an endorsement of any vendor, just the first one I happened to find]
Scranton Times Tribune: The days of selling pistachios to
local taverns and stocking candy cases are ending for the landmark
South Scranton business. Crystal Candy and Nut will close Monday, the
victim of the changing retail landscape.
The building at 1102 Pittston Ave. is the Meskey family homestead.
Living above the store, Darlene, Wally and Gary made Crystal Candy
& Nut their playground.
As a child, Darlene would rush outside with Windex and a rag to wash
the windows of delivery trucks. She remembers her grandmother counting
out 15 peanuts for each bar-bound bag of salty nuts. Her father would
load up his truck and make rounds.
Darlene's grandfather, J.T. Meskey, opened a five-and-dime on the first
floor of the building in the early 1920s. Later, the Meskeys began
roasting nuts on the stove in the kitchen and selling them.
J.T.'s son, Walter Meskey Sr., was a truck driver, delivering cars
throughout the East. Along the way, he stopped at stores, taverns and
filling stations and offered wall-mounted cards stapled with Crystal
Nut bags of nuts. Those stops became customers, and Walter began to
deliver nuts and candy rather than cars. Crystal Candy became a
wholesale business.
In the late 1980s, the candy business soured. Got-it-all big box
discounters flourished and corner markets gave way to supermarkets.
Neighborhood bars, once found on nearly every block of every Main
Avenue and Main Street, closed. One by one, Charles Chips, Reisman
Pretzel and Groff's went belly up or sold their brands.
The building is sold, but Mrs. Markowski said the name is not. She said
Crystal Candy & Nut may re-emerge in some other form. Nostalgia
candy so popular at Crystal has found a niche on the World Wide Web,
she noted. Penny candy like Mary Janes, Candy Buttons, Squirrel Nut
Zippers and Lik-L-Nip Wax Bottles that helped build Crystal may revive
it.
"Never say never," she said. "There's nothing more fun than selling candy."
1.We admitted we had been overpowered by the spectacle-- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2.Came to believe that only by empowering ourselves could we restore ourselves to sanity.
3.Made a decision to reclaim our will and our lives from the spectacle as we understand it.
4.Made a searching and fearless personal and social inventory of ourselves.
5.Admitted to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our subjugation.
6.Were entirely ready to get off our asses and subvert.
7.Humbly asked others for mutual aid in our struggle against the spectacle.
8.Made a list of all accomodations we had made to the dominant culture,
and became willing to strive to create better ways to organize our
lives.
9.Made direct action to subvert the spectacle wherever possible, except when to do so would injure ourselves or others.
10.Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11.Sought through meditation, agitation, relaxation, masturbation,
gyration, demonstrations, defacement, parody, subversion and satire, to
improve our conscious contact with the world around us as we understand
it, preying only on the spectacle, and not on it's individual slaves.
12.Having had a personal and social awakening as the result of those
steps we tried to carry this message to other poor suckers (of whom
there is one born every minute), and to practice these principles in
all our affairs.
Each Christmas millions of people enter the dangerous world of the shopping centre.
Once inside these 'consumers' are exposed to an atmosphere filled with
advertising, products and temptation: many cannot cope. As the 'consumers'
become intoxicated their very souls are taken over by the need to buy. They wander around,
impressionable and weak, slowly becoming 'mall zombies'
You must rescue the 'consumers' before it's too late! Use the tools provided
to guide the 'consumers' to the exit avoiding the dangers.
Well-made and sturdy, the supermarket trolley comes with a variety of
plastic food items -- bananas, packets of cereal -- that can be scanned with
a handheld scanner attached to the cart. Pass an item in front of the
scanner, and the cart speaks its name and the number of items. Scan the item
again, and the cart speaks its color, the food group and its nutritional benefit.
Aimed at preschoolers, the cart is billed as teaching numbers, counting,
quantities and simple food facts. . .
Lyle preferred the exploratory mode and its free-form play. The game mode,
when asked to find certain items, was not altogether successful. Lyle had no
trouble finding the first item asked for but lost interest before finding
the second one, preferring to scan items at random.
It used to be teenagers that were the early target markets. Oh, well. At least he'll be well-trained
for a high-paying, satisfying job....
found via nettime: collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets.
Click & Clack, the Tappet Bros. of NPR's Car Talk "fame" give you
the skinny on SUV's.
I bring this up only becuase a friend sent me this:
Why I question the intelligence of SUV owners
Nearly every day where I work, there's an announcement over the PA system about someone's SUV being parked
where it shouldn't be. Considering where I work [auto-parts sales], this probably isn't surprising.
Yesterday they announced for someone to go move their Ford Explorer from blocking the area of a handicapped
parking space.
And just now there was an announcement for someone to go move their Chevy Suburban from "spaces 32 & 33".
Not only did this person take a RESERVED parking space... they took TWO!
I mean, literally, there's an announcement nearly every day about someone needing to move their SUV.
In fact, the one day a couple of weeks ago I witnessed an accident involving an SUV in the parking lot (not the
SUV's fault, fault of a person in a pick-up truck trying to get out of a space between 2 SUVs).
And of course they had to announce that...
Though really, it's not like there's a lot of SUVs in the employee parking lots. But the ones that are there
are make a hell of a lot of trouble.
Looking for an alternative to mass-produced merchandise?
It's not too late to buy original, hand-made artwork for Christmas (or the resto f the year).
Check out the stained glass at the Paulukonis Studio.
FULL DISCLOSURE: it's my parents' studio. Do you know how hard it
is to make a living off stained glass in Northeastern Pennsylvania when
Walmart sells slave-labor-produced knockoffs for pennies? My folks'
stuff is the real thing--unique designs, quality art glass,
small-business made. Ahhhh....
for other great artists & artisans, check out the Guild.
"Play is a child's work," said Daphne White, founder and executive
director of the Lion & Lamb Project. "Children learn through play …
So actually giving them violent toys predisposes them and … teaches
them that to behave violently is fun and acceptable."
And they include the Army Forward Command Post, dubbed by one toy expert as "Barbie's Dream House: The Nightmare Version."
When I was young we made guns out of sticks (and we walked uphill to school both ways).
The association pro Christian child sat down it to the goal of
strengthening consciousness in handling with the tradition of the
"Christian child". It is to be pointed out that the Weihnachtsbrauch of
the "Christian child" is displaced ever more by advertising-effective
"Santa Claus". The association would like to work against that with
purposeful actions. Christmas is the birth celebration Jesu Christi us
is not not to a celebration of the consumption to degenerate.
10.12.02 Life radio upper Austria would like to be absolutely free this
year by Santa Claus. Success of our efforts? Co-operation is aimed at.
10.12.02 The interest of medium remains existing. After also the
"Wallstreet journal" announced itself, report now the Tiroler media (in
the mountains a nothing given...) Netherlands broadcast brings report,
since there is a similar "problem" there with the Nikolaus. More into
that.
I'd translate it as "Christ Child" or "Baby Jesus"--the traditional
bearer of Christmas gifts in large chunks of the Catholic/Christian
world
that doesn't speak English.
Santa has become the latest symbol of the ineluctable creep of American popular culture
and commerce around the world. In Austria, birthplace of "Silent Night," the rotund gent
in the red suit is provoking a Yuletide backlash.
Mr. Horst Strauss believes Austrians should celebrate their own symbol of Christmas,
the Christkind, or Christ Child, who, like Santa, also comes noiselessly to leave gifts
under the tree on Christmas Eve.
Mr. Strauss and other Austrians have started an organization, called the Pro-Christkind
Association, which is determined to prevent the secular Santa from muscling aside their
venerated religious figure. Members of the group said the Santa Claus phenomenon had exploded in the last three years.
They attribute it to globalization, which brings Christmas television shows and movies to
Austria, as well as to worldwide holiday marketing campaigns by American corporations.
"Santa Claus has been used by commercial interests to generate consumption at Christmas,"
said Philipp Tengg, a former seminarian, who started the Pro-Christkind Association and
is its chief spokesman. Mr. Tengg noted that the modern likeness of Santa is a creation
of the Coca-Cola Company, which uses the figure, conveniently dressed in Coke's red-and-white
corporate colors, to sell its product in winter. Santa, it seems, is viewed here as another
example of the corrosive global reach of American multinationals.
Not
updated in a few years (!), but contains links to information,
make-your-own bumpersticker graphics, and a page of the self-described"Best Anti Wal*Mart Links on the Web which has some outdated links (surprise!) as well as some good resources.....
AlterNet article:
Wal-Mart's business practices may be leading to a new kind of globally sanctioned gender discrimination.
Women make up 72 percent of Wal-Mart's sales work force but only 33 percent of its managers.
A study conducted for the Dukes plaintiffs by economist Marc Bendick found such discrepancies
to be far less pronounced among Wal-Mart's competitors, which could boast of more than
50 percent female management. Even more striking, comparing Wal-Mart stores to competitors
in the same location, Bendick's study found little geographic variation in these ratios,
and little change over time. In fact, the percentage of women among Wal-Mart's 1999 management
lagged behind that of its competitors in 1975. (Wal-Mart spokesman Bill Wertz says it's
"too soon" to say how the company will defend itself against these charges.)
Some of the lawsuits against Wal-Mart reflect common grievances cited by working women, inequities
hardly unique to Wal-Mart, but that women's advocates rightly find particularly outrageous in the
world's largest corporation.
Wal-Mart is also criticized for indifference to the workers, mostly young women, who make the
products sold in its stores. While most major-clothing stores traffic in sweated labor,
Wal-Mart's record on this issue is unusually bad. Much of the clothing sold at Wal-Mart is made
in China, where workers have no freedom of association. Unlike many companies, Wal-Mart has
adamantly refused to tell labor rights advocates where its factories are, rejecting even the
pretense of transparency.
Last year, Wal-Mart was removed from the Domini 400 Social Index, an influential socially
responsible investment fund, for its failure to make sufficient efforts to uphold labor
rights and for its "unresponsiveness to calls for change." Other than Nike, Wal-Mart is
the only company that has been booted from the fund for this reason.
Last June, citing all of the above issues, the National Organization for Women named Wal-Mart
its fifth "Merchant of Shame" and launched a public education campaign against the retailer.
With 10 days left until the end of the annual Toys for Tots drive
for the Logan County Chamber of Commerce, organizer Susan Kraich said
she was back at square one.
"I've been keeping an eye on that box every time I went to Wal-Mart,
and was so excited as it slowly began to fill. Over the weekend I heard
that it was nearly full, so I went to pick it up. I was devastated when
I found it empty," Kraich said.
Kraich said she complained to store management, but was told the store
would only replace the items she knew for a fact were in the box. She
left the store after replacing only three toys that she had purchased
and donated to the cause.
"I don't know how I am suppose to prove what was in there ... I thought
since Wal-Mart agreed to place the box, they were agreeing to keep an
eye on it," she said.
Wal-Mart manager Brad Barritt said the Toys for Tots organizer he met,
whose name he could not remember, was instructed that donated items
needed to be wrapped in Wal-Mart bags to ensure the items had been
purchased.
Kraich denied ever receiving any such instruction.
"There was everything in that box -- clothing, sporting goods, food
items. My understanding was that the box would be emptied regularly. We
had no way of knowing whether or not those items had been paid for,"
Barritt said.
He said the box was not visible from the store's security cameras, so there was no video proof that the toys were purchased.
As a result, he decided to place all of the items in the box back on store shelves to be resold.
He decided to place the items from a charity box back on the shelves?
I'm no expert on this, but having lived a certain amount of years, I
know how the Toys For Tots charity works. I would've thought anybody
would have. I guess not.
Barritt noted that the retailer is a regular benefactor to area
clubs and organizations, donating more than $50,000 annually. Wal-Mart
even offered a $1,000 cash grant to Toys for Tots this year.
"Not that that has anything to do with this situation. Only to say
that, as a corporation, we are very community minded. I'd hate to see a
discrepancy over a few toys change that perception in the eyes of the
public," Barritt said.
Well, it's nice that the Wal-Mart national headquarters have donated to
make up for the mistake. But personally, I'm more worried that this
might change people's feeling of confidence in donating to Toys for
Tots.
I think one of the reasons Toys For Tots is successful is the personal
nature of it. It's not just handing cash, or writing out a check, to
some organization that will select toys for children. It gives the
average person the joy of selecting a particular toy that will go to a
child that will appreciate it. So even though Wal-Mart national
headquarters may have donated financially
more than the individuals who put toys in that box did... the incident
has still stolen away that particularly good feeling people get from
knowing their selected & donated toy went to a child. Not to
mention that the toy a person (like me for example) might choose to
give to a child might be very different than what Wal-Mart or even a Toys For Tots organizer might deem appropriate to choose.
Despite that it's less convenient than buying a toy & putting it
right in a box in the store, if you're concerned about this, it
shouldn't stop you from donating. A lot of churches, employers, and
other non-commercial settings host Toys For Tots boxes, where a mix-up
like this is less likely to occur.
[Wed Dec 04-no permalink]Something
I like to do: Go to Target & try on their holiday headbands &
take pictures. Try them on the kids, anyway. The headbands are not
worth owning, but the pictures I get are priceless.
In October 2002, credit card giant Visa convinced a Las Vegas federal
court to prevent the small business JSL Corp. from using the term
"evisa" and the domain "evisa.com" for its website offering travel,
foreign language, and other multilingual applications and services. The
court ruled that the website--run by Joe Orr from his apartment--
"diluted" Visa's trademark, even though the site uses the word "visa"
in its ordinary dictionary definition, not in relation to credit card
services.
"Apple Computer, no matter how famous it becomes, cannot restrict
companies from using the word 'apple' to refer to the fruit," said EFF
Legal Director Cindy Cohn. "Yet the court held that the Visa credit
card company can restrict the ability of Americans to use the word
'visa' when they offer travel-related information and services."
Even our language has been colonized by corporations.....
[via ChillingEffects]
As the holiday season approaches, bargain shoppers not only have to
deal with getting through their gift lists and waiting in store lines,
but this year they will also have to contend with the chilling effects
of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown procedure. When
major retail stores including Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Staples, and
Office Max learned that the content from their upcoming sales circulars
were being posted on the Web, they sent their lawyers to get the
information taken down. These corporations claim not to have authorized
the release of their advertisements for what is known in the retail
industry as "Black Friday," the big shopping day after Thanksgiving
when stores expect to increase their profits at the end of the year.
Predecessor announcement to the Fat Wallet post below....
Eat in diners; Put a porch on your house;
Ride trains; Shop on Main Street;
Live in a walkable community.
from By The Way,
a magazine devoted to roadside diners. Primarily in New England, as they were
headquartered out of Worcester, MA. But now they've moved to PA.....
For the purposes of their preservation, By The Way defines a diner
as a prefabricated structure with counter service, hauled out to its site. We also
include structures built on-site that conform to diner styles, proportions, and intentions.
Wal-Mart sells 25 percent of the computer and video games purchased
annually in the United States, a share worth $1.58 billion in 2001,
according to the Interactive Digital Software Association and
NPDFunworld, the industry's data clearinghouse.
With that kind of clout, the discount retailer can exercise
considerable influence over the kinds of titles that find their way
into consumers' hands, simply by determining what goes on its shelves.
Since 2000, the chain has blocked sales of mature-rated titles to
minors, as defined by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board. An M
rating means a title is not recommended for children ages 16 and under.
However, Wal-Mart's policies go far beyond saying no to a 16-year old
at the cash register, say game developers and industry analysts. The
company's purchasing managers also review games before they're
published to ensure every aspect of the product -- from packaging to
content -- toes the line with the retailer's conservative policies.
"We're not going to carry any software with any vulgarity or nudity --
we're just not going to do it," Wal-Mart spokesman Tom Williams told
Reuters in October, a month before the game's release to the public.
That said, Wal-Mart has been known to carry some M-rated titles, as
long as they are big sellers. An example is Grand Theft Auto III, which
has prostitutes as characters. It sold more than 7 million copies.
Not only does Grand Theft Auto 3 have bloody graphic
violence & prostitutes as characters... One of the movie scenes
early on in the game depicts the mob boss's mechanic son, Joey, in his
garage with "his regular girl". She is poised on top of a tall
mechanic's tool chest, her breasts hanging nearly completely out of her
very low-cut top, and she's shifting around, grinding her
bottom into the chest she's sitting on, all the while making little
grunting moans, saying things like, "When are ya gonna nail me, Joey?"
And I can't be sure, but I swear I've seen a nipple in this game,
albeit a blurry one.
Wal-Mart seems bent on weilding control over & censoring the games of small video game companies who have little choice in the matter, if they want their game to sell. Yet they had no problem selling 7 million copies of Grand Theft Auto 3, in all it's violent & sexy glory, at nearly $50 dollars a pop.
As you may know, FatWallet
received Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices from
several major retail chains requesting that it remove sales prices
effective during their Day After Thanksgiving Sales. FatWallet
reluctantly removed the posts to avoid liability. Today, Megan Gray and
the Samuelson Clinic on behalf of FatWallet sent letters to the
retailers contesting their frivolous copyright assertions and demanding
payment, under Section 512(f) of the DMCA, for all damages, including
costs and attorneys' fees, incurred by FatWallet in addressing the
knowing and material misrepresentations of copyright protection.
In addition, FatWallet has demanded that Wal-Mart withdraw their
pending subpoena, under Section 512(h) of the DMCA, for identifying
information on the individual who posted Wal-Mart sales information. If
Wal-Mart does not withdraw FatWallet will seek to quash it in federal
court.
"We are being portrayed as a heartless giant which doesn't care about
the 20,000 lives lost due to Bhopal over the years," said Dow
President and CEO Michael D. Parker. "But this just isn't true. Many
individuals within Dow feel tremendous sorrow about the Bhopal
disaster, and many individuals within Dow would like the corporation
to admit its responsibility, so that the public can then decide on the
best course of action, as is appropriate in any democracy.
"Unfortunately, we have responsibilities to our shareholders and our
industry colleagues that make action on Bhopal impossible. And being
clear about this has been a very big step."
[from New York Times] NEW YORK (Reuters) - AOL Time Warner Inc.
(AOL.N) on Tuesday gave a grim advertising outlook for its America
Online Internet business and said it will focus on high-speed services
to try to turn the unit around.
Shares of the company, which also owns magazines, cable programming
channels and a movie studio, dropped nearly 12 percent, as America
Online forecast flat revenue for 2003, signaling it does not expect the
turnaround to take hold until 2004 at the earliest.
Ad sales started sagging shortly after AOL's deal to buy Time Warner
closed in early 2001. The two companies had touted the merger a way to
exploit the possibilities of Internet delivery of movies and news, but
so far little of that promise has panned out.
[via CNN] About 75 percent of consumers surveyed shopped over the
weekend, starting with "Black Friday," the traditional kickoff to the
holiday shopping season and one of the busiest shopping days of the
year, the latest installment of the National Retail Federation's
Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions survey said.
ShopperTrak RCT, which tracks retail data, said Saturday that Black Friday sales were up 12.3 percent from last year.
In its survey, ShopperTrak found that sales rose 9 percent Saturday
compared with the same day a year ago, bringing the two-day average
pace up 10.9 percent from the same days following Thanksgiving last
year. The two-day sales total rose to $12.6 billion from $11.4 billion
a year ago.
[from CNN] NEW YORK (Reuters) - Facing a mounting price war in the
fast-food industry, Burger King franchisees have agreed to offer the
flagship Whopper burger for 99 cents for a limited time, according to a
published report Monday.
Seventy percent of the company's franchisees voted in favor of the
plan, a move that could pressure rival McDonald's Corp. to mark down
its Big Mac sandwich, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Burger King parent Diageo PLC, which is trying to sell the company, has
recently said it may have to accept a price cut because of Burger
King's declining results.
MediaChannel.org
Santa has become the latest symbol of the ineluctable creep of American popular culture
and commerce around the world. In Austria, birthplace of "Silent Night," the rotund gent
in the red suit is provoking a Yuletide backlash.