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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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Okay,
So I have this idea and I am wondering who would like to help out.
Some of you have already said you wanted to be in on this - the rest of you, please let me know.
For RallyofOne and another local organization here, I am trying to
get a complete list of alternative shopping options to the Walmart's of
our area.
Here is the first step:
I plan to pick a day over the next week or so and head into the Dickson
City super store (super, like it has a cape or something) with pen in
hand.
Take each department one at a time and make a list of EVERY product
they sell, not every brand, just every product - and the lowest price
they offer.
Once all that info is compiled - bring the info back here and
research every local business that competes with a Walmart department.
I'd like to see whether it is possible to provide people with a list of
locally owned places where they can buy EVERY item they can find at
Walmart
This may not work - we may find that Walmart has stuff no one else can
even dream of - but I would really like to try. Getting the local
information will be harder - but the visit to Walmart can actually be
fun - and it would be really fun and much faster if we had a group
going, with at least 2 people per department.
So - if any of you are interested in spending a day or weeknight doing this - let me know.
There may be pizza involved if that helps.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that a class-action case makes sense,
since Wal-Mart's 3,500 US stores are more or less identical.
The company fosters a strong common culture - a culture, the complaints say, of routine discrimination against female staff.
'Women have been paid less than men at Wal-Mart every year since
1976, in every managerial position,' Brad Seligman, a lawyer for the
workers, told the judge.
'Every store is closely supervised and every store is connected in a real-time way, and all management are trained together.
'This is not a case involving disparate autonomous stores.'
People used to get thrown in jail for the very things
credit card companies can now do legally. While banks and money markets
are paying pittances in interest, it's common for the annual percentage
rate on your friendly Visa or Mastercard to approach 30 percent.
"Wal-Mart employees have a reputation for being cheerful
and now Playboy.com is giving them a chance to smile for the camera,"
Playboy said in a press release. "Playboy.com wants Wal-Mart's sexiest
assets to roll back their clothes and pose nude."
[....]
"I'm not aware that Playboy put out something like this
(referring to the press release)," said Tom Williams, spokesman for
Wal-Mart. "But this is not a ballpark that Wal-Mart wants to play in."
These special sections, known as advertorials, are as glossy as any
editorial spread, with high-level photography, writing and design.
While special advertising sections are nothing new, the heightened
production values are. Magazine companies are investing more time and
money — and sometimes their editorial staffs — to see that special
sections like these leave advertisers feeling a little special as well.
"Special sections have always been around, but now they have gone on
steroids," said Michael A. Clinton, executive vice president and chief
marketing officer at Hearst Magazines.
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