"Yahoo! news Sat Nov 29,10:27 AM ET
ORANGE CITY, Fla. - A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her.

"She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them, `Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!'' Ellzey said some shoppers tried to help VanLester, and one employee helped Ellzey reach her sister, but most people just continued their rush for deals. "All they cared about was a stupid DVD player," she said Saturday.

[....]

ROGERS --While others are rushing to stores Friday to kick off the traditional first day of Christmas shopping, Justin Barnum, a University of Arkansas student in Fayetteville, will be putting up fliers on campus protesting such conspicuous consumption.

"I see a lot of problems with the way that people consume, and this is just one way that I feel maybe I can reach another person and make them realize how much pain can be caused through consumerism," Barnum said.

He won't be alone. Barnum is taking part in "Buy Nothing Day" Friday, a world-wide protest that started several years ago in New York by a group called Whirl-Mart Ritual Resistance, said organizer Andrew Lynn of Troy, N.Y.

"Buy Nothing Day was really started by a Canadian magazine called Adbusters, a progressive journal dealing with consumption issues among consumers," Lynn said in an e-mail. "They started this holiday (the day after Thanksgiving), called Black Friday. What they're pushing for is to resist consumption for that one day."

According to the Whirl-Mart Web site, what began as a single happening in Troy has evolved into a ritual activity performed across the United States and around the world, often at Wal-Mart stores and other large chains. During the ritual, groups gather and silently push empty shopping carts through the aisles of stores.

Barnum said he came in contact with the movement while working on his undergraduate degree at Hendrix College in Conway.

"Buy Nothing Day is just a piece of the anti-globalization movement, the environmental movement, and finds its followers and adherents among those of us who are fed up with the way modern society is taking advantage of all of us for the pleasure of a greedy few. This is just a way that I am able to maintain my sanity," Barnum said.

The movement has been written up in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other major newspapers. According to a July 2002 article in the Austin Chronicle, some Whirl-Mart protests have received negative response. The newspaper wrote that during a March 2002 "performance" at a Wal-Mart store in Austin, Texas, store managers grabbed Whirlers' shopping carts, told them to disperse and threatened to confiscate one protester's camera. The store's general manager also reportedly followed the group into the parking lot, scolding them for "causing trouble," the newspaper said.

"We get reactions all the time from management at particular stores," Lynn said. "I don't think we've penetrated the system enough to get any type of reaction from (Wal-Mart) headquarters."

Sharon Weber, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart in Bentonville, said the company was not familiar with Buy Nothing Day or the group behind it.

"Because of our size, we're often the target of criticism by special interest groups that have agendas," she said. "We enjoy having customers in our store whether they're buying anything or not."

Dr. Helene Cherrier, who taught international and retail marketing at the UA before moving to London, England, said she found out about Buy Nothing Day while doing research for her dissertation. Cherrier said she became "very interested" in the protest because of her own personal beliefs.

"I have been involved in expanding consumers' awareness on the importance of waste in consumption practices," Cherrier said in an e-mail message. "On Nov. 28, I will not consume. In London, they've created a 'puppet shopper' that yells at people how wonderful it is to consume and waste and do not care ... It is quite sarcastic, yet it seems to attract people's attention. I will probably construct my own puppet and join some members (of the protest)."

Michael Paulukonis of Pennsylvania said he started taking part in Buy Nothing Day last year. He sees the event as "a cross between protest and performance."

Paulukonis said he's never run into any problems in the stores he entered.

"I like to think of myself as a protest artist," said Paulukonis, who works in information technology. "At my post, I try not to pick on one chain. The real reason behind Whirl-Mart is not to point fingers at companies ... but to recognize, as consumers, that we are the people shopping there. All that money Wal-Mart and the others have is because we go there and buy things."

This year, Paulukonis will be targeting a Wal-Mart store in northeastern Pennsylvania, he said.

While Buy Nothing Day has participants all over the country and overseas, no Wal-Mart stores in Arkansas have been targeted so far, Lynn said.

BBC on-line:
Americans are increasingly turning to the world of popular culture to name their children, a study has found. Children have been named after big brands as diverse as beauty company L'Oreal, car firm Chevrolet and designer clothes company Armani. There are even two little boys, one in Michigan and one in Texas, called ESPN after the sports channel.

Psychology professor Cleveland Evans discovered the trend after surveying US social security records for 2000.

[....]

Send e-mail to: apikul@timesshamrock.com

posted by Michael | Thursday 20 November 2003 9:53 PM
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by MEGAN ROWLANDS
Weekender Correspondent

Just like millions of other consumers, Michael Paulukonis will head to Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Unlike most though, he won't be purchasing anything. Instead Paulukonis will push an empty cart through the bustling crowds, past the towering Chicken Elmo displays. In silence, he'll swerve around the Kathie Lee Collection, steer past the discounted DVDs and add nothing to his cart. Paulukonis, a 33-year-old activist from Throop, will buy nothing on Black Friday. And he is not alone. He's just one of many who celebrate International Buy Nothing Day.

In Tokyo, London and New York City, participants will stage an "oral assault" on consumerism, vomiting on store displays, ATM machines and from mall balconies. Outside shopping malls in Seattle, activists will set-up a credit card-cut-up booth. Some will dress up as consumer sheep and protest Starbucks. Some will open up a shop on a street corner and just sell, well, nothing.

Why? Because they're calling out for consumer awareness on the most over consumptious day of the year: Black Friday. On November 29, the day after Thanksgiving, shoppers are expected to purchase more than $210 billion worth of goods, marking the official kickoff of the holiday shopping season.

The name Black Friday comes from its ability to push merchants' books out of the "red" zone and into the profitable "black" zone, according to CNNMoney.com.

And what better day to protest binge consumerism than Black Friday? Buy Nothing Day is a worldwide movement that got its start 12 years ago in the Pacific Northwest, according to the Adbusters web site, a magazine that sponsors Buy Nothing Day as one of its campaigns. Originally started as a plea for simple living and an alternative to inflated spending, Buy Nothing Day has gained momentum and become an international movement, a revolution aimed at curbing over consumption globally. Its message is still the same, but its messengers have multiplied and taken a plethora of anti-consumer actions to the streets.

One of the prime operatives of Buy Nothing Day is to pry open the eyes of as many people as possible and show them that as consumers, we are all being taken advantage of. To do this every season Adbusters approach the major networks to purchase an "opt-not-to-shop TV uncommercial", and every season ABC, NBC and CBS refuse, claiming the ad would "threaten the current economic policy of the United States." This upcoming Buy Nothing Day, Adbusters will air their ad on "CNN Headline News", the one network that has accepted their money since 1996.

Although Black Friday is just as notorious a day in Northeastern Pennsylvania as it is in every other city, locally, we hear nothing of Buy Nothing Day. While it's common to see hundreds of street corners in big cities or college campuses plastered with Buy Nothing Day posters, this valley is drier than the Sahara.

Paulukonis, along with fellow activist L. Dunn Grossman, who operates RallyofOne.org, an outreach and education web site, is attempting to change this.

Both Paulukonis and Grossman, along with a few friends, will take part in a Whirl-Mart Jam on Buy Nothing Day. The Whirl-Mart movement, backed by the slogan, "our empty carts and silent energy subtly invade the cathedral of consumption," is a peaceful protest aimed at superstores and national chains such as Target, Toys-R-Us and Wal-Mart.

"It's a non-confrontational, nonviolent, less offensive form of action," explains Paulukonis. "We're reclaiming public space."

As an avid supporter of local and independent business, Paulukonis says that mega -chains like Wal-Mart suck revenue out of the community and drive business away from smaller, family-owned establishments.

Grossman, 30, agrees. "I am going to buy absolutely nothing from a store that contributes absolutely nothing to our community and offers nothing that comes close to opportunity for its workers," she says. "For all the Wal-Marts, TJ Maxxs and Marshalls, there are only a few people that benefit from them. What's most aggravating is knowing how poorly they treat their workers and where they get their products and how long we've allowed them to get away with it. We really do have the power to politely, but firmly say, 'thanks, but no thanks.'"

Paulukonis and Grossman see themselves as a rare breed in a matrix of mega stores and mini malls. Refusing to digest what's fed to them, they are each, essentially, a rally of one, fighting what they view as a capitalist monster, one less credit card swipe away from over consumption.

For more info on Whirl-mart or Buy Nothing Day, contact Michael Paulukonis at xraysmalevich or visit his website at www.watermelonpunch.com/whirl

[....] I may be a knucklehead and a hopeless idealist, but you'd have to stick a gun in my jock to get me to enter a Sprawl-Mart. [....]

I needed some winter gear last week. Where did I buy it? At the Army/Navy store in our downtown. I needed two spray bottles and a new wood bit. Wanna guess where I got 'em at? Main Hardware. Near East brand (the Cadillac of rice pilaf) rice pilaf and some Green Giant canned veggies? BILO! And no, I didn't hand over any spare change out front. Happy Meal for Gage? Downtown Wilkes-Barre. Chips Ahoy! for Gage? Oh Yes on North Main street. Are they cheaper at Price Chopper? YES! Do I shop there? NO! Automotive parts? A&A Auto! Downtown Wilkes-Barre wins again! Toys for the kids in Iraq? Family Dollar! Wilkes-Barre! And where does the mayor go to purchase Preparation H? Wilkes-Barre Township! Sprawl-Mart! Whoops! Sorry. Forget I mentioned it. The fact that the downtown doesn't vote slipped my mind. Then again, the downtown voted a while ago. With it's feet.

Sprawl-Mart has those super low "slave labor" prices and we've got a near empty downtown. Am I expecting too much from people? Probably. [The new mayor] is committed to revitalizing our downtown, but if we're going to continue to turn our back on it-it'll never come back.

"A gallon-sized jar of whole pickles is something to behold. The jar is the size of a small aquarium. The fat green pickles, floating in swampy juice, look reptilian, their shapes exaggerated by the glass. It weighs 12 pounds, too big to carry with one hand. The gallon jar of pickles is a display of abundance and excess; it is entrancing, and also vaguely unsettling. This is the product that Wal-Mart fell in love with: Vlasic's gallon jar of pickles.

Wal-Mart priced it at $2.97--a year's supply of pickles for less than $3! 'They were using it as a 'statement' item,' says Pat Hunn, who calls himself the 'mad scientist' of Vlasic's gallon jar. 'Wal-Mart was putting it before consumers, saying, This represents what Wal-Mart's about. You can buy a stinkin' gallon of pickles for $2.97. And it's the nation's number-one brand.'

Therein lies the basic conundrum of doing business with the world's largest retailer. By selling a gallon of kosher dills for less than most grocers sell a quart, Wal-Mart may have provided a ser-vice for its customers. But what did it do for Vlasic? The pickle maker had spent decades convincing customers that they should pay a premium for its brand. Now Wal-Mart was practically giving them away. And the fevered buying spree that resulted distorted every aspect of Vlasic's operations, from farm field to factory to financial statement.

Indeed, as Vlasic discovered, the real story of Wal-Mart, the story that never gets told, is the story of the pressure the biggest retailer relentlessly applies to its suppliers in the name of bringing us 'every day low prices.' It's the story of what that pressure does to the companies Wal-Mart does business with, to U.S. manufacturing, and to the economy as a whole. That story can be found floating in a gallon jar of pickles at Wal-Mart."

[....]

CNN.com - Oct. 20, 2003
MISSOULA, Montana (AP) -- The nuptials of Ford Lund and Rae Bauer was strictly a company affair -- a Wal-Mart wedding. 'We met here, we work here, we bought our cake here and our rings. Wal-Mart is our family,' said Lund. Lund, 74, and Bauer, 48, met as co-workers in the garden department. Their wedding Saturday was on the lawn in front of the store.

Fellow employees, granted a special break to attend, cheered and applauded when the newlyweds kissed. Then the couple had their wedding photos taken at the store's portrait studio.

'They met at Wal-Mart, and basically their whole relationship is based on Wal-Mart,' said Andrea Bauer, bridesmaid and daughter of the bride.

'This couldn't have happened to two better people,' said store manager Bill Smith. 'They care about the other associates in the store and either one of them would help anyone out.' A wedding at Wal-Mart just seemed like the perfect fit.

[....]

November 10, 2003

*Scandal: Wal-Mart, P&G Involved in Secret RFID Testing *
/American consumers used as guinea pigs for controversial technology/

Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble conducted a secret RFID trial involving Oklahoma consumers earlier this year, the Chicago Sun Times revealed on Sunday. Customers who purchased P&G's Lipfinity brand lipstick at the Broken Arrow Wal-Mart store between late March and mid-July unknowingly left the store with live RFID tracking devices embedded in the packaging. Wal-Mart had previously denied any consumer-level RFID testing in the United States.

"It proves what we've been saying all along," says Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN). "Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble and others have experimented on shoppers with controversial spy chip technology and tried to cover it up. Consumers and members of the press should be upset to learn that they've been lied to."

The Sun Times also reported that a live video camera trained on the shelf allowed Procter & Gamble employees, sometimes hundreds of miles away, to observe the Lipfinity display and consumers interacting with it.

"This trial is a perfect illustration of how easy it is to set up a secret RFID infrastructure and use it to spy on people," says Albrecht. "The RFID industry has been paying lip service to privacy concerns, calling for notice, choice and control. But companies like P&G, Wal-Mart and Gillette have already violated all three tenets when they thought nobody was looking. This is exactly why we oppose item-level RFID tagging and have called for mandatory labeling legislation."

[....]

Better latte than never: Starbucks coming to area
©Scranton Times Tribune 2003: By Jeremy R. Cooke - 11/12/2003

Your freshly brewed Venti Caramel Frappuccino will be ready soon.

Seattle-based Starbucks Corp. is bringing its first premium-coffee retail store to Northeastern Pennsylvania. 'We're slated to open our first company-operated store in Dickson City sometime later this winter,' Starbucks spokeswoman Shannon Findberg said Tuesday, adding it will feature a drive-through window for coffee and pastries on the go.

Dickson City has granted the company a $275 permit for signs to advertise a new location off Commerce Boulevard across the parking lot from Target. Starbucks will move into one of four new storefronts under construction on the site, borough zoning officer James Damski said.Borough Council granted Daniel Siniawa's development company a subdivision approval for the parcel in September, but Mr. Siniawa typically defers comment on store openings to the retailers that are arriving.

Ms. Findberg said Starbucks examines several factors when deciding where to expand, and listens especially to those who call the company's hot line to ask for a new location.'Customer requests play a significant role in how we decide to open new locations in Pennsylvania,' she said. Before now, area coffee drinkers have had to drive dozens of miles to get a fresh Starbucks fix. The nearest retail locations are in Doylestown, Vestal, N.Y., and Rockaway, N.J. Fans instead can buy coffee by the pound in area stores.

The well-known brand has started to infiltrate smaller metro areas, where people seem to be salivating for its arrival. The Patriot-News reported Sunday about 200 people lined up to greet the opening of the Harrisburg area's first Starbucks.

Luke Damiani, a manager at Northern Light Espresso Bar, which faces the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Scranton, said his shop may see a little bit of decrease in business initially after the new Starbucks opens.'The new thing in town is usually popular,' he said. But Mr. Damiani said he does not expect that decrease to last long, with the drive to Dickson City and downtown business customers within walking distance. 'I'm not worried,' he said.

In October, Starbucks reported it has 7,225 locations worldwide and an annual revenue of $4.1 billion. In July, the corporation completed its acquisition of Seattle Coffee Co., which includes the Seattle's Best Coffee brand.

CNN.com Nov. 8, 2003
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- McDonald's says it deserves a break from the unflattering way the latest Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary depicts its job opportunities. Among some 10,000 new additions to an updated version released in June was the term 'McJob,' defined as 'low paying and dead-end work.'

In an open letter to Merriam-Webster, McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo said the term is 'an inaccurate description of restaurant employment' and 'a slap in the face to the 12 million men and women' who work in the restaurant industry. The company e-mailed the letter to media organizations Friday, and it also was published in the Nov. 3 edition of an industry trade publication. Cantalupo also wrote that 'more than 1,000 of the men and women who own and operate McDonald's restaurants today got their start by serving customers behind the counter.' McDonald's, the world's largest restaurant chain, has more than 30,000 restaurants and more than 400,000 employees.

Walt Riker, a spokesman for McDonald's, said the Oak Brook, Illinois-based fast-food giant also is concerned that 'McJob' closely resembles McJOBS, the company's training program for mentally and physically challenged people. 'McJOBS is trademarked and we've notified them that legally that's an issue for us as well,' Riker said. A message left at Merriam-Webster's headquarters in Springfield, Massachussetts, was not immediately returned Friday evening."