It's always fascinating to watch corporations flail about cluelessly while society is in the throes of epochal change. One has to go no farther than Starbucks for an example; their recent crash course in societal change involved incurring the wrath of marijuana users, as it turns out a sizeable portion of their target demographic. Starbucks only took a couple of days to come around after pot users threatened a national boycott after spotting the coffee giant's logo on a virulently extremist anti-marijuana website. Huge behemoths like Starbucks and WalMart exercise their corporate policies with the implicit assumption that American society as a whole is in their corner, philosophically speaking. Playing the middle of the road is just smart business, after all. Nobody gets rich by alienating huge groups of consumers. But the interesting thing about social change is that sometimes the corporations get left in the dust. Starbucks was careful to make sure that didn't happen; I'm betting WalMart may not be so smart, if its atrocious labor policies are an accurate marker. During these periods of rapid and dizzying change – a perfect and current example being the huge shift in American attitudes toward marijuana - major corporations often reveal themselves to be big, dumb, lumbering beasts. That was exactly what WalMart, notorious for its corporate stance of social conservatism, looked like this week when it summarily sacked a cancer patient who had been “Associate of the Year†for using medical marijuana with his doctor's recommendation – in Michigan, a state where that is perfectly legal. WalMart, so far at least, hasn't budged. But the wave of revulsion and outrage over their treatment of Associate of the Year Joseph Casias hasn't crested yet, and it's going to get a lot bigger before it does. For now, WalMart seems completely oblivious that what just a few years ago was solid political ground under its feet is simply no longer there. The ritual corporate shaming of marijuana and its users – extending even to legal, medical users – is now so disconnected from science, medicine and mass perception that we can only watch in horror as companies like WalMart mistreat employees, fully confident they'll get away with it “just like they always have.†This moralistic and intolerant stance towards medical marijuana patients flies in the face of modern American sensibilities. More than 80 percent of Americans now support the medicinal use of pot. Casias worked at the WalMart store in Battle Creek, Michigan, for five years, winning employee of the year in 2008 despite suffering from sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor. At the recommendation of his doctor, Casias began using medical marijuana to ease his pain. “It helps tremendously,†Casias said. “I only use it to stop the pain. To make me feel more comfortable and active as a person.†Then he sprained he knee at work last November. During the routine drug screening that follows all workplace injuries, marijuana was detected in his system. Casias showed WalMart managers his Michigan medical marijuana card, but was fired anyway. “I was told they do not accept or honor my medical marijuana card,†Casias said. Casias said he had never shown up at work after smoking pot. “No, I never came to work under the influence, ever,†he said. “I don't think it's fair. Because I have a medical condition I can't work and provide for my family?†WalMart was completely unapologetic. “In states such as Michigan, where prescriptions for marijuana can be obtained, an employer can still enforce a policy that requires termination of employment following a positive drug screen,†said WalMart spokesman Greg Rossiter from company headquarters. “We believe our policy complies with the law, and we support decisions based on the policy,†Rossiter said. Casias has been collecting unemployment compensation since getting sacked in November, but this week he got more bad news: Now WalMart is even challenging his eligibility for benefits. So how do you teach a big, dumb beast? You hurt it in the only way it understands. It's time to teach WalMart that mistreating medical marijuana patients isn't just dumb and cruel; it is also very, very bad for business. The national WalMart boycott by medical marijuana supporters begins in 5… 4… 3… Source: News Junkie Post
2...1.... Well i have a wal-mart supercenter where i live. it is huge. ive always seen this as an opportunity to get my klepto on, but this morning i was inspired to do something else. Think about every wal-mart youve ever been inside. Wal-mart is essentially the perfect little view of the state of the union. Go to a wal-mart at 9 am, noon, 5pm, 9 pm, and 2 am (if anything just to ride around on the scooters n shit). At each time look around and notice the demographics of your local wal-mart. Today i enterd my local walmart with 50 pieces of paper, each with a picture of the sacred leaf, and a brief list of facts on marijuana itself. i also included a small rant on "The Persuit of Happiness". i grabbed some tape from the front of the store and made my rounds. I felt like i was prepping for a game of stratego or something. ok im stoned and rambling. Everyone print out some pro marijuana fliers and secretly put them up in the aisles of your local walmart! alotta fucking people go to walmart, however the number that can read has yet to be determined. ps: i paid for the tape on my way out with a smile
Hell yea dude! great story I never go to Wal-Mart so my boycott has begun already, but what they have done is plane wrong. Sadly, even if the ENTIRE population of Cannabis users boycotted Wal-Mart, it would be incredibly inconsequential to a multi-national corporation such as Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart has taken advantage of industrializing nations such as China and India to create cheap labor on top of their already terrible labor treatment here in America. I think handing out fliers, taping them up would be the most effective way to spread this anti-Wal-Mart movement. Lets not forget there are tons of people who dont go to Wal-Mart already for a plethora of reasons
its a good idea but it will never work nobody complied with the boycott of walmart over the unfair treatment of their staff theyre just too powerful and their shit is too cheap walmart is the biggest publicly owned corporation in THE WORLD i used to work for walmart, and was also fired for failing a drug test. (although i am not a medical marijuana patient. i was never high at work though) they dont give a flying fuck about anything except making money, and thats just what i saw from the customer service managers. i cant imagine how bad the douchebags in corporate are.
further, by boycotting WalMart, you can also choose to support the smaller, local businesses. yeah, it might be a little more expensive, but to be fair the shit that walmart has on their shelves is of such poor quality that it's actually (as i see it) cheaper in the long run to buy high quality merch at your local mom-n-pop store. shit, every pair of jeans i purchased at a wal mart ALWAYS ended up either wearing down (crap quality fabric) or stitching coming out (shitty manufacturing processes.) ... though, that was a while ago and as much as i like to save money, i've chosen to shop for all my clothing at the local thrift stores. it's SERIOUSLY cheaper, good quality (usually, gotta know what to look for) and for the fashoinistas in the crowd, you can get that "vintage" look real easy and cheap. some of the things i've found there? pink floyd tour shirt from the 60-70s... pair of real chuck taylors in great condition (the logo hadn't been rubbed off and worn down either (black...) and even a couple pairs of button-fly 501 levis from the 90s.) though, i will admit, i won't buy undergarments at a thrift store and i ALWAYS wash everything before it goes on my body. so, yeah, it's not like it has to be some grand sacrifice to stop shopping at wal mart... in the end, you'd be making out better than if you kept going there in the long run.
man i love thrift store. You can find nearly everything you need, except for undies, as long as you look. And it's better than recycling, because your extending the life of something that would have otherwise been thrown away.
Before thread become too anti-walmart and anti-corporation take note. we can bitch about the situation or find ways to raise awareness.
The corporations should already be aware that we exist. And furthmore, stickering Walmart, like Soldierof420, is taking action. I haven't shopped there for nearly 5yrs., and I posted this thread as my part. What can YOU do to raise awareness is the question. With a statement like that, you should be forthcoming with some ideas. I am willing to go along with damn near anything, if they are within reason.
well i had a great time stickering my walmart. i remember the Aqua Teen scare in boston a few years back, granted everyone who didnt know the show thought it was terrorism. if enough fliers just start "appearing" one local news station will pick up the story, then another. soon a larger media outlet will take notice. i mean who isnt tryna jump on a "People vs. Big Business" story these days? btw it really is a fun thing to do... get some friends, bless a bowl, and have some fun. there are even little war-game scenarios that can be played out: Ganjaman, roachclip and their friend bob enter a walmart: Ganjaman: "Alright men we have a mission of great importance put before us today" Roachclip: "Indeed sir, i will hit the pharmacy section first to focus on old people and alternative medicines" Ganjaman: "Excellent, Bob i want you to hit the entertainment section, we need the people with the money for $5k tvs on our side" Bob: "10-4!, Im gonna hit the sportmen section too! maybe we can relate "the right to consume" to "the right to bear arms" you know those nra fucks" Ganjaman: "Well outstanding, Im going to be hitting the Money center at the front of the store where everyone goes to cash their welfare checks so they can buy the weed that they cant buy with their food stamps" Team: "READY!!!! BREAK!!!!"
Since Wal Mart only cares about money and nothing else we should at least mention how much money they could make by all the marajuna being sold from the pharmacy when medical is legalized...
QFT complaining or talking about it is completely useless unless action is taken. i mean, are we a bunch of "lazy-assed, whiny stoners" or are we a collection of "motivated, driven and passionate cannabis conneseurs?"
companies like walmart are the main problem with this country, tons of goods in one place, made in other countries at cheap prices so they are sold for cheap prices, great right? except when everyone loses their jobs so those cheap prices are now all they can afford, FORCING them to buy from stores like walmart further increasing the problem. FUCK WAL MART
I do not agree with Walmarts practices towards their laborers, however I live in NYC. We do not have a SuperWalmart any less than 45 miles up towards Newburgh NY I think, it's right near Orange County Choppers. So whenever I'm down south visiting family, I get fucking loaded and love to travel around aimlessly through a super walmart, mostly just window shopping the asiles or buying racks of ribs to smoke while stoned etc. WalMart's produce are so dirt cheap it's a way for them to get you into the store and then buy their other items that they do profit off of. I've read WM marks up the prices on their produce a mere 3% of their cost, which makes it not really a financial cash cow for them, but they make their bank of material goods shipped in from over seasons. One thing I always seem to notice are Avocado's for 88 cents as compared 2 dollars a pop near me & tons of other retarded discounts we don't get up here. Plus the quality of their produce is top notch too, most of the stuff in the markets around here are always bruised and overpriced... but not wallyworld! I hate to say it but if I were to live in a general area with access to a SuperWally World, I'd probably be hitting it up twice a week, and bitching about their unfair business practices to and from my car but just like when you have a generous dealer, you'll be sitting happy in your car with a trunk full of goods and a few extra bucks in your pocket. Oh and 1 reason Wm is great? You can buy almost everything there to do a soil grow, and almost everything you could need for a dwc setup all under 1 giant flat roof. p.s. I've been to a few regular WM's and those are usually just dumps built in swamplands really, but I guess that's part of the charm.
I think a flyer would be great, i would definately start handing out flyers to people entering walmart telling them the story of the man with a brain tumor, so if someone could like maybe create or design a flyer that gets straight to the point and make it look like walmart is obviously the villain and we should boycott. If someone were to make a flyer and upload it, i would be willing to print some copies (with paper and printer cartidges i stole from walmart in the first place ) and give them to people entering the store
kinda yes... and kinda no. It isn't Walmarts "fault" with the concept of having goods produced overseas and shipped for sale here. Dating back to the East India Trading Co. under British rule and probably back to the times of the Egyptians people have imported cheaper and rare goods to their own communities and then charging a markup on them. Anyways my point was going to be this, sure WalMart figured out a way to do what they do on a massive scale that only brought more awareness to the situations created by that style of commercialism. But, let's just say I wanted to buy a Hannah Montana t shirt at WM. They have it on a rollback sale price of $7.88. Check the label and sure enough it was produced in China or Thailand, then thrown in a shipping container and shipped into one of the numerous ports of the US&A and then it makes its way to your local wally world store. Ofcourse the smaller "mom & pop shop" that Wal Marts have decimated all over the country couldn't sell the same T shirt, made in the SAME FACTORY for that low price, instead they'll sell it for 12 bucks let's just say. In the end both of the goods are being produced overseas in the same factories where your dollars go as compared to "keeping it in the US&A". So you say, "well bring back the manufacturing jobs back here and out of those countries! Dey Took our JOBS!" which you're correct about, buuuuuut take that factory from China making the T shirt, and move it to West bumfuck Alabama, Mianus, CT or East Handover, MD it doesn't matter where really because OUR FINAL PRICES WILL INCREASE, because instead of a company being able to produce a T shirt for 1 dollar and then selling it to WalMart for 2 and then, in turn selling it to us for 7.88. That same shirt made in the USA, when you factor in things such as a fair minimum wage and the overall higher costs of production and doing/running a business in the states, that same quality shirt with the same design etc will possibly cost you double, so now it costs you 15 bucks for the shirt that would have cost you 7.88 if it were produced in China. It's a losing proposition. it's something that the US car manufacturers learned starting back in the 70's when foreign companies like Honda & Toyota started coming to the forefront of popular mechanics. A Honda Civic in Japan costs far less than what it retails for in the US, we put tariffs/taxes on all imports that atleast in the car markets brought up the price of imports with the hope of selling more domestically made cars since after taxes the prices were much closer than prior to the import taxes. It's not just Walmart, or Car companies that rely on cheap imports to fatten their wallets, it's everyday people and like "foreign oil" we've grown over the past 50+ years to be truly dependent on those cheaper imports since it increases our own value of life and it's cost have become a substantial part of our everyday lives as necessities. Hell, American Cattle Farmers successfully secured a ban on importation of Canadian Beef when the "Mad Cow" scare started popping up years back, over exaggerating the scope of things, creating fear in consumers on the imports, etc, it drove up the cost of meat in the stores due to it's limited availability, but more importantly for the US Cattle farmers, it basically made them the exclusive supplier of meat for the US and raised their profits since more than 20% of the marketplace had been banned from import. Those same farmers last year cried foul when South Korea banned all US Cattle imports based off of protests from their citizens over sensationalized fears that US beef was tainted because of hormone therapy they're given, so now they eat Chinese imported Beef out there and our farmers get no profits. Every type of industry unfortunately has a way or means that the final price can be undercut, legally, illegally, moral or an unmoral way and those "savings" get trickled down along the way until there is only pennies left for the workers to be paid to meet the cheap overhead goals of the manufacturers. Anyone ever stop and think maybe WalMart is simply charging items for what they are "worth"(by selling most items at retail for marginal markup in prices compared to their cost) and not necessarily an inflated supply & demand cost, or maybe all the MOM & POPS they put out of business, were in the business of overcharging you for items based on what they "decided" it was worth? How "much" should an Avocado be worth? Or an Affliction glitter bedazzled T shirt? 45$? 50$? Or a television? I could go on and on. I recently saw a special on China's ongoing industrial revolution on CNBC, they did a segment with Nabisco, who recently began selling Oreo's in China, even making commercials on TV to teach the Chinese "how" you're supposed to twist open and eat an Oreo. A package of cookies that would go for $1.50 here, is imported and sold for something like 35 cents out there, because in the marketplace out there it's what they can sell the cookies for and they sell so well that that I believe the show said their sales in China were only outsold in America and they expect China to be a bigger marketplace and profits too compared to the US within the next 5 years in overall business. So why is this American company selling their item's for more than 50% less than they do here and STILL make a profit? (They like WalMart make their profits by selling in large quantities with a small markup value.) It all makes no sense in the end except big business like to rape consumers as much as they can as long as they can get away with it and only sometimes will they lube themselves up first before raping your wallet.`
Walmart is one of the most consistently successful companies in the world, there is no way their management is stupid. I'm not saying I agree with their business policy but in no way does that make them stupid. Bottom line oriented, yes.
You have a good point, but there is something wrong with your statement. When people started loosing their jobs to foreign labor, when the companies moved over seas, and the jobs went elsware, etc., the prices of those same goods did not change. These companies that were producing those t-shirts, went under because companies like walmart found they could increase their profit margin by buying a t-shirt from china instead of from billy bob down in akansas. I have done the papers in a retail business and I know the markup for resale goods. You cannot tell me that they only make 3% off their goods. Common markup is 200-300% of the original price. And walmart, with all their buying power, is making at least 200% markup.
you guys want this to happen then you need to post like 5 different flyers in this thread that people can easily print. If you post some good shit ill add some graphics that will draw in the general populas and then re-upload them. We ccan post these in walmarts and even our local malls... One thing we cant do is make these things look like theyre 100% pro marijuana...we have to just show the truth from the lies and not try to make it look amazing just normal and harmless. The problem with most weed propaganda is they make it super bias and the pro marijuana always makes it sound "too good" if we make it sound like what it really is we might have a chance of hitting the news and getting some real knowledge out there.
I am designing a "Legalize IT" sticker I want to start pasting everywhere. I found a website that will do them really cheap. I'll send you a link to a jpg to print if you want. I'll get it up on the weekend. printrunner.com does 500 stickers of your design for like 40 bucks.
I take serious offense to you bringing the NRA into this discussion... The 2nd Amendment is NOT up for debate, it is a right of every RESPONSIBLE adult in this country to own and learn to use a gun for any reason they see fit, from self defense, to target practice, to hunting. If not for guns, this country wouldn't even exist... If not for private citizens learning to use guns, we'd all be singing "God Save the Fucking Queen" instead of "God Bless America".... with that, I'm Agnostic... so pay no attention to my mention of God... but the point should be clear. Everything else you've said... ROCK ON BRAH... By the way... this is what I have so far in Photoshop... Someone give me the content to put on the fliers, and I will finish up and post them here for all of us to distribute...