The Free Press -- Independent News Media

Fri Feb 10 2012

Departments
National Issues

An invitation to a tea party
by Lucinda Marshall
December 6, 2005

Robert Greenwald's WAL-MART: The High Cost of Low Price is a potent and timely effort to awaken our inner conscious consumer. But the corporate ethics malfunction that we are experiencing goes far beyond Walmart, and pervades every aspect of our lives. There is nothing new about any of this. Arundhati Roy has worked tirelessly to point out that our spending habits play a significant part in supporting corporate empires and folks like Ralph Nader have been begging us to pay attention to our complicity in corporate plundering for years.

As we stumble through the holiday season, mindlessly maxing out our credit cards, it is high time that we re-examine our own complicit spending and consuming habits. The reality is that we do have the power to commit change in the way we spend our money, not only during the holiday season, but also in the purchasing choices we make every day. There is no shortage of companies that are poster children for the bad corporate citizen award. But perhaps we can chose a few that many of us use every day, and make the choice to pick alternative products until these companies take substantive action to change their destructive policies. With that in mind, here are some worthy targets for a national Buycott:

Coca Cola: You shouldn't be drinking this stuff anyhow, it's unhealthy. But there are a lot of other reasons not to drink Coca Cola products, the most important being the company's leading role in the commodification of water. Other reasons include safety issues at their plants and how they treat their employees, particularly in Columbia where Latin America's main bottler, Panamco is accused of hiring para-militaries to kill and intimidate union leaders and workers (www.killercoke.org). In India, the company's practices are linked to water shortages and pollution. See www.caja.org and www.indiaresource.org for more information.

General Electric: These folks, while claiming to bring good things to life, are a major military contractor and builder of nuclear power plants. That is bad but what is worse is that they also own NBC News. If you think their involvement in the energy and defense industries doesn't impact how these issues are reported on the news, I have some real nice land along the Gulf coast for you. Buy somebody else's light bulbs, preferably energy efficient ones.

ExxonMobil: Filled your tank lately? Well fill it somewhere else, CITGO is the best choice. CITGO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state owned oil company. Venezuela is run by a democratically elected government which uses the oil revenues to help the country's poor. They don't do that in Saudi Arabia. When energy companies refuse to invest in renewable resources, make obscene profits and give their CEO's bonuses with that many zeros, they don't need your business. You can find a CITGO station near you at http://www.citgo.com/CITGOLocator/StoreLocator.jsp. You can also sign a petition to hold Exxon accountable at http://www.moveonpac.org/exxon/.

DuPont: This company has known for decades that there is no safe level of exposure to Zonyl RP, their grease-resistant coating that is used for food packaging and that it could contaminate food at three times the federal safety standard. The company did not share this information with the FDA. As a result, the chemical is found in the bloodstream of virtually every American. The company has also failed to disclose known health effects of one of the ingredients in Teflon, which is used in a wide variety of products, from cookware to carpeting. No corporate entity should ever have the right to force consumers to be exposed to chemical toxins without their knowledge. While this is a somewhat more difficult company to buycott because their products are often part of other products, make every effort to avoid them.

Ford: Their fleet has the lowest fuel economy of any car manufacturer in America which leads to higher fuel usage and auto emissions. Tell your local Ford dealers that you demand fuel efficient cars. Check out www.actforchange.org for more information. And don't forget subways, buses, bikes and feet.

And of course,

Walmart: This company is destroying our nation one community at a time. It pays wages so low that their employees can't afford health care and need food stamps. Walmart discriminates against women and drives local companies out of business. Most ironically of all, despite the company's constant mantra of low prices, it is actually the leader in overcharging at the register. In her new book, Democracy's Edge, Frances Moore Lappe offers the best reason to avoid Walmart. According to Lappe, "a dollar spent in a locally owned business can generate three times more local economic activity than a dollar paid at a corporate chain." Go to www.wakeupwalmart.com for more information about this largest of predatory companies and take your business elsewhere, to locally owned merchants if possible.

There are plenty of other companies that don't deserve our business (see http://peace-action.inbyron.com/lists.html and http://www.boycott-republicans.com/ for some more good ideas). The point here is that not patronizing these particular offenders is virtually painless, making participation in a Buycott an easy choice for a wide cross-section of people.

A few centuries ago, the good people of Boston told the British where they could take their tea and shove it. It's high time that we hold another Tea Party and not the kind with white gloves or dainty china. By not giving these companies our business, we can give them the business and make it clear that we have had enough of their toxic, non-sustainable, socially reprehensible behavior.

---
Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, www.feministpeacenetwork.org. Her work has been published in numerous publications in the U.S. and abroad including, Awakened Woman, Alternet, Dissident Voice, Off Our Backs, The Progressive, Rain and Thunder, Z Magazine , Common Dreams and Information Clearinghouse.