Wal-Town
An interactive platform for community driven content on social issues + activism.
Written by
Sergeo
February 15, 2007
The long drive to Toronto and then Hamilton from Montreal, is the busiest corridor in Canada. It is the most commercial stretch of land, this side of the flag. It is here you see the continuous development of big box wasteland and the ever popular American and, to a lesser extent, Canadian corporations. The brand names and commercial logos pop up with such regularity the roadside takes on an advertising slideshow feel. Where once billboards filled the gaps between populations, the physical store/restaurant/gas station becomes the advertisement
In Hamilton the Labour Students Association is hosting the event, and brings out a huge crowd. Lots of students from McMaster´s University, and local labour activist populate the audience. We meet up with Lincoln from the UFCW. Lincoln has been coordinating the screenings in Ontario for both myself and WalTown. He has a cold but still manages to speak to the union issues. Also he asks people to call on TVO (TV Ontario) to email them and ask them to broadcast the film, as we still need an English broadcaster. They are still debating if they will acquisition the film. So if you are reading this and you are from Ontario email TVO (shit email them if your are from the Bahamas) and tell them you want to see WalTown on the teley.
The debate rounds up with a young girl who came to see the film with her parents and is spearheading a petition calling on Lee Scott (CEO of WalMart) to fix the companies notorious record with international sweatshops. She had written a letter that was asking WM to raise their low standards on human rights, to allow independent inspections of factories that supply for WM and to grand workers the basic right to collectivization.
It was nice to see young activism in action, made me want to pick up the camera and start all over again… ok not quite.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Written by
Sergeo
February 14, 2007
I read an article in the Edmonton Journal last year detailing the amount of water needed to produce a pair of blue jeans (something like 70 liters). In looking for the article, I found a number of other links that add to the concern anyone would have regarding the destruction of local ecosystems and the environment because of our consumer habits.
This article explains how making blue jeans requires water to dye the jeans and the resulting ‘tailings pond’ or tailing creek that gives any viewer pause regarding the blueness that water should and should not be:
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=06-P13-00038&segmentID=8
In another article, a similar analysis of how we get our fashion fix– it seems that we mortals are not the only ones who suffer from for being beautiful: http://www1.umn.edu/ships/ethics/jeans.htm
How do we make the connection between what we purchase and consume, and the infrastructure needed to produce, move, and sell any one consumer item? When a bird or frog or animal requires water, they behave with instinct and need. If we don´t provide an environment that is adequate for their needs too, we must inevitably take responsibility for the deaths of millions of animals. Every day, over 100 species of plant and animal become extinct. How long can this reduction in the value of genetic diversity take place? Can human life exist with all other life on Earth reduced to a few species?
Comment (1)
Category : Uncategorized
Written by
Sergeo
February 13, 2007
The Media has been holding strong, since this tour started I have been doing an interview a day with the mainstream and student press, sometimes three. The best is live radio interviews. There is a sense of immediacy to the process. The intimate raw feed creates a performance environment. The clarity of thought and natural responsiveness to interactive questioning excites me. The idea that an audience is ethereally hidden behind the electric cables, hard microphones, and radio waves make it easier to deliver. The fact that the audience is not physically present does not make them any less real. One is directly aware of the masses tuned in to your vocal thoughts.
Of all the professions I admire, the CBC radio host is one that holds some of the highest tenets of occupational excellence. A job that defines nationhood, reaches some 3000 miles of geographical diversity. A job that connects us with our very disconnectedness. The CBC host is someone that we identify with implicitly. I was nursed on CBC radio as a child. The jingles and musical IDs are part of my audio repertory.
So when I am invited to talk on CBC live, it is an honor and an opportunity that I think has bigger proportions that television. During the tour I did three in-studio interviews on CBC radio, and each time I felt the issues were strongly debated, or at least addressed. Then, last Wednesday me and Ezra were invited to be on CTV Canada AM morning show live. The stress of visual approval, the fear of fucking up on national television can be debilitating, and counter productive to having the opportunity to reach people, so conscious are we of the visual importance of what is being said. At times I felt that I needed a prop, or an extravagant costume to get the idea across that Wal-Mart has negative consequences to Canadians, as if just talking about the issues was not going to register with CTV´s 3 million viewers.
Such is the profound difference between Radio and TV, that I feel intellectually sufficient to talk on radio and visually insufficient to meet on TV. The thought I am left with is that I am accepted on Radio although less audience is reached, and judged more on TV though more people see us.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Written by
Sergeo
February 9, 2007
We hop on what feels like miniature planes to fly to Calgary then Edmonton, no more then a dozen seats to spare, the co-pilot does the flight attendant explaining, it is a lighter plane and the wind makes the wings flop around like a schizophrenic butterfly. But there is an intimate feel to the adventure, less assembly line, more individualistic.
Flat land opens up more flat land and the city containing the former largest indoor mall (china has built three, and counting, bigger ones) stretches out of the highway. We are greeted with a hour long drive of big box land, what feels like an endless stretch of consumer wonderland, large marquees screaming out industrial shopping complex after shopping complex, Edmonton is boxed in by the beast.
The screening takes place at the center of town, at the art house, Metro Cinema, a lone defender of independent art cinema. There has been wonderful coverage in the press, radio and on television, global even shows up to interview me for the late night news.
But the audience is not as full as we had hoped. It seems either Edmontonians are not interested in the issues or they where especially tied up that night. (the later event two nights later, fills up) Friday is not the movie night it seems
However we are still surprised by the debate, it seems that every where we go with this film people are willing to talk, and at length, I am always surprised at the amount of interest the film generates in discussion, even when I think the audience is antagonistic to the issue, or unimpressed with the film. Everyone seems to have a personal relationship with the store. It is something everyone has an opinion on, love, hate or convenience, Wal-Mart is in their life.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Written by
Sergeo
February 6, 2007
I am quite tired, the road has taken a toll on my energy level and the lack of sleep combined with the continuous flight plan, makes it hard for me to keep up a spirited and enthusiastic discussion, but I am surprised by the full house in southern Alberta´s hard rock town of Lethbridge, the event is hosted by the LPIRG, at a small gallery in the student union building of the university of L. As it packs out with students, professors and concerned citizens with over a hundred very vocal audience members.
The discussion turns to mobilizing a local team to combat the third Wal-Mart application (a second one is being built). LPIRG is looking to volunteers, and has capital to expend for dedicated projects. The night is a lucrative one for the Wal-Towners, 17 DVDs sold and large donations given, the Albertans are exceptionally supportive. The night is a rush for us and we are hugely optimistic about Edmonton.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
The turbulence hits hard as the plane breaches the cliff wall and shortly after the rocky airliner lands on the rock of St Johns. This is the barren out-post of Canadiana, the city of supermarkets, big box progress and the highest concentration of Wal-Mart´s per-capita in all of Canada. I have raced across Canada leaving Ezra and Rob to fend for themselves in the Yukon while I head to the east coast to meet up with the eastern team, namely Jason Gondziola and Tim McSorley.
There is a storm in the works and Jason picks me up at the airport an hour before the film is to screen. It is set to play at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, hidden in the bowels of academia. The audience turn out reflects the weather. It seems the location of the film and the storm are keeping people at home.
It is nice to be with Jason and Tim, a more relaxed approach to film touring, the discussion is equally laid back, as if nothing is more casual then talking about the 21st century political economy. And the audience joins into an hour debate about the issues of isolation and access, how Wal-Mart is seen as progress and modernization in a rural island community. From the prospective of a community on the fringe it is understandable how anything big is respected. Its just too bad it has to be a big exploitable store.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Salmon Arm has become the popular retirement home for wealthy Albertan seniors, after Kelowna having reached retirement saturation capacity, it is also where my brother was born, and I spent three years in, and seven years surrounding, Salmon Arm. Today the demographics make it an appealing target for a mega big box complex lead by Wal-Mart (currently not located in the region) and senior are appealing to Wal-Mart to build in their new neighborhood. Unfortunately the locals have the most to lose.
As it stands the attempt by Wal-Mart to build on Native land has failed, and now the municipal government is expecting an application any time soon from Wal-Mart. In the meantime locals have been in contact with a business association called Smart Growth, a confederation of business, real-estate, and legal groups involved in providing advise to communities where Wal-Mart plans to enter. The policies recommended are much like the book I just skimmed through in the Airport (see previous blog), do not compete with WM directly, diversify, concentrate on service, and out run your neighbours.
The feeling of inevitability is hard to shake on this cross Canada tour, even with the determined spirit of passionate individuals in all the towns we have been to, it is hard to see the giant slowing down unless the public starts challenging the status quo. There is direct and lasting victories but the continued growth of WM is exponential, six activist are not enough to hold greed at bay.
The screening in Salmon Arm is a wonderful collection of old friends and family. The theater fills up with a broad mix of locals. There is something especially satisfying with the screening in the Salmar Classic, it was the first theater that I started to see films in, it is an independently run theater and locally owned, a rarity in this mega-box world. The local organizers for the event even stage a three-person puppet greeter outside the theater and ticket ushers don Wal-Mart vests with greeter dignity. The show is another rounding success and we finish the film with a lengthy discussion on divesting Wal-Mart stock.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
An insanely early ferry to Vancouver gets us up after 4 hours of sleep to fly to Salmon Arm, one of my former geographical identities. Waiting in the airport I perused the commercialized bookstore kiosk, in the business section, seated in the bestseller list was a book called Wal-Smart, mildly fascinated to find out what the business elite was writing about Walmart, I read standing.
There has been three notable literary era´s in the last three decades of Wal-Mart rule. The first was the books on Wal-Mart as the godsend, then there was the books on Wal-Mart as the evil empire, now the topic seems to be get over-it, the world is Wal-Mart´s world, lets find our place in the new economy, society, and political power that is ruled by the Bentonville model.
In the book the author use a parable to illustrate the way business should react to walmart. It goes something like this: two friends are the woods and they see a angry bear coming for them, one of the men bends over and ties his shoes tight. In surprise his buddy says, “ what are you doing, do you think you can out run the bear?” His friend looks up and says, “I don´t have to outrun the bear, I just have to out run you”. The book continues in this vein of blood is thin and deserves to be spilled if it will preserve individuality at all costs. Co-operation and community are simply exploitable for capital advantage. Altruism and social co-operation is not considered intelligent decision making if you plan on maintaining a business in the new wal-world.
A sobering assessment of the advice of economic sages, a class of advisors not normally inclined to credit social values, however this counsel is relevant in its starker then most, its dog eat dog, sacrifice your friends to further your own interests, the goal is survive. I can´t help but see parallels in the way the business community sees the environment, a disposable, commodifiable, exploitable, product to use until the all the monetary value is completely extracted. Government is supposed to hold the merchant class accountable, unfortunately the merchant class is now the government, and policy is capital market over social value.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Written by
Sergeo
January 30, 2007
The drive is from Courtney to Victoria is comforted by the tall island Douglas fur trees that line the highway, sadly the forest is visibly thinner then last time I was here, The active arm of development at work. BC is a remarkable environment to grow up in. I developed by pre-teen years in this mountain land, and later returned to be a horse logger, in my twenties. The trees stir deep-rooted emotion within me. Working in the woods altered my views about forestry, but deepened my respect for the wilderness. BC is a strange competition of rednecks, hippies and yuppies competing for nature´s increasingly limited resources. WalMart is a direct example of what is at stake in this fragile relationship between consumption and sustainability.
The Open Space, a nonprofit artist run gallery in the heart of Victoria, filled up with a young crowd of activist and non activists alike, over two hundred people showed up. The screen was unfortunately low and individuals in the back had difficulty reading the French subtitles on the bottom of the screen. However the message was not lost. The laughs and chuckles throughout the screening were fun to witness; the film always seems funnier when viewed with a humorous crowd.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Ezra’s not mine, but it felt like we were the welcomed heroes of a foreign conflict. It was a smaller more familiar crowd, the ever popular Winton family, and other esteemed locals.
There is a scramble to get the projection equipment set up in the hotel conference hall where the screening is taking place. At first we can’t find the projector, then we can’t figure out the DVD player, finally we realize the sound will not connect with the home system. Rob runs off to buy a Future Shop stereo speaker system (to be returned the next day for a free one day rental courtesy of the big box) and we plop two large speakers up in front of the audience.
The sound sounds great.
We break for a few drinks during the film screening and stress about the objects, jackets, wallets, phones, scarves, and eye solution we keep losing on the trip (most of which we find later) After the film we are surprised at the depth of discussion and support for the film. A women who shops at Wal-Mart says she is not going to shop there anymore after watching the film, she did not realize the union busting tactics Wal-Mart used to keep collectivization out.
People joked about going to Wal-Mart to reorganize the shelves of in the store and play wurlly-mart, an act where people line up with shopping carts, buy stuff and then return it to customer service, after which they go back and buy the same stuff all over again, effectively jamming the aisles and cash registers.
The next day we celebrate the Winton family breakfast and marvel at the women in ezra´s family. Then race off to Victoria.
Leave a comment
Category : Uncategorized
Next entries »
