IMPORTANT: If you make any changes, do not attribute them to me in any way.

I'm calling for a Boycott of Walmart. I ask that everyone, every person in the world, to join me.

This is not a petition, I'm not asking for signatures.

I am, myself, starting today a lifetime Boycott of Walmart (mine or Walmart's lifetime whichever comes first). I feel strongly that this is a necessary and important action to take. To my friends, family and peers I say that if you respect my opinion, if you regard me as an intelligent, rational and principled person, consider what I have to say and then join me. To those of you don't know me personally, I ask that you consider that what I'm calling for is in your own best interest and also something important to do for your family, friends, loved ones, your neighbors, and fellow citizens of the world.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time selling anyone on this. There is no organization or organized effort behind it. And it is not my intention to encourage the formation of any such effort. I don't want anyone to spend even a single penny directly on this. I do realize the boycott alone may be a genuine hardship for some of you.

What I'm asking is simple. I'm asking that you never step foot in a Walmart again for the rest of your life. It's as simple as that... no more no less.

I'm not asking that you boycott specific products. I'm not asking that you think about the various relationships that exist between corporations. If Walmart owns a retail store called Bob's Market for example, I'm not asking that you boycott Bob's Market. (This is a fictitious example. To my knowledge there is no "Bob's Market" owned by Walmart of otherwise.)

The point isn't to drive Walmart out of business. The point isn't to dismantle the web of complex relationships that exist between suppliers and retailers and among corporations that allow Walmart to exist in the first place.

The point is as simple as the boycott itself. At a critical time I want us to come together and demonstrate that we are an important part of this process, that we have considerable influence ourselves and that we're capable of exercising that influence. Also, I suggest that it's important that we make the point that as consumers, there is much more to who we are than the cheapest price at all costs.

It's important for us to affirm that consumers are humans first and that we have respect for the people involved in bringing goods and services to market. Surrendering human diginity is too high a price to pay for low low prices at the register. It's not worth tolerating fear and intimidation as an accepted business practice; it's not worth undermining the quality of people's lives.

And ultimately a saving is meaningless if it costs you or your neighbor your health, happiness, or livelihood.

We owe each other more than cut-throat consumerism at all costs.

Why Walmart?
Don't other retailers do the same sort of things?

To answer each of these points in turn...

Because Walmart is big - bigger than any other retailer has ever been, so big in fact that they excercise a great amount of control. Influencing Walmart means making the point that consumers still call the shots. This is a lesson that all retailers should take notice of and if we are successful at impacting Walmart, then all retailers will take notice, there is no doubt about that.

Why not other retailers too? Because this should be simple. If we all run in different directions with the same general idea then the overall impact will be difficult to measure. I'm not asking that we boycott corporate partners or even other properties of Walmart, just any store with the Walmart name. Shop anywhere else you like, buy anything you like, pay whatever you think is fair anyplace else. If Walmart starts changes the name of their stores, then start shopping there again. If your local Walmart is rebranded an 'Almart', 'Malmart' or 'Walstore', go back. Keeping it simple means a clear purpose and mission, and makes it easy for everyone on both sides to measure the impact of the effort.

What if Walmart offers concessions, or states that they are willing to do whatever it takes to improve whatever it is that's broken, or makes any other statement whatsoever (not that I'm expecting that to happen)? Don't go back. This a lifetime boycott, it's all or nothing and it's forever. If they change the identity, even if only on a store by store basis then we'll have excercised our influence and we'll have demonstrated that we stand for something important and that we can't be pacified and ignored or manipulated. If they change the identity feel free to go back.

So is this random then? No, it is true that Walmart is not the only company in the world that sets out to dominate but by traditional measures they have been successful to a degree that no other retailer has. I would also argue that in other critcal ways they've failed miserably their customers, employees, partners, their founder and their original mission.

This is either your America and my America or it's corporate America. That's not to say that coporations cannot or shouldn't exist. I guarentee you that they aren't going anywhere, and that's fine. Corporations fund research and development which can improve all of our lives. Corporations make possible the economies of scale that allow for innovation and allow us to benefit from it. Corporations offer us a place to work, sponsor our play, bridge physial distance, foster learning and education. I don't question any of these things nor do I question whether corporations can exist harmoniously with local and regional competition and with small and medium size business, and entrepreneurs. It's a question of purpose. Do corporations exist for our benefit or do they operate only in their own best interest benefitting us only when necessary or as happy coincidence. Does Walmart lower prices so that the products they sell are affordable for you and your family or because it's the best way for them to position themselves to grow their business and outgrow the competition? It's not possible that the two are equally valued.

Alarm at the size and the influence of Walmart is nothing new. I'm not the first person to point to it and raise the warning flag. I've been aware of this sort of thing for the better part of a decade at least. I'm not going to build a comprehensive set of references to all of the different news stories, magazine articles, studies, books and other materials that talk about the business of Walmart, economic theory and the debate for or against magacorporations and globalization. It could be that something like this would be very useful but that's not what this is. This is no more than a simple appeal. This is not intended to be a treatise on this issue.

Where is this coming from? As I've said I've heard debate for and against Walmart for a long time now. That ongoing discussion is the foundation for my appeal. About a month ago I read an article in Fast Company magazine titled "The Walmart You Don't Know". That article is the impetus for this. I'm not in a position to keep close tabs on what Walmart is doing. I'm using the article as a yardstick or a measure. We can talk forever about what a company like Walmart might do with their resources and their influence. Of course proponents will argue that Walmart is in a unique position to benefit consumers and opponents will talk about the potential to do harm. Theoretically, either side could make perfectly valid points. It is difficult to discuss the validity of something that might or might not happen in the future. Great, so let's pretend that it's 1993 and we've decided to let the experiment play out. In the next 10 years Walmart will increase in size five-fold. Now let's jump 10 years into the future... and here we are. We stepped into yesterday's future. Walmart has been given its chance to prosper and to conduct itself in any way that it sees fit.

What is the result? And what if anything should we do about it now?

I'm calling for a boycott, so you have a pretty good preview of my interpretation of the result.

I want to talk about that result by quoting from the article I'm using as my measure.

What I really want to do is quote the entire thing. I can't do that and so I won't, but I do want to encourage you to read the article for yourself. I'm going to pull some passages and quote them here. It's difficult to quote facts without the context of the article but I'll do my best. I am going to quote the final paragraph because I think the author does a good job with it and it summarizes all of this quite well.

Just a couple of final points before I get to the article:

The facts that I have read the article, and that I am a subscriber, is the extent of my involvement with Fast Company. I haven't made any attempt to contact the author of the article or Fast Company directly, nor do I intend to. I am assuming that portions of the article that are represented as factual are indeed based on fact. I don't know that Fast Company magazine is breaking any new ground with their article. I don't know that it's particularly significant except that the article presents information that I found interesting and upsetting and that I have chosen to use as a benchmark. In my estimation the article is fair and unbiased. I will also note that I've found Fast Company to be reputable in the past.

Further I want to state that I have no affiliation with Walmart, Fast Company magazine or any organization that is involved in the retail industry in any way. I'm sure that just about everyone I know has shopped at Walmart frequently or occasionally. I can honestly say that I have never discussed this with any of them before now.

You can find the article online here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

Start of Article Excerpts:

Source:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html
The Wal-Mart You Don't Know

The giant retailer's low prices often come with a high cost. Wal-Mart's relentless pressure can crush the companies it does business with and force them to send jobs overseas. Are we shopping our way straight to the unemployment line?
From: Issue 77 | December 2003, Page 68 By: Charles Fishman Photographs by: Livia Corona

Excerpt 1:
Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined. "Clearly," says Edward Fox, head of Southern Methodist University's J.C. Penney Center for Retailing Excellence, "Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever been." It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate being.

Excerpt 2:
To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas.

Of course, U.S. companies have been moving jobs offshore for decades, long before Wal-Mart was a retailing power. But there is no question that the chain is helping accelerate the loss of American jobs to low-wage countries such as China. Wal-Mart, which in the late 1980s and early 1990s trumpeted its claim to "Buy American," has doubled its imports from China in the past five years alone, buying some $12 billion in merchandise in 2002. That's nearly 10% of all Chinese exports to the United States.

Excerpt 3:
Steve Dobbins has been bearing the brunt of that switch. He's president and CEO of Carolina Mills, a 75-year-old North Carolina company that supplies thread, yarn, and textile finishing to apparel makers--half of which supply Wal-Mart. Carolina Mills grew steadily until 2000. But in the past three years, as its customers have gone either overseas or out of business, it has shrunk from 17 factories to 7, and from 2,600 employees to 1,200. Dobbins's customers have begun to face imported clothing sold so cheaply to Wal-Mart that they could not compete even if they paid their workers nothing.

"People ask, 'How can it be bad for things to come into the U.S. cheaply? How can it be bad to have a bargain at Wal-Mart?' Sure, it's held inflation down, and it's great to have bargains," says Dobbins. "But you can't buy anything if you're not employed. We are shopping ourselves out of jobs."

Excerpt 4:
No one wants to end up in what is known among Wal-Mart vendors as the "penalty box"--punished, or even excluded from the store shelves, for saying something that makes Wal-Mart unhappy. (The penalty box is normally reserved for vendors who don't meet performance benchmarks, not for those who talk to the press.)

"You won't hear anything negative from most people," says Paul Kelly, founder of Silvermine Consulting Group, a company that helps businesses work more effectively with retailers. "It would be committing suicide. If Wal-Mart takes something the wrong way, it's like Saddam Hussein. You just don't want to piss them off."

As a result, this story was reported in an unusual way: by speaking with dozens of people who have spent years selling to Wal-Mart, or consulting to companies that sell to Wal-Mart, but who no longer work for companies that do business with Wal-Mart. Unless otherwise noted, the companies involved in the events they described refused even to confirm or deny the basics of the events.

Excerpt 5 (Article Conclusion):
Randall Larrimore, a former CEO of MasterBrand Industries, the parent company of Master Lock, understands that contradiction too well. For years, he says, as manufacturing costs in the United States rose, Master Lock was able to pass them along. But at some point in the 1990s, Asian manufacturers started producing locks for much less. "When the difference is $1, retailers like Wal-Mart would prefer to have the brand-name padlock or faucet or hammer," Larrimore says. "But as the spread becomes greater, when our padlock was $9, and the import was $6, then they can offer the consumer a real discount by carrying two lines. Ultimately, they may only carry one line."

In January 1997, Master Lock announced that, after 75 years making locks in Milwaukee, it would begin importing more products from Asia. Not too long after, Master Lock opened a factory of its own in Nogales, Mexico. Today, it makes just 10% to 15% of its locks in Milwaukee--its 300 employees there mostly make parts that are sent to Nogales, where there are now 800 factory workers.

Larrimore did the first manufacturing layoffs at Master Lock. He negotiated with Master Lock's unions himself. He went to Bentonville. "I loved dealing with Wal-Mart, with Home Depot," he says. "They are all very rational people. There wasn't a whole lot of room for negotiation. And they had a good point. Everyone was willing to pay more for a Master Lock. But how much more can they justify? If they can buy a lock that has arguably similar quality, at a cheaper price, well, they can get their consumers a deal."

It's Wal-Mart in the role of Adam Smith's invisible hand. And the Milwaukee employees of Master Lock who shopped at Wal-Mart to save money helped that hand shove their own jobs right to Nogales. Not consciously, not directly, but inevitably. "Do we as consumers appreciate what we're doing?" Larrimore asks. "I don't think so. But even if we do, I think we say, Here's a Master Lock for $9, here's another lock for $6--let the other guy pay $9."

End of Article Excerpts.

And so I call for a boycott of Walmart. And as I've already said I realize that this boycott may be more difficult for some of us than for others.

I would guess that there are primarily three groups of people for whom this might be a greater burden than it is for others. < p/> 1. People who live geographically near a Walmart and/or geographically far from other stores.
2. People who need or want to take advantage of the sometimes substantial savings offered by Walmart. Money is an issue for all but a very small minority of people obviously, it certainly is for me, but for some people and some families working within a tight budget, the savings that you benefit from at Walmart are integral to being able to feed and cloth your family.
3. People who work for Walmart and depend on the chain not only for their shopping but for their paycheck as well.

I don't want anyone fitting into these three groups to feel like a boycott is working against them or can't include them, because I honestly don't believe that. Having carefully considered it, I believe that everyone, including people in all three of these groups, stand to benefit from this boycott.

I do want to spend just a moment to directly discuss each one of these groups.

1. Of the three groups, a boycott should be easiest for people in group 1. It can be very tempting to shop close to home and it's undeniably convenient. At times it may seem necessary. All I can say is that I think that the additional travel time is well worth it. I don't think we're yet at the point when Walmart is anybody's only option. One of the reasons for this boycott is to prevent us from getting there. If it is true that you have no other local option for some or all of your shopping then you should be able to see why this is so very important.
What happened to all of your other choices?
Where did they go?
What about the people who worked there... what happened to them?
Is Walmart really the ideal shopping experience, so much so that no other retailer ought to be allowed to exist?
It very well may be possible that there is no other single place that you can go to get the range of products that you can get at Walmart but I am assuming that you can find just about everything, or at least everything you need, at a number of different retailers. Spreading your money around the local economy is a wonderful thing to do to encourage growth and development of the local community and strengthen the local economy and foster entrepreneurship. I don't want to make this last point too strongly because I'm really not interested in very detailed arguments about economics. The primary point that I am trying to make is that handing over the entire consumer economy to one corporation that has demonstrated, in my opinion, that it has little or no interest in limiting itself or representing anything greater than pressuring suppliers and employees into lower prices with seemingly no interest on the broader impact of practices that extreme is not in anyone's best interest. If there literally is no other option then I would encourage you to buy a computer and shop online. There are any number of reputable merchants accessible via the Internet selling everything you need, everything you could possibly think of. This returns some of the convenience of shopping close to home because what you buy online is delivered directly to your home or office. Because the Internet affords some logistical advantages to merchants with regards to warehousing, distribution, and savings related to not having to maintain many retail stores etc. prices online can represent substantial savings, on par with or even better than prices for the same or similar products at Walmart. Computers are getting cheaper all the time. They're readily available (at places other than Walmart) for less than $500.00 new, and cheaper still used. Internet access has never been more available, better performing and cheaper. There are other advantages to purchasing a computer as well. A computer can help you budget, help your children with schoolwork, put you in touch with a wealth of information that will help to enrich your life, plan and save money on your next vacation, access medical information that can literally save your life, and there are many other benefits as well. This is certainly not a sales pitch for computers or the Internet. All I'm interested in is exploring some of the options that are available to you, that might help you if you decide that you want to join the boycott.

2. Even for these people I would ask you to consider that a boycott of Walmart is in your best interest. It is true that some prices at Walmart are substantially cheaper than prices for the same products elsewhere. It's also true that it isn't the case for all products or even the majority of products sold at Walmart. Buying in bulk can make a lot of sense, but it can also be wasteful. It could be that you're not saving as much as you think you are, as much as you hoped you would be. And there are comparable options most of the time if you make an effort to find them. Sometimes you'll be able to find even better deals. Look for sales, buy generic brands, buy in bulk elsewhere, change some of your buying habits to maximize the value you get for every dollar you spend and look for other opportunities to save. Again, I would encourage you to buy a computer and shop online.

3. For this group, I'm not asking that you quit your job just that you shop somewhere else. I do realize that this may be difficult for both of the reasons mentioned above and that it may seem like an odd conflict of interest. I'm certainly not asking that you be vocal or demonstrate against your employer. I'm not asking that you do anything to risk your job. I'm just asking that you do your shopping somewhere else. I would argue that this group has the most to gain. We ought to be concerned with encouraging competition; comptetion among retailers for our consumer dollars and competition among employers for our time and efforts. Competition sways the balance of power from suppliers to consumers, from employers to employees. As an employee, you will be paid more and with better benefits, job security, and working conditions when there is some healthy level of competition between employers for your services. There are laws in the United States that guarantee basic rights to you but you should understand that:
A. In other parts of the world people do not have those same guarantees;
B. These are minimums. You should expect more and competition encourages employers to do more;
C. You can to a degree give these freedoms back either through purposeful compromise or because you feel you have no other choice.

As a consumer you will ultimately receive the fairest price, best shopping experience, assurances that what you buy is worth your money, the widest selection, etc. with competition. Again there are laws in this country that guarantee some of these basic rights. And again these are only basic protections and they are difficult to enforce.

We need to fix this. We need to start making smarter decisions. We need to make responsible decisions and impress upon others that it is important to us that they make responsible decisions on our behalf.

If you and I are at all alike, if as human beings we share some of the same basic principles, if we both value the integrity of human life then you must feel the same way about this that I do and together we need to honor those principles.

Thanks for your time and efforts.