Walmart workers begin Thanksgiving and Black Friday strikes with fasting

[umbertino]

by: Estevan Nembhard & John Wojcik

November 24 2015

 

 

 

NEW YORK - Disgusted with having to take free food left by customers in collection boxes in their stores and angry about having to go to food pantries to feed their families, Walmart workers across the country and their supporters are fasting during the 15 days leading up to Thanksgiving and Black Friday later this week. They are foregoing food to demand a $15-an-hour living wage and full-time work.

 

Jennifer Green, one of the fasting protesters outside the penthouse home of the Waltons here, was fired from Walmart while she was pregnant but has remained active with the OUR Walmart campaign. Still, she says, Walmart is the only place close enough to her home in Norfolk, Va. where she can afford to go shopping.

 

"I went into my old Walmart yesterday to buy Thanksgiving groceries," she said. "Many of my former co-workers said they want to come by for a plate of dinner at my house but are scheduled to work from 2 to 11 on the holiday.

 

"My cashier had a miserable look on her face. I told her that I used to work there just like her and that I have been protesting in front of Alice Walton's house. I told her she was not alone and that people are out here fighting for her."

 

"I've had to forego meals so my boys have enough to eat," Walmart worker Jasmine Dixon said last Thursday at a press conference organized by OUR Walmart. "If it wasn't for food stamps I don't know what I'd do."

 

Some 1,000 workers and supporters have signed up for fasting this week. Some are doing full fasts, consuming only liquids, while others are limiting intake of just certain food items.

 

"My mother grew up during the Depression and she passed along lessons on how to get through hard times. They are lessons I use today at Walmart," said Nancy Reynolds, another worker who spoke to the press.

 

"A lot of times I've had to get chicken nuggets because that's all the money I had," Reynolds said. She described dividing up one order of nuggets in the break room "because my coworkers were hungry."

 

Earlier this year, embarrassed by the attention it was getting for its low wages, Walmart announced it would raise its wages to $10 an hour. By cutting hours though the company pays man workers less money than they were paid before the increase.

 

Workers still complain they are often not consulted on schedules that they say make it impossible to do more than scrape by week to week. The schedules also don't allow them to fit in time for second jobs they need to get by.

 

Walmart relies on taxpayers to foot much of the bill for its workers. Estimates are that a typical large Walmart store, in effect, bills taxpayers $1 million a year for food stamps and welfare payments needed by its underpaid workers.

 

The hunger strikes this year amount to a stepping up of protests that have been going on for years. Those protests, as they will this year on Black Friday, involve strikes at Walmart stores across the country.

 

Last year's Black Friday protests happened at 1,000 stores with actions expected at even more stores this year. Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year.

 

 

Photo: Estevan Nembhard/PW

 

 

http://www.peoplesworld.org/walmart-workers-begin-thanksgiving-and-black-friday-strikes-with-fasting/

[freeroy]

The following was written by Steven Levy and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

"My confession:

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians.   I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. 

I have no idea where the concept came from, that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship celebrities and we aren't allowed to worship God as we            understand Him? 

        There are a lot of us who are wondering where these celebrities came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different.    This is not intended to be a joke; it's not funny, it's intended to get you thinking. 

In light of recent events, terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O'Hare (she was murdered, her body found a few years ago) complained she didn't want prayer in our schools, and we said OK. 

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. 

The Bible says thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. 

And we said OK.

Then Dr. Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehave, because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock's son committed suicide). 

We said an expert should know what he's talking about.  And we said okay.

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. 

I think it has a great deal to do with 'WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.'

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world's going to hell.  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says. 

Funny how you can send 'jokes' through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, 

but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.      
Are you laughing yet?

Pass it on if you think it has merit.         If you discard this, 

don't complain about what bad shape the world is in.

[divemaster5734]

Well saif Roy.

As for those poor demonstrators, all 10 of them can go scratch, the other 20,000 are happy for their jobs.

Oh wait, then you'd have a libtard reporter out of a job.

Tell him not to worry, MSNBC will find a place for that drama queen liar too...

[RVWITHME]

Retail Service Robots....

 

Coming to an aisle near you (soon).