KILLED BY LOW PRICES

THE NAME BEHIND THE FACE BEHIND THE EVIL

Today, in a rampant display of consumerism, a New York man was killed by a unruly crowd at a Walmart in Long Island. May he rest in peace. The story is roughly as follows.

On Thursday evening, even before many families had finished eating their Thanksgiving turkey, crowds began forming outside the Long Island Walmart in anticipation of the Black Friday sales that were to be taking place the next day. (Black Friday is a peculiar American holiday, the day after Thanksgiving, which marks the onset of the holiday shopping season. Sales and ravenous crowds are part of the spectacle.)

By 5:00 AM the next morning over 2,000 people had formed a mob in front of the store. When the workers inside tried to open the doors, the angry crowd surged forward and broke them down. They stampeded into the store en masse and trampled several workers. Some tried to reach the victims but were unable to because more shoppers walked on top of the already downed Walmart employees. In the end, one worker died and several were hospitalized, including an 8-month pregnant woman. When Walmart announced over the PA system that they would have to close the store for the day because of the death, the shoppers refused to leave the store and continued to shop.

A dismal display of humanity.

Walmart was quick to point that the man technically worked for a temp agency, not Walmart, per se, and that the incident could have happened at any store.

True, but Walmart has consistently shown a low regard for human values worldwide. Actually, Walmart is so unpopular in the area of California I live in they have been banned from building in many cities.

I never trust crowds, but you especially can't trust the ones looking for sales, because most the motivator for most Americans is material wealth. In this country, we put a premium on stuff. Walmart is the world's largest corporation because people want massive amounts of goods at the lowest price possible. Low price trumps everything. Walmart recently rebranded themselves with the slogan "Save Money Live Better." This connects the consumer's quality of life with Walmart's business model of offering the lowest prices.

I like low prices, but I don't necessarily think consumption is something that should be celebrated and turned into a holiday. Shopping is good enough. It's fun and it makes people happy, but there is a huge gap in knowledge between knowing this and gathering in front of a Walmart, waiting overnight in 30 degree cold and storming forward to buy some crappy plastic appliances that will all break in a month anyway, just because it's a group experience and it's tradition and TV cameras will be there, etc. At this point it's like some weird embarrassing cultural rite.

I've been trying to work on not being so negative lately, but just one more time:

What kind of a fucking loser waits overnight in the street to go shopping at Walmart?

I'll leave it at that. I hope no one dies next year but if someone has to at least let it be one of the shoppers.

TWO EXCELLENT FILMS

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

I don't know what it is about the end of the year (Oscar season, for one), but excellent movies abound. I've seen two great movies in the last few weeks. Two classics.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE [8.5/10]

This is Danny Boyle's new film ("Trainspotting," "28 Days Later") and watching this really made me want to check his other stuff more in depth. I also saw his recent "Sunshine" this year, which was a total surprise as it wasn't released widely in the U.S. Everyone, check that one out too.
So "Slumdog Millionaire" centers around the life of Jamal, a young street kid (or 'slumdog') of Bombay, India. His upbringing is brutal and obscene but somehow light moments shine through, and Jamal develops a remarkable percevierance. He's got spirit.

Through a series of crazy events Jamal ends up on the set of the Indian version of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire,' a total smash-hit television show. When he begins answering the questions correctly and progressing further in the game show, no one can believe it, including the corrupt police of Bombay. Soon we see though, question by question, how Jamal knows these seemin

gly esoteric bits of trivia, and more importantly, why he is what he is today. And did I mention this is a love story?

This is an excellent plot, interesting, culturally rich, suspenseful, and poignant. It's seriously got a bit of everything. It is unapologetically cheesy at points, but never sappy and never contrived, somehow. One of the few movies out there that will have you leaving the theatre hopeful and happy about life, and not ashamed to admit it. A+.

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN [8.5/10]

Q: What do you need to know about 'Let The Right One In?"

A: Swedish Vampire Movie

Yes it's true. This is a swedish vampire movie and it's the shit. Most great horror movies are really talking about something besides blood, and this is no exception. "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" is about anarchy, "Night of the Living Dead" about capitalism, "The Shining" about isolation.

"Let The Right One In," like Steven King's "Carrie" is about bullying. Here lives Oskar, a young boy in rural Sweden (presumably before the end of the Cold War) who is kind of a loner, a loser. He is neglected/ mismanaged by his family and constantly picked on by his schoolmates.

When a young girl who only ventures out at night moves into the town, and people start dying, you know what's going on. She becomes friends with Oskar and their relationship becomes the focal point of the movie, even as the town searches for the killer and the kids' personal lives become more dire.

This is straight arthouse, complete with psychoanalysis to the core, cinematography that at times is so artful it could be out of a music video, and enough unanswered questions to leave you arguing with your friends after the movie. And the story is told with extreme discipline. And it's original. A+ work. Can't wait to watch it again.

KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE

Wow. It's hard to know where to begin here. So much of this space has been dedicated to covering the election, and now that it's over it feels weird to be writing again. But, really, nothing is over, and if anything this is the start of something big.


VICTORY


I've been following and supporting the candidacy of Barack Obama since before it was made official. Beginning with his emergence to the national scene I was deeply struck with how inspiring he was, how soaring his rhetoric was, and how he seemed different than any other mainstream politician of my lifetime.

I think, especially after the Bush years, we as a nation had become jaded and neutered by the actions of our government and its partners in the private sector. Even before 2001, the political and ruling systems were a distant blip on our radar screen. Like the teacher in Charlie Brown...."blabla bla bla bla..."

Barack Obama offered the kind of talk (and yes, words are important) that I had never heard before. He promised us more than anyone else and told us we were better than our current selves. He said he had faith that America could be a better nation. Yes, he was the "hope" candidate, a special breed of vibrant intellectual Democrats that run every election and always lose (Bill Bradley in 2000 and Howard Dean in 2004).

But something about Obama made him stick. The horrible state of everything made Americans, even Republicans, willing to listen. And the more he talked, the more people liked him. Electrifying everything further was the bubbling possibility of the country's first minority leader: a black president.

Once Obama started winning states in the primary I maintained he would win the presidency, even though I doubted it. The notion of him winning appealed to deep ideals and hopes I had, and I've learned that ideals and hopes usually get steamrolled by reality, especially when you're dealing with a huge American electorate.

But this time, ideals and hopes came together and made reality. On November 4, 2008 Barack Obama was elected president.

When I heard it announced I was watching online cable in my room, in the dark. MSNBC, I think, just flashed a graphic on screen that says something like "Obama wins Presidency" and the network pundits went silent for several minutes. The only images and sounds were the roar of the crowds at Grant Park in Chicago, where hundreds of thousands of people had gathered to celebrate the victory.

What was there to say? This was one of the poignant moments of my life. Obama's election was a rejection of so many things, not just from the last eight years in this country, but from the last three hundred. It was a celebration.

When I went down to the street from my apartment I saw the San Francisco streets taken over by thousands of people chanting, cheering, and lighting off fireworks. In my neighborhood, the Mission, they had to cut off traffic due to the celebrations. I never thought I would see the day when people in San Francisco would take over streets with American flags and chants of "U.S.A.," but I saw it that night on Nov 4.

It was a happy and cathartic night for us all.



DEFEAT



No discussion of the election, civil rights, etc. would be complete without discussing the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which will amend the state constitution to eliminate gay marriage.

Many people have asked me what I think about this, and what I think is that it sucks.

For me, having different institutions of unions for different types of Americans creates, psychologically, different classes of people. This hurts all gay people, whether or not they are planning on marrying. And those that are marrying, or who have already been married, really get shafted.

The election was bittersweet because Obama made it, which is great, but gays in California and other states didn't. I'd like to point out that Barack Obama is a product of interracial marriage which at the time of his birth was still illegal in many states. Presumably he may not have been born had his parents not met in Hawaii.

There has been a lot of noise made about the fact that the black vote that turned out strong for Barack Obama voted heavily, by over a 2 to 1 to margin, to ban gay marriage in California. This has sparked some divisiveness that is sad to see. Prop 8 is no single sector's fault (except for the Mormon church who can suck a dick for all I care).

I'm hoping to see the California Supreme Court or perhaps the US Supreme Court overturn it. If not that then we'll try another proposition in 2010. The fight is never over.



KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE



Obama has said that he isn't scared going into the presidency given the current unstable climate of pretty much everything. He said that he entered politics to make a difference and this is the best time to make a difference.

While I'm sure that's true, the fact is that things just seem to be getting worse everyday. Every time I wake up, I read about some new corporation filing for bankruptcy or cutting huge, huge numbers of jobs. Just today, CitiBank failed, and I'm sure other major banks will follow this week. The major players in the US auto industry will apparently also go bankrupt in less than one month.

There is no way the government can afford to bail out every major corporation or subsidize every industry that collapses in the next few years, because it seems that most of them will in some way.

I think we're in for a major overhaul in the way we do business. Clearly some huge changes will have to be made and clearly we have to be up to the challenge. Risky.

But with great risk comes great opportunity. We're in for a hell of a bumpy ride, and I'm more hopeful about our landing with this new leadership.

_

There is still racism in the country. There is still homophobia. People are still addicted to drugs and homeless still die on the street. Horrible things still happen everyday and they always will. And it is our job to make them better.

But the election of Barack Obama is something we can all be proud of. Something we should be proud of and something that should make us hopeful. We did this.

What can we do next?

NO WORDS