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.