Friday, November 04, 2005

Just read on Salon this article about the new Wal-Mart documentary. You can host a screening of the movie through the movie web site by purchasing a DVD kit for $10. I think I'll try to host a screening. I'm such a revolutionary. The reviewer Andrew O'Hehir says,

"For me, the crippling moment arrives when Greenwald takes his cameras to a
factory in China, where workers toil 14 hours a day, seven days a week, to make
toys for Wal-Mart. They're paid roughly 30 to 40 cents an hour (with rent for
the factory's dormitory, with its triple-decker bunk beds, deducted) and perhaps
an economist could convince me that's a decent wage in that context. But for me
these workers and their painful, hopeful stories recalled the righteous anger of
Chapter 4 of Marx's "Capital," with its descriptions of the Industrial
Revolution's workday that began long before dawn and went deep into the night,
of women locked in sweatshops and 8-year-old children fed their lunches inside
the machinery. I started anxiously reading the labels on my shirts and asking
myself questions: Where did I buy this -- I'm hoping the answer is the Salvation
Army -- and where did it come from before that? And am I really willing to buy a
shirt at a price that would pay the person who made it a decent wage?"

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