Grayson Condemns Walmart – And Obama

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) also predicts that the wave of strikes that have hit Walmart, along with a backlash against the arrest of protesting employees, will drive a revival of politically energized labor in America:

Firebrand Congressman Alan Grayson hailed Black Friday civil disobedience in an afternoon interview, saying the protests by Wal-Mart workers and supporters show “the dissatisfaction of the middle class” since the 2008 financial crash “coming to a slow boil.”

“If one person falls out of the middle class, that’s sad,” Grayson told Salon. “But if millions of people fall out of the middle class, that creates a backlash which is being seen all over the country, and will potentially create a new political movement of the disenfranchised.” …

Grayson charged that the company “feels compelled to cheat its own employees to the point where they’re forced to turn to public assistance simply to stay alive.” The common thread between deadly disasters at factories which have supplied to Wal-Mart in Bangladesh and abuses in the United States, he contended, is that “Wal-Mart is a machine that exists solely for the purpose of enriching its owners and…the top managers of Wal-Mart, and in so doing wreaks havoc on the lives of both workers and suppliers.” As workers have in industries like miners and auto, he argued, the solution “is for people to get together and stop fighting each other, but rather fight the boss and beat the boss.”…

Asked whether the Administration’s repeated praise for and appearances with Wal-Mart hurt the workers’ cause, Grayson told Salon, “It certainly doesn’t improve things.” Then he asked, “What has Wal-Mart given the president in return? Or, for that matter, what has Wal-Mart given to the president’s constituents in return?”

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.