Wal-Mart opens in Hawaii amid protest
 

HONOLULU, Hawaii (AP) -- Wal-Mart opened a store in Hawaii on Wednesday with hundreds of eager shoppers rushing past a handful of protesters who accuse the giant retailer of desecrating ancient gravesites.

Customers lined up hours ahead and then poured into the discount store after a traditional Hawaiian blessing and the untying of a lei at the main doors.

Native Hawaiian groups had tried to stop the opening until 44 remains of Hawaiians unearthed during construction could be reburied at the Wal-Mart site.

"Wal-Mart's pitch is that it's slashing prices for you. In this instance, it's slashing graves," said Moses Haia, a Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. lawyer who has filed a suit against the store.

Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin said the retailer is treating the Hawaiian remains with respect, placing them "in an air-conditioned, darkened trailer in a secure location on the site." State approval is needed to rebury them on the site, she said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/10/14....ap/index.html

It sucks they built the store on a burial site. I am suprized the state hasn't given them the ok to re bury them there. I don't know much about Hawaiian tradition but wouldn't be better to move them to a better location rather than back at Wal-mart?

If you find bones at a burial ground, YOU DON'T MOVE THEM. You put them back when you found them, even if it's under a Wal-Mart. It's one thing to disturb them, but moving them and having them interred somewhere else is the ultimate disrespect. That's Hawaiian culture.

Our H-3 Freeway cuts through about 5 different burial sites. I get chills just driving on it.

The State doesn't do jack shit when it comes to Native Hawaiian issues. That's why we have organizations like the Legal Corp., Alu Like, and `Iliulaokalani that lobby for Native Hawaiian rights and recognition.

Cynthia Lin can just kiss my ass. There's no respect for keeping remains in "air-conditioned trailers".

This whole "Wal-Mart/Sam's Club Super Block" was a bad idea from the beginning because they're building this shit in an already congested part of town. With the traffic from existing business AND residential areas, it's just going to create too many headaches. The last thing we need is another fucking Wal-Mart.

When they found the bones, they should have stopped things altogether. I'm no kupuna nor am I kahuna, but I wouldn't be surprised if all hell breaks loose in the store.

If I didn't have to work yesterday, I would have gladly been one of those protestors outside. :rolleyes:

Since I do not want to drop the F Word, screw Wally World!:mad:

Doing more to corrupt Retail business, Kill Small Town Business, and placing and screwing Employees better than any other Biggie Business!

Shop, K-Mart! I do!:cool:

question: did walmart build on top of an existing cemetary that no one knew about? and, was the land marked with tombstones?

I can't remember what the land was used for back in ancient Hawai`i (haven't done research on it), but when Hawaiians were buried (commoners, anyway) they were often buried in unmarked graves or placed in remote caves. The ali`i (royalty, or high ranking chiefs) had their own special burial sites. The Hawaiians didn't have a written language until missionaries came in the mid 1800s.

When I was growing up, the land went undeveloped for YEARS. I can't even remember anything being on that lot (which takes up about 4-5 blocks, btw).

Not long after they broke ground, they found the bones.

It's not uncommon to hear about finding bones. Like I said earlier, construction of the H-3 freeway went on and on Maui, the uber sophisticated Grand Wailea Resort (where you stayed, Kiki) was built even though the found over 180 remains on the property.

After watching this movie

http://usuarios.lycos.es/pedrohal/ca...oltergeist.gif

I would never want to go to a place on top of a burial site. That movie scared the crap out of me as a kid.

At the very least, they could show some form of respect to the fact that this is a burial ground. That's what's happened, for the most part, with the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. It was unearthed during construction (of what I don't know), and now they're working on paying homage to those buried there.

Just another example of Wal-Mart's assiness and low-brow behavior.

Amen - I already hate Wal-Mart enough for several small cities worth of people, but this is absolutely repulsive.

an air conditioned darkened trailer...gee how much respect is that?
when will they get it?

Yet another reason for me to avoid Wal-Mart.

And way to go Wal-Mart: lowering the bar for corporate responsibility.

I am soo happy! Walmart is getting rid of the exsisting store
and building a super center here this coming yr and right next to it is going to be a sams club.

they built a disturbution center here last yr and so i knew before long we would get a supercenter here in california! i am happy happy happy happy! i love supercenters so i can shop and get geroceries at the same time!:D

Walmart is not a good neighbor to have. Like everyone has said -- they have no sense of corporate responsibility, none.
They are too large, too powerful, and do too much damage to small communities. In addition to moving into the little towns and putting store owners out of business they do very little (in terms of their size) to give back to the communities they overtake.

As far as having a SuperCenter near you, I can atest from having one about 1miles from my house-- it is hell. So we have a Walmart grocery store-- most of my town will tell you that we don't have a grocery store. The local store went out of business a few years ago. There is a store in the next town (4 miles). Like everyone else, I do shop at Walmart--- somethings are just cheaper and its close to home. But if I want to buy produce, meat, or deli food you don't go to Walmart-- nothing is fresh. The store is dirty as well, as Walmart seems to attract every trashy person from a 20mile radius.

[hijack] - that's funny that you say that b/c here we drive 30 minutes to Super Wal-Mart. Not only are the prices great, but the produce dept is huge and always have fresh stuff coming in -- I guess it just depends on where the store is. Now the other WM in town (not a super center) fits your last statement -- except usually its the employees fighting with each other. We were in there late one night and two employees started fighting - physically! [/hijack]

HAAHAHA-- you will see anything and everything at Walmart--- a couple of years ago we went in around 1am, walked down an aisle and what to we see-- two Walmart employees "pleasuring" each other in the aisle behind a skid of product.

Jobs? Keep Your Stinking Jobs!
The Chicago Sun-Times reports on the Windy City's War against Wal-Mart:

Eighteen months after the Chicago City Council torpedoed a South Side Wal-Mart, 24,500 Chicagoans applied for 325 jobs at a Wal-Mart opening Friday in south suburban Evergreen Park, one block outside the city limits.

The new Wal-Mart at 2500 W. 95th is one block west of Western Avenue, the city boundary.

Of 25,000 job applicants, all but 500 listed Chicago addresses, said John Bisio, regional manager of public affairs for Wal-Mart.

As blogger Steve Bartin notes, "The morons who run Chicago don't appear to want jobs in the city of Chicago."

URL for this article: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110007872

It seems like everywhere walmart goes, there is always protest, but they always build it anyway..and tons of people shop at that walmart in the end.

did ya'll ever see that episode of SouthPark making fun of Walmart? It was a really funny one :)

WTF?

I refuse to even step foot in a wal-mart. Nasty employee's, shitty products. If I need to go to one of those types of places I'll go to Target.

I think Wal-Mart is more dangerous for American Society than Communism and Al-Qeada combined. Although, I don't think communism is that big of a threat anymore. I think global warming, and the SOLS are way worse.

I hope you don't vote.

I found this really interesting article. It's scary how powerful Wal-Mart is. This article is from 2003, and I'm sure Wal-Mart has only grown even more since then. I don't know what the solution is. Even if we could make everyone more globally aware (aware of the type of pressure Wal-Mart puts on its suppliers, aware that Wal-Mart is driving factory jobs overseas, aware that Wal-Mart has the power to very negatively affect other businesses, etc.), I still don't think it would make a difference. People are still going to shop at Wal-Mart because it's the cheapest. I think as long as there is no direct negative effect on our lives and lifestyles, most of us (Americans in general) aren't going to concern ourselves too much with global issues.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

"Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company--bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric. The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what

number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals. It does more business than Target, Sears, Kmart, J.C. Penney, Safeway, and Kroger combined. "Clearly," says Edward Fox, head of Southern Methodist University's J.C. Penney Center for Retailing Excellence, "Wal-Mart is more powerful than any retailer has ever been." It is, in fact, so big and so furtively powerful as to have become an entirely different order of corporate being.

Wal-Mart wields its power for just one purpose: to bring the lowest possible prices to its customers. At Wal-Mart, that goal is never reached. The retailer has a clear policy for suppliers: On basic products that don't change, the price Wal-Mart will pay, and will charge shoppers, must drop year after year. But what almost no one outside the world of Wal-Mart and its 21,000 suppliers knows is the high cost of those low prices. Wal-Mart has the power to squeeze profit-killing concessions from vendors. To survive in the face of its pricing demands, makers of everything from bras to bicycles to blue jeans have had to lay off employees and close U.S. plants in favor of outsourcing products from overseas."

Every single wal-mart in existence should be completley destroyed, and their execs should be tried for treason.

yes, quite.

Tom

Make up your mind. Are the unions killing the country or is non union companies like Wal Mart?

Why?

All I read was that Wal-mart is bad. It charges less than anyone else, and....it's bad. :rolleyes:

Walmart has developed inventory control and supplier systems that the US military (and other militarys around the world) have copied because it is so revolutionary.

Once again, people want cheap prices...but they aren't willing to accept the other side of the deal. Foreign outsourcing.

Wal-mart in my town was attempting to build a new super center. However it was supposedly on top of graves (like there is any place in the world without a grave there from some point or another). Well, people bitched and protested, so no store was built.

Now, a few years later, a developer has put up a town house development.... Yeah, so where were those idiot protestors for that?

Chicago's losses, according to USA Today:

sales and property taxes - $1 mil

school taxes - $400,000

Yeah, I kinda think Wal-Mart is bad. In order to give you those cheap prices, it forces companies to outsource and go oversees. Companies have to make their products cheaply in order to meet the price that Wal-Mart agrees to buy the product at. So, you get a crappy product for less. Great, that's what I want.

It (Wal-Mart) doesn't pay their workers a 'liveable' wage forcing two things. One, the only place they can afford to shop is Wal-Mart. Two, they ENCOURAGE their workers to file for welfare and other forms of goverment aid. So while your saving the big bucks by shopping there, in the long run, you're paying for it because you're supporting the workers that work there because they're on government aid.

Half the people that work there would be on gov't aid regardless.

Outsourcing is also going to happen. It's not like Wal-mart created the desire to manufacture more for less money. Any business man would rather pay someone in China a dollar a day to make a product as opposed to $40 an hour to lazy union workers in the US.

If you think the products are cheap, don't buy them. If something is that bad, a rival's product will take over that sector of the market. Bad products just don't make it.

Isn't Wal-Mart notorious for treating their employees like shit? Not paying their over-time and not giving them breaks? I've been in Wal-Mart before and I have seen Salvation Army thrift stores that are being better maintained. One big thing here (Michigan) is that Wal-Mart is a newer chain in the market. We just got our first one in the area about 10 or 12 years ago.

Price fixing is a big thing that wal-mart likes to do. Their prices are lower than all of the competitors, driving them to go out of business. Once the competition is gone, wal-mart raises their prices sometimes to the point where they are more expensive than what the non-existant competitor was.

I would never shop there nor would I invest in their stock (although the shares have done very well).

There are cleaner discount stores that don't exploit their workers.

Did anyone read that book regarding working for minimum wage jobs around the country? I forgot the title and author. The author took various low-paying jobs in different areas of the US from waitressing to Shoney's in the South to working for Merry Maids in Maine. From what I recall, she worked at Wal-Mart in MN(?)

...or I'm paying for the wages of about half of MTSU that seems to work at one of our two WalMarts.

You've made a pretty sweeping generalization. I know many people that work at Wal Mart that are not on government aid, get their overtime pay, get their breaks, and are generally happy, well contributing members of society. I have a good friend that supported his wife and child on the wages he earned at Wal-mart, and yet another that is a single mother supporting her child without government aid on the wages she earns - you guessed it - working at Wal Mart.

However, if all those workers are on government aid, I'm supporting them even if I don't shop there with my taxes. Might as well get my stuff cheap.
I actually like Wal Mart. Granted, the stuff is cheaper and of lower quality than many other places, but in six months, I'm going to get tired of that fuzzy pink beaded pillow that I just had to have for my apt. Then I can buy another cheap pillow I like better. Besides, I couldn't afford the fuzzy pink pillow at Dillard's and would've felt guilty throwing it out when I got tired of it.

I went on a boycott spree for a while when I discovered things about different companies whose products I used, but then realized that soon I wouldn't be able to buy groceries if I kept it up.

Or, I am Ford Motor Company that Tells Its Employees in a Plant Area, "IF You Drive a Car other than Made By FMO", You will park across the street, not in the close parking lot!:rolleyes:

Thank You Unions, place the Cars out of price of even the workers whom You pay.:p

So, the Out of Work Stats dont go up!

BS!

FMC is laying off 300,000 People. Who then buys The Cars?

Oh, They are not the only ones!:(

Maybe I've made a generalization, but I really don't see Wal-Mart as a great business contributing wonderful things to our society. There's a reason why there's almost always such a fight almost everytime that Wal-Mart wants to build somewhere.

I'm happy that you're friends are able to make a decent living working at Wal-Mart, I'm assuming that neither of them are in management since I was referring to a non-management type worker in my generalization.

It makes sense that you'd want to get a short-term product for a good price. I'm all about a bargain. The anchor stores in my area have such huge sales anymore that I'm able to get quality stuff sometimes for cheaper prices than what I can get elsewhere. If I can't get it there, I head to Target, maybe K-Mart. I don't even know the last time I stepped in Wal-Mart.

bump, because this is important.


I also boycot Pepsi.

There's a post above that 25,000 people applied for Wal-Mart jobs when a new one opened.

I guess these are pretty ignorant people, or else your "notorious" comment is inaccurate.

There are two union-funded anti-Wal-Mart campaigns underway, organizing and funding negative stuff - even producing a movie.

The common people are consistently said "we love Wal-Mart" spending money there and seeking employment there.

I don't think they are so bad.

My guess is they are extremely ignorant of the conditions and corporate pratices of Wal-Mart. Either that or too deserately poor to relize they will be worse off a year from now if they work at Wal-Mart.

Are you a union member?

hijack:

why don't the people that work at my city's walmart look and act all happy like the the ones they have on their commercials??

/hijack

Lol, because the actors in the Walmart commercial are getting paid way more than your local Walmart employees ;)

I agree.


I don't know about Billy, but I'm not in a union. If fact, I'm pretty vehemently against them. That doesn't mean I don't think employers should provide decent benefits and work envirionment.

********************

Wal-Mart has been on the front page lately here in Maryland because the legislature just overrode Governor Ehrlich's veto of a bill requiring private companies with more than 10,000 employees in Maryland to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on employee health benefits or make a contribution to the state's insurance program for the poor. People are calling it the "Wal-Mart Bill" because Wal-Mart is currently the only company in the state with the targeted number of employees which does not already do so.

Very un-Republican of me, but I applaud the legislature. I think they did a good thing. In that same session, they overturned the Governor's veto of a bill raising the minimum wage to $6.15 an hour. Still pretty lacking, but it's a start.

IMO, no one who is willing to put in an honest day's work should have to resort to public assistance.