Wilderness Walmart

At the risk of sounding anti-Walmart…oh who the hell am I kidding. I am anti-Walmart. But this should burn the britches of even the most ardent Walmart supporter and/or shopper.

It seems there aren’t enough Walmarts in the world already. It seems Goliath wants to build himself another hideous grey castle. His sights have recently been set on a nice little spot in Virginia right next to the Wilderness/Chancellorsville battlefield. For those of you unfamiliar with Civil War history, two separate battles were fought on this spot a year apart from each other; Chancellorsville in May of 1863 (you may remember that I blogged a little about this a few weeks ago) and The Wilderness in May of 1864. Both of these battles were bloody and brutal, with the latter battle marking the start of General Ulysses Grant’s year-long campaign to destroy General Lee’s army. Tens of thousands of Americans fell here. It is hallowed ground, a rare and precious thing here in America, as opposed to Walmarts. As a friend of mine put it: “Wal-Mart doesn’t need to expand. And I’m a shareholder.”

The Civil War Preservation Trust has been fighting for years to preserve important sites like The Wilderness, with varying success, and they’re fighting like mad to preserve this one. They’re asking for our help…for your help…and I think we should give it to them.

So take a few minutes and check out their website for lots more information about the battles, why it’s important to preserve our battlefields, and what YOU can do to support them. Robert Mackey of the Huffington Post said it better that I ever could:

“Support the saving of our heritage, so that decades from now, when a Wal Mart SuperCenter is finished sucking the resources and life from a small community and has moved on to another victim, we will still have a quiet piece of land where we can bring our children and remember what the cost of freedom truly means.”

And in other news…

Wal-Mart mobilizes against Democrats

Wal-Mart Stores Inc is mobilizing U.S. store managers to lobby against Democrats in November’s presidential election, fearing they will make it easier for workers to unionize, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if store workers unionize, the paper said.

About a dozen employees who attended meetings in seven states said executives stressed employees would have to pay hefty union dues and get nothing in return, and might have to go on strike without compensation, and warned that unionization could force the company to cut jobs as labor costs rise, the Journal reported.

The Wal-Mart human-resources managers who have run the meetings didn’t tell those attending how to vote in the November elections, but made it clear that voting for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, would be tantamount to inviting unions in, the Journals said.

Wal-Mart could not be reached immediately for a comment.