Tag Walmart

It’s been a busy season. And a pretty meager one. My “Geist” bank account has been pretty low for awhile and I hadn’t done a great job of gradually building it up with small deposits. But I figured I could swing a hundred bucks or so. At least it’s something. But between work and some personal stuff keeping me busy, I also hadn’t gotten around to buying toys for charities yet.
Lately though, I have been thinking a lot about the concepts of random acts of kindness and paying it forward to a complete stranger. It seems a lot more people have lately. I mean, look at the video that Thanatos linked to recently if you haven’t seen it already: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc8ZbVcdHpg&feature=youtu.be
Plus, people across the country have been going into stores like Kmart that have layaway plans and paying on the accounts of complete strangers. According to newspapers, the internet and tv, it’s a nation-wide phenomena and it’s also happened in my city a couple of times. The store tries to choose someone deserving to whom to allocate the funds. This is the sort of positivity that a lot of us have been wanting to encourage for a long time. And it’s happening! This is the sort of thing that I also wanted to do.
I started out the morning swinging through Burger King before work. I paid for my breakfast with exact change, but still had money in my pocket. I took out a $10 and handed it to the cashier after I paid. I said, “I’d like you to put this toward whoever comes up after me. This Christmas, I’m paying it forward. Use it until it’s gone.” I figured it might brighten someone’s morning. Maybe a couple of people.
After work, I made a withdrawl from my account and gotten a crisp $100 bill. geared up in a “Geist-lite” mode. Black jeans instead of cargo pants. A pair of cowboy boots instead of the urban ones. No gauntlets. I was trying to seem non-threatening. And I loaded the vehicle with food and supplies I’d been building up for the homeless. Industrial-size cans of corn, beans and some other things.
I went to Kmart and stood in line as people stared at me. A clerk became available and said that she could help me. I made a point of having the $100 in my hand even before I entered the store. I realize I appear weird and I didn’t want anyone to think I was there to rob the place. I handed her the bill and asked if she could put it toward someone’s layaway account. It took her a few seconds for her to understand and I had to repeat myself, but she eventually recognized what I was doing and said that I’d have to talk to the store manager. I was getting uncomfortable because, like a ghost (Geist), I really don’t like to hang around in public longer than necessary. I asked her if she would please do that for me and went for the exit. She went toward the manager and yelled above all of the chaotic noise, “Thank you!!” I said “You’re welcome.” and left.
Then I was on my way to our local homeless shelter, the Dorothy Day House. As I was unloading my goods, I saw a proper and well-dressed lady walking to the door carrying a crate of peaches. I said, “It looks like we have similar ideas.” She smiled and knocked on the door and stood there. When I got to the door I said, “In my experiences here, you can just go right in.” and we did. The guy at the front desk ushered us to another room and a lady asked if we were together, to which we said, “No.” I waited for her to speak to the familiar lady and tell her who she was and where she got her donations (there were more boxes to come from her). Then it was my turn and I gave my spiel. “I’m Geist and I’m a Real-Life Superhero.” to which the Proper Lady laughed. The familiar lady said, “Yes, I know. We’ve met here before, haven’t we?” I said yes and she showed me where I could put my donations.
On my way out, I saw the Proper Lady with another box and asked if she needed any help. She said, “No, but thank you, Geist.”
I drove away smiling and onto a short meandering street patrol before heading home without further incident. It was a fun and rewarding day.
-Now I’ve got to work on that “Geist account.”

From All-Star-

Hey Everyone!
As we all know the crisis in the Gulf Coast has been downplayed by BP, and just recently was found out that the oil is DOUBLE if not MORE than what was previously reported!
Team Justice is using their non-profit status to help raise money to be used in the oil cleanup effort.
So here are the details:
WHEN: August 7th and 8th (a weekend) 2010
WHERE: Your local community shop!
(Preferred Locations: Kroger Brand Stores – Kroger, City market, Ralphs, King Soopers, Dillons, etc the whole list is here: http://www.thekrogerco.com/
If those are unavailable default back to Wal-Mart! Unity and Similarity in location will help!
WHAT: We are accepting donations for oil cleanup in the Gulf Region! The money donated will be split between the National Wildlife Foundation and the International Bird Rescue Research Center
WHAT CAN YOU DO: Its easy!
Contact All-Star ([email protected]) or Superhero ([email protected]) by June 30th, All you need to do is go to the store you want to stand in front of and ask! Typically they will say they need a letter from a Non-Profit, and that’s where Superhero and Team Justice comes in!
We are hoping to reach as many states as possible for this nationwide event and we need as many organizers as possible!
If you have any questions, please send All-Star or Superhero an email! Thanks guys for all your help! Let’s make a difference in the gravest natural disaster our country has ever seen!

From Superhero-

Folks please remember that Team Justice is representing you when you use our DR14 (paperwork) to stand in front of a Wal-Mart or something. Smile….act accordingly….and don’t use the opportunity to raise funds to build a A-Bomb or something.

CURRENT LOCATIONS:
Colorado Springs, CO
Salt Lake City, UT
Ocala, FL
Chattanooga, TN
Houston, TX
Saskatoon, SK, CA
http://www.therlsh.net/public-forum-f8/attn-all-rlsh-s-opportunity-to-fund-raise-for-oil-cleanup-t3928.htm
 

Before you read the body of the text below, I am unable to post a link to our website that will allow you to click on the link and go there from this bulletin. You will need to copy and paste it into your browser if you would like to help us out. The link is: http://www.glhg.webs.com/psptoydrive.htm
I also want to let everyone know that again we will be adding to our efforts with our team members in Wisconsin and Florida to also make an impact there. In Wisconsin, the Watchman will be helping out the Gingerbread House
And in Florida we will hopefully be helping at the Pregnancy Care Center in Zephyr Hills.
Now we have had some wonderful donations from a couple of our good friends, but we need more. We want these kids at these locations to have a wonderful holiday! And sometimes the only way we can do this is by helping out with even $1. I tell you if every one of our respective friends donated just $1 we would have an awesome haul of toys to affect kids in all three states!
People Serving People in Minnesota.
The Gingerbread House in Wisconsin
The Pregnancy Care Center in Florida
These are all places where people who have been hit hard by the world go for help. The people that donate their time at these places do what they can and do a wonderful job, but they don’t have the resources to have collection boxes in every Wal*Mart or Target. They all rely on word of mouth, and right now that word of mouth is ours. I am still trying desperately to get at least one local store to allow us to put up a collection box expressly for the People Serving People part of the drive, but have had no response from the owner of the place. But I will keep trying. Its early, but I would like to work at this now, knowing that the closer we get to Christmas, the harder it is for anyone to help.
Thank you for your time in reading this, and remember, if you can donate $1 or if you can donate in the package toys, please contact Jack about donating the actual toys, he can accept them being sent to Hero Gear. You can contact him at [email protected] or at myspace.com/herogeardotnet
Lets rock the world this year and show everyone that we can make one heck of an impact!
RazorHawk
Great Lakes Heroes Guild

 

Photo essay originally published online at Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University
This photo essay is about Superbarrio Gomez and his journey in the construction of a “politics of the possible” (1) , an alternative political imaginary constituted via popular culture and the construction of a national and transnational social movement. Superbarrio makes evident the collapse between politics and performance; he forces us to think beyond the performance of politics in order to understand the politics of performance. Superbarrio belongs to both the majoritarian class and to the wrestling ring of popular culture, which makes his politics possible. Superbarrio’s practices of popular culture creates a political imaginary in which winning was possible in spite of corrupt referees. But Superbarrio makes evident how the wrestling ring teaches us about political culture as well as social mobilization. Superbarrio’s wrestling ring is a place of possibilities where corrupt landlords and politicians are unmasked .As long as Superbarrio keeps his mask, we all win. Superbarrio’s journey maps an alternative political imaginary that functioned at the local, national and transnational/hemispheric register. At the local level, Superbarrio, with the strength of Mexico City’s Neighborhood Assembly [Asamblea de Barrios] created a social movement that understood that to win one’s home, one had to win at the national level, the National Palace and la Casa de los Pinos [presidential house]. Superbarrio became the symbol to mobilize the political imaginary in which to vote, (against seven decades of perfect dictatorship) was the only option to own the Presidential house. In 1988, Superbarrio aligned forces with Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in the winning of the national vote and they won.
But against systemic corruption, to win was not enough and the social movement had to reach beyond the US/Mexican border. In order to do so, Superbarrio made his first US tour promoting the possibility of Mexicans, living on the US side of the border, to vote for Mexican president. After all, their income has contributed to the Mexican economy 13 thousand million dollars in economic gross. Superbarrio promoted a political imaginary in which voting– a fundamental right of citizenship– could be exercised across national borders. But this transnational campaign was the practice of a political vision that understood the rules of the game within the then nascent process of globalization and the privatization of the Nation-State. In 1994, NAFTA (North American Free-Trade Agreement) would become the national precedent. Knowing the dirty rules of what became a macro-economic political game, Superbarrio jumped out of the national arena to fight for the rights of workers transnationally; he ran for US president in 1996. Superbarrio’s strategy was to contextualize the concept of national citizenship (exercised in the voting of national citizens such as Latinos/as and Latin Americans living in the US with dual citizenship) into that of free trade, not of goods but of people. In his campaign he proposed “free citizenship”, a concept that assumes rights to decent housing and working conditions across nations for all, citizens and non-citizens, the workers of the hemisphere within and beyond the US territory. Superbarrio’s free citizenship becomes a model of global citizenship in which fair housing and fair working conditions function within the realm of human rights transnationally. He also proposed the voting rights of these transnational workers, their vote would count for Mexican as well as US president. Superbarrio’s US presidential campaign, and his premonitory “politics of the possible”, produce an alternative political, social and cultural imaginary. By implication, to believe in Superbarrio is to believe in a collective struggle that functions regionally and operates as a social movement across borders. To believe in Superbarrio is to believe in us as transnational social agents. Beneath the mask, we are all Superbarrio.
(1) I am borrowing this concept from Kumkum Sangari “The Politics of the Possible,” Cultural Critique 7 (Fall 1987: 157-186).

Imagine:
The fence from the U.S. to Mexico is recycled and settled in the Palestinian territories. The U.S./Mexican border becomes Wall-Mart Nation, where peso salaries purchase dollar products. Wall-Mart becomes the contact zone, the bridge where socialization takes place via consumption, and transculturation functions by way of gastronomic hybridity with post-national and post-natural products. The category of migrant and/or undocumented worker disappears, now replaced by the Wal-Mart migrant shopper. Wal-Mart becomes a brand citizenship. Mexican workers are from both sides of Wal-Mart as the U.S. becomes Mexico and the south of Mexico becomes the place where the corporate oligarchs live in their natural resorts of Puerto Vallarta, Cancun and Acapulco. Wal-Mart workers are mostly women; child labor laws have been dismantled, given the population’s gastronomic diet made of intense hormonal doses in super-size meals. Workers overdeveloped in size and Mexican mothers conspire by creating cilantro pills to sustain the IQ levels and cultural memory of their overgrown children. Workers sneak in the pills. Reports from the information guerrilla network attest that those who intervene against the Wal-Mart production line risk being devoured into the fast food menu. In the south, the formation of a Coca-Cola State becomes a preventive model against military occupation and tamales are assimilated into Wal-Mart’s production line. The Chinese, out of earthly space, transport their maquila sweat shops into outer space in Bangladeshi man-made space ships. Meanwhile, the electoral process experiences radical change, voting acquires a Wal-Mart redirecting points system; the more one purchases, the more points for the ruling BWW Party. In Wal-Mart World, former U.S. citizens and radicals vote a la the Mexican “si no?” vote against the ruling party even if it is not in favor of any candidate. Chiapas is yet to be conquered.