Coretta King Is Barely Even Cold…
…before Andrew Young reverts to his NOLA bougie roots and becomes just another corporate shill. What a legacy for the Civil Rights generation.
Nothing illustrates more the moral vaccum at the heart of the Democratic party. No wonder Americans despair of them – you can’t trust anyone in that party to have principles. The progressive heroes of the sixties, like their values, have become hollow shells of their former selves.
Have I said how much I loathe fucking baby boomers? They got theirs. Screw the generations that come behind – let them have shoddy sweatshop goods, a dreadful diet and hellacious healthcare.
BET News: ANDREW YOUNG HIRED TO PRAISE WAL-MART:
Former Atlanta mayor joins company aimed at plugging store?s virtues.
(March 1, 2006)
*Former Atlanta mayor and civil rights legend Andrew Young has been hired as the face of a Wal-Mart-backed group whose goal is to combat recent negative reports about the retailer.
Young, a one-time aide to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., will serve as chairman of Working Families for Wal-Mart’s national steering committee, the group said in a statement.
The Bentonville, Arkansas-based chain has increased efforts to counter criticism from unions and other groups who say the company pays poverty-level wages, discriminates against women and drives competitors out of business.
The allegations were outlined in Robert Greenwald?s 2005 documentary ?Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price.?
“The critics have it wrong,” Young said in a statement. “For those who care about the poor it is time to step up, speak out and join this national discussion.”
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has contributed funds to support Working Families for Wal-Mart, described on its Web site as a group of people “who understand and appreciate Wal-Mart’s positive impact on the working families of America.”
Wake Up Wal-Mart, a union-backed group critical of Wal-Mart, hopes Young will use his new position to push for changes at the retailer.
“Ambassador Young is now in a unique position to reach out to Wal-Mart and CEO Lee Scott and urge them to change,” Paul Blank, campaign director for Wake Up Wal-Mart, said in a statement.
“Urging them to change”. What bollocks. Young’s just proved himself nothing but another Democrat corporate whore, hired merely to put a reassuringly light-skinned, regular-featured, acceptable Black face on Wal Mart’s rapacious brand of corporate pillage. Do we honestly think they’d’ve offered this deal to the Rev Al Sharpton? Please.
Wal-Mart Corporation, the world?s largest retailer, with 4,717 stores worldwide, 3,422 in the U.S. , and 1.2 million U.S. employees, opposes unions and is the target of multiple civil rights lawsuits alleging violations that include refusal to pay overtime, use of illegal workers and pay inequities for women.
On its Web site, Wal-Mart defends its record, noting that it hires more than 139,000 Hispanics and more than 208,000 African-Americans. Of its 14-member board, it states, two are Black, two are Latino and one is female. It further states that its ?officer compensation is now linked to diversity goal? and that a manager who fails to reach his or her diversity goal could lose up to 15 percent of bonus money.
Sharpton said the Wal-Mart award was slated to go to Esther Silver Parker, Wal-Mart?s vice president for diversity relations, who has been credited for planning and executing much of Wal-Mart?s diversity efforts.
The Tyson and Wal-Mart nominations were strongly criticized by labor activists, who questioned the giving of awards to large companies who may have records of philanthropy in the Black community, but questionable hiring, labor or civil rights records.
Sharpton says Gene Morris, president of Chicago-based E. Morris Communications, nominated Tyson Foods approximately three months before the suit was filed. Morris, who says he has had a strong and positive business relationship with Tyson, has denied directly nominating the company for the award. He says he and Sharpton mutually agreed during a telephone conversation that Tyson would be a good choice.
Sharpton has declined further comment on the issue, but he argues that he will always hold companies accountable, no matter what good they seem do be doing.
The only question remaining in my mind is, what was Young’s price? Or maybe there was no price – maybe he did it for ideological reasons. Maybe I’m a meerkat.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Young says his roles with Wal-Mart and the Drum Major Institute are at apparent philosophical odds. “There’s probably a conflict,” Young said. “I can’t step down from my past.”
But he said he has “worked out these conflicts in my own mind” and that he sees opportunity for dialogue.
Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com, said Young’s new group “is another well-funded ploy by Wal-Mart to try and cover up its record of driving down wages, not providing affordable health care, shifting costs onto taxpayers and shipping U.S. jobs overseas.”
[…]
In addition to Young, the steering committee of 16 other members includes two other Georgians: the Rev. Barbara King and Ron Galloway, an Augusta filmmaker who recently made a pro-Wal-Mart documentary. Young’s firm, GoodWorks International, has been hired by Wal-Mart to be a consultant. The other steering committee members are not being paid.
Oh, right – so that means he is being paid. Again, how much? What’s it worth to publicly throw a lifetime of work down the drain? But then ‘working out these conflicts in my own mind’ comes a lot easier when you have a healthy bank balance, and a healthy realtionshiip with business.
I tried to think of a good reason why Young might do this. I’ve admired his achievements in the past, and I’d really like to give him the benefit of the doubt. But it’s hard:
Bryant spoke of a conversation he had with Ambassador Andrew Young recently. Young told him that, ?Dr. King and I succeeded in integrating the lunch counter, the public building, and even the public school house ? but never the dollar. And capitalism in a capitalist society, with no true access to capital and the knowledge to utilize it, is nothing more than a sophisticated form of slavery.?
It’s another arrow in Young’s quiver though. He also serves as a member of the boards of directors of numerous organizations and businesses including Delta Airlines, Argus, Host Marriott Corporation, Archer Daniels Midland, Cox Communications, and Thomas Nelson Publishers.
The only real beneficiaries of this act are Young and Walmart themselves. In the light of his ties to big business, let’s not forget it was Young who also said
“Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.”.
Tags: US Politics Civil Rights Andrew Young Walmart Democratic Party
