#OccupyWalmart Adds A Juvenile Sophomoric Touch To The Shop-In

(Updated 04 DEC 2011)
So far in the latest bitch, whine, and complain demonstration nostalgia of the 1960s we have had Teach-Ins, Sit-Ins, along with piss-and-shit-ins. Now the bush league Ad-Busters scripted, American Nazi Party endorsed #Occupy children, decided to dig out another discarded protest idea that involves a field trip.  This one from the 1960s, pioneered by the Congress Of Racial Equality (CORE): The Shop-In

Cumberland Evening Times, Friday, February 28, 1964

Negroes Stage Shop-in Protests

New Weapon Used By Civil Rights Demonstrators

In the shop-in,. demonstrators enter a store, fill shopping carts with, groceries, wheel them to the counter, have them checked out, then say they can't pay and leave the sacks and boxes piled in front of clerks.

Members of the Congress of Racial Equality began the tactic last week at supermarkets of Lucky Stores, Inc. in San Francisco, at Berkeley, home of the University of California, and at Palo Alto to the south, adjacent to Stanford University.

They contend Lucky didn't fulfill an agreement to hire additional Negroes. Lucky flatly denied it, pointed to its Negro employes and said it would have no part of "reverse discrimination."
Tuesday, the largest Negro group in San Francisco, the Baptist Ministers Union said it would sever its ties with CORE if the shop-ins didn't stop.

"CORE has a right to picket, but if it continues 'to use this tactic, we just can't go along," said the Rev. George L. Bedford, head of the group representing 40,000 of the city's 85,000 Negroes.

In 1964, CORE was picketing grocery stores that they did not like, but that tactic did not impact business enough.  So, they tried a new tactic, clogging up the stores so nobody else could buy anything.  Later in 1967, CORE was a key player in the Detroit Riot.

Now, the new kids come along with their version: #OccupyBlackFriday

Instead of a trespassing protest on private property to get a grocery store that already employs Black people to . . . employ Black people a la CORE, the #Occupy kids make a mess trespassing on private property to demand . . . people shop locally?

The original shopins were so successful that they ended up on the trash-heap of history for almost forty years.  The old fart Commies running this #Occupy circus must have some memory of the shopins of old, and how they went over.  Perhaps they do not, because until recently one had to remember them from the 1960s because there was precious little to be found about them online.  The effect was pissing people off, so maybe they do remember and it fits right in with the rest of #Occupy.  There is an old film or two about the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s that PBS channels play on occasion, but that is about it.  I have been asking for source information about shopins for years and this week was the first time I found a news report from the period that mentioned "shop-ins".

In Liberal Fascism, or during his book tour, Jonah Goldberg mentioned that around the time of Hitler's rise in Germany there were protests against department stores there, similar to the Walmart hate we witness in America today.  I am still looking for direct references to that and any information is welcome.

Daniel J. Flynn has a great response to #OccupyWalmart at Human Events.  Rush Limbaugh mentioned the ruckus on his show, apparently before it spread to Target, Best Buy and other stores.

The Blaze covered the Dayton 'event' like this:

Black Friday shoppers in Dayton, Ohio, were in for a rude awakening when Occupy Dayton protesters (we’ve reported on their antics before) entered a local Walmart and Target and began mic-checking and berating individuals and families.

On the protest group’s YouTube page, a five and a half minute video has been posted. In it, Occupiers document and promote the torment they attempt to inflict on shoppers.

At the 40 second mark, you’ll see the first clip, which was taken at a local Target store. Around 1:08, a male voice can be heard asking, “Ready?” Within seconds, the protesters begin yelling, “Mic check!” Then, they launch into their seemingly endless chant:

“Hello Daytonians. We have a message for you. This will only take a moment. It is shameful that you spend your hard-earned money at a corporation who does not care about your family. They insult the 99 percent. They pay little or no taxes, while profits soar. Our tax money goes to our public schools. We find it an outrage that you continue to shop here in support of a corporation who does not support you.”

Video from The Blaze:

I am not up on Walmart getting any free ride on sales taxes.  They frequently get property tax incentives thrown at them by local governments competing with other local governments for Walmart to build a store in their town, which is really an abuse of government power.  Neither am I certain if Ohioans fund public schools with sales taxes generated at Walmart.  I am betting that the Occupiers have a few tax facts wrong.

Also, if you don't think that the American Nazis are Socialists, try looking at their endorsement of #OWS for their "anti-capitalist" positions.  Just because they mix racism with Socialism does not make them any less Socialistic.

Steve Jobs Has Died

I was never a big fan of Jobs, mostly because I was never a big fan of his expensive products.  Perhaps if I were more of a graphic artist I would appreciate them, and the price tag more.  Don't get me wrong, I loved using them when someone else was buying them, like my employer or school.  When it came down to outfitting my home and office, I always bought Toshiba.  It is all about the price/utility tradeoff.  I do use an iPhone and complaints about it could fill another post.

Part of my attitude was influenced by Steve Wozniak, who never spoke ill of Jobs, I just did not like how he described the way Jobs behaved.  I am a big fan of Woz and have met him in person, for a couple of hours.  It was more of a valued opinion sort of thing.  Woz can say anything and I tend to believe it.

Perhaps it was my lack of knowledge about how he ran Apple.  I never studied it, never went out of my way anyway.  I appreciate him more now that I know he really ran Apple computer.  From what I thought I knew in the past, I had the impression that Jobs kept wrecking the company and everybody else around him shored it up.  Not true, not even close.  However, when the press begins heaping praise on Jobs for inventions and engineering, because that was Woz, not Jobs.

I see that there are already comparison wars erupting, comparing Jobs to Edison.  Jobs was no Edison, he was no Wozniak either.  He was a fantastic marketer and knew good ways to package products.

Rush Limbaugh was always touting Apple products, reportedly without any compensation, just because he liked their stuff.  Perhaps if I were not as frugal as I am on certain things, I would be in the same Apple camp as Rush.  His show tomorrow should be interesting.

What does this have to do with How Many Borders Would You Like With That Socialism?  Nothing really.  Not much, really.  I recall in the 1980s(?) Jobs did a big computer "giveaway" to any schools that wanted to buy Apple products at cost.  As I recall, it was an effort to keep the company open during an economic slump.  This deserves more research and could be relevant to my current project.  It was like a reverse of rent-seeking, with Apple marketing and selling to government without seeking a government enforced monopoly.

On the surface, it is similar to the story of tobacco companies giving cigarettes to the US government for Soldiers in WWI.  I am still researching that one, but the story goes on that the returning Soldiers, of all walks of life, retained the habit and introduced cigarette smoking to sectors of society that had shunned the habit in the past.

The Apple giveaway, from memory, placed Apple computers as the introductory platform for school children of all ages for decades.  In college, it was my preferred platform and where I learned to use MS Word and Excel when MS Windows was not yet ready for prime time.  As this group grew older, a significant portion of them continued to purchase and use Apple products.  IIRC, the recent boom in Apple sales did not start until they began producing non-computer products, like the iPod and iPhone.

One of the critical mistakes they made in the early days of Apple was their insistence on making the Apple Graphic User Interface operating system incompatible with other platforms.  Unix, then Microsoft owned the government and business markets.  Apple acted like their hardware platform was superior and it would become obvious to everybody "any day now."  That event never happened and Microsoft expanded their rule over the non-academic computing market.

Eventually Apple did make their computing platforms compatible with Microsoft, but it was too little, too late.  Even today, non-Apple users cite Apple incompatibility with their favorite programs, which has been false for over a decade.

I need to do more research into the Apple federal lobbying efforts over the years.  Apparently, they never lobbied to get their platforms into the federal government.  If they did, it was a colossal waste of money, however I have never heard a hint of that.  Microsoft had problems because they began, and won, the business and government desktop war on the coattails of IBM.  They retain that position today, after being bullied by the federal court system into playing the crony capitalism game and positioning lobbyists to shower money on government officials in DC.

In retrospect, Steve Jobs is more of a great marketer to the masses, rather than a technological innovator, who knew what people wanted before they did, a little more like George Gilder.