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I rose from my evening’s indulgence. Pushing pause, I passed through the dark room, glowing with a crystal glare, and entered the kitchen. Flicking on the lights, white recessed cans struck their yellow casts onto shadows with a soft incandescence, like a candle on a corner bookshelf.<br />I reached the pantry, opened its wooden doors and pulled down two contents. One was a can of Equal Exchange Organic Hot Cocoa. The other was a plastic bag of Western Family Marshmallows—jumbo.<br />

The Brotherhood of Corporation

Camron Karsten
2007-04-27 22:26:53

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and bodies of Americans, but now it extended not just to Europe, but also to Mexico.

Wal-Mart imports an outrageous amount of products from overseas. On November 29, 2004, China Daily reported the company’s imports in an article by Jiang Jingjing: "The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., says its inventory of stock produced in China is expected to hit US$18 billion this year, keeping the annual growth rate of over 20 per cent consistent over two years." That’s an estimated $18 billion pumped out not by moral means, but from sweatshop factories employing young, naïve women, men and children living in poor provinces. According to Global Exchange, Wal-Mart employs 400,000 workers overseas.

Ah, yes. It’s everywhere. Mexico to home. Just 15.59 miles from my doorstep, at the beginning of this year a Wal-Mart Supercenter opened its doors on January 27 in Poulsbo, WA, with the official Grand Opening on January 31. It is a 203,000 sq. ft. store providing 525 new jobs in 36 departments that remains open to customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What’s most amazing, apart from the $35,000 donated to local organizations through its Good Works community involvement program, is the fact that twelve miles down the road there is another Wal-Mart Supercenter located in Silverdale, Washington. Ah, yes. It’s everywhere.

A Better Need For More

My cocoa was most delicious, as always, and have it be known to others unfamiliar in such undertakings, hot cocoa without marshmallows is not the same. Plainly, it sucks. But as I continued to indulge my conscious senses in the film, I felt a pang of guilt. Here I was, drinking organic hot cocoa fairly traded through the worldwide networks of small farmers and co-ops with gigantic, jumbo-puffed, white-oozing, falsified sugar marshmallows.

No, they were not organic, fairly trade, or manufactured with conscious decisions. Most likely, they were not ...