Community Activists to Discuss Walmart

Citizen’s Action for Peace will screen “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?,” a production of the PBS series Frontline.

The show explores the relationship between job losses and rise of Wal-Mart and their “Low prices. Every day. On everything.”

In 2004, Frontline correspondent Hedrick Smith looks Wal-Mart’s way of doing business by profiling Circleville, Ohio, where the local TV manufacturing plant has closed down and South China boomtown of Shenzhen where cheap labor provides Americans the affordable products.

The screening will be from 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. Sunday at the Redlands United Church of Christ, corner of W. Olive and Bellevue.

The screening was inspired by Wal-Mart’s attempt to build a huge Walmart Supercenter near Citrus Valley High School. A discussion between local activist groups, Citizen’s Action for Peace, Redlands Good Neighbor Coalition, and Occupy Redlands will follow.

The event is free and open to the public.

China has become the cheapest, most reliable production platform in the world, the source of up to $25 billion in annual imports that help the company deliver everyday low prices to 100 million customers a week, screening organizers said. 

Two years after the program first aired, Frontline staffers posted an update noting that Wal-Mart's sales had increased 30 percent, approaching $325 billion for 2006. And the U.S. trade deficit with China has nearly doubled, expected to hit $230 billion in 2006.