CR Nation

A remarkable example of capitalism’s charity in true times of need.

An excerpt from the article:

…Wal-Mart trucks pre-loaded with emergency supplies at regional depots were among the first on the scene wherever refugees were being gathered by officialdom.

Their main challenge, in many cases, was running a gauntlet of FEMA officials who didn’t want to let them through.

As the president of the brutalized Jefferson Parish put it in a Sept. 4 Meet the Press interview, speaking at the height of nationwide despair over FEMA’s confused response: “If [the U.S.] government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.”

This benevolent improvisation contradicts everything we have been taught about Wal-Mart by labour unions and the “small-is-beautiful” left.

We are told that the company thinks of its store management as a collection of cheap, brainwash-able replacement parts; that its homogenizing culture makes it incapable of serving local communities; that a sparrow cannot fall in Wal-Mart parking lot without orders from Arkansas; that the chain puts profits over people.

The actual view of the company, verifiable from its disaster-response procedures, is that you can’t make profits without people living in healthy communities. And it’s not alone…other big-box companies such as Home Depot and Lowe’s set aside the short-term balance sheet when Katrina hit and acted to save homes and lives, handing out millions of dollars’ worth of inventory for free.