United Food and Commercial Workers is organizing a demonstration in front of the St. Louis Whole Foods store Wednesday morning at 11:30 to protest the recent Wall Street Journal op ed piece written by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Bloggers nationwide are outraged that Mackey regurgitated right wing lies about health reform (not to mention opposing the Employees Free Choice Act). Here’s a sample:
“The last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health care system.”
Mackey doesn’t own Whole Foods. He’s an employee there, and should be held accountable, by the company he’s associated with, for spewing such nonsense. We think he should get lots of heat for putting his employers in this unwelcome limelight.
Tea partyers have dominated much of the health care news in August with their lies and loudmouth antics. Now it’s time for us pro-reform folks to show some muscle. And we can start by making John Mackey regret his arrogant assumption that he can offend his employer’s customers with impunity.
Come and BRING SIGNS.
I’m reminded of the old joke:
What’s worse than biting into an apple & seeing a worm? Biting into an apple and seeing half a worm!
I’ve both shopped and done demos at Whole Foods. It deserved its reputation as a good place to work. It’s disappointing to learn it’s been orchestrated by a jerk!
Like this post states, Mackey is far off base in his op-ed. Everyone really should read his op-ed to get a better understanding of how unaware many people are about illness, disease and health. Mackey said “Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat.”
PREVENT and REVERSE degenerative disease?! Correct me if I’m wrong, but is Mackey suggesting that our country would be free of cancer, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, Alzheimer’s, etc. if we all just ate better?? While Whole Foods may help, we need research and better health care delivery systems to prevent and cure diseases.
and not just because Whole Foods is my only local source for lots of things that I use regularly (like Tempeh).
It seems to me that I used to get really outraged when the right-wing went after progressives and liberals for speaking out. Nor do I not feel that anyone’s livlihood, no matter how wealthy they are, should be threatened because they exercised their right to free speech in good faith. Wrong as Mackey is, I see no evidence that he is consciously trying to mislead people.
I am aware that because Mackey is wealthy, he gets a bigger pulpit than many others — but shouldn’t that mean that we pressure the WSJ with requests for more balance in their op-eds? And that we work hard to display the error of the arguments — which I am not sure that a boycott or demonstrations do since the emphaisis can be presented as an effort to shut Mackey up and intimidate him rather than as disagreement with the opinion.
I compare this to the pressure being put on sponsors of Glen Beck, which I support, and I can see real differences. Beck is cynically, consciously spreading untruths that veer off into the areas of hate speech and which are close to inciting violence — the “crying fire in a crowded theatre” test for the limits of free speech. His behavior clearly should not be tolerated by people of good conscience. Mackey’s piece doesn’t seem to be quite the same thing — although I would welcome counter arguments since I am, as I noted above, really conflicted about this protest.
Dixie Chicks, the singing group who had the guts to speak out about against the Iraq war and Bush’s excesses and suffered financially for it — just as Mackey serves a largely liberal group, these country singers were dependent on the fringer-land for their livliehood and they suffered for being out front about their beliefs. Certainly the boycott of their records (and the CD-burning, etc. parties) had the effect of intimidating free speech.
I would feel differently if Mackey were funding astroturf organizations or otherwise using Whilefood profits to organize against healthcare. I am not too outraged that he says what he thinks and that it is bunkum.