Beltway Area Indymedia

(AUDIO: 5 min 58 sec)

About noon on March 31, protestors descended on the Harris-Teeter grocery store on Glebe Road in Arlington. Once there, a delegation entered the store to deliver petitions and inspect house brand pork products to see if they have changed packers.

A most interesting thing happened inside. A huge wall of boxes of produce walled off the section of the meat coolers where ham, bacon, etc are displayed, giving very limited access-even nearly preventing one customer from making a purchase.

We all squeezed through and I was able to personally inspect packages of both Harris-Teeter brand and Smithfield brand bacon. The packages were almost identical, right down to the color scheme on the packaging, the size, and how the bacon is packed.

Several times, the "manager of the day" demanded that videographers stop taking pictures, and of course that demand was ignored. She tried to conceal her name and claimed that nobody with any authority was on hand. Soon, however, it came out that her name is Susan Gibbons, she was the manager in charge and the corporate office(itself in North Carolina) had instructed the store to refuse all petitions and not to deal with union or other protestors.

Everyone took one store brand and one Smithfield brand bacon package and all of them were deposited in one shopping cart, which was presented back to Susan Gibbons with a request that she "search her heart" and remove at least these packages for store shelves for the day.

Afterwards the delegation walked out to cheers and applause from the crowd. Several speakers said they would stop shopping at Harris-Teeter, and one produced and destroyed a Harris-Teeter discount card.

If Smithfield's abuses continue, dropping Smithfield could become just as socially required as dumping HLS!

Also on March 31, the same march visited a nearby Starbucks and a nearby McDonalds, two more notorious abusers of labor. Starbucks was asked to stop paying pennies a pound to growers for coffee that sells for $26 a pound in the US, and McDonalds to pay a penny more a pound for tomatoes to the Immokalee tomato pickers.