Buying For Equality?
With the holidays approaching, who would have thought that you could fight for equality every time you swiped your credit card? The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) recently released its 2008 Buyer's Guide, which ranks companies on a 100 point scale in terms of their corporate policies regarding gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees. If ending discrimination against GLBT individuals is a priority for you, it may be worth a quick browse before you head out to do your annual gift shopping.
The buyer's guide is broken down into several sections, such as "Where to Shop," "Banking and Finance," and "Eating Out." In each category the guide lists companies with high, medium, and low scores. Since it's the holiday season and the shopping frenzy is now upon us, let's take a look at some of the retailers who fit into each category:
- Highest Scores: Amazon.com, Best Buy, Borders, GameStop, Hallmark, Sears, Staples, and Target.
- Medium Scores: Barnes & Noble, Circuit City, OfficeMax, and Pathmark Stores.
- Lowest Scores: Harry & David, RadioShack, Toys "R" Us, and Wal-Mart.
For some reason the list didn't surprise me too much. Perhaps I feel the aura of acceptance as I walk through Best Buy, yet shy away as the folks at RadioShack try to sell me a cell phone with my two pack of double A batteries. I'm not saying that you shouldn't shop at scores that didn't rank as highly as others, but it's always good to be an informed shopper, especially if equality in the workplace is a huge issue to you.
To browse the complete 2008 HRC Buyer's Guide, please visit http://www.hrc.org/buyersguide/.
Re: Show the world you care about Democracy
Hi birdflewover,
I think you bring up some good points, and also strike at the big theme that consumers should definitely try and educate themselves in general when choosing where to buy goods and services. The recent toy recalls from products made in China also highlight this point.
Thanks for your comment!
~Justin
TreeHugger
Hi Justin,
You probably already know this but just in case, a great website that leads to many other great websites for buying stuff that actually does good, ie good capitalism, is TreeHugger, just Google treehugger and you'll get there. There you can buy on the internet really great "green" products in all aspects of life, that last a super long time, save you money in energy and usage costs, minimize negative impact on our environment, our the healthiest and safeist for our children, are not made with slave labor or exploited people, etc. Check it out.
By the way the organic wines are really good and often less expensive than non organic, and with organic wines you don't have a headache the next morning if you drink more than half a bottle on a Friday evening with you husband wife boyfriend or girlfriend during a romantic dinner. The clothes are made sweatshop free and are all the fashion rage these days, quite sexy actually, great gift for your wife or girl friend who will appreciate not only your love for her but for the environment.
Recently the Venezuelan people voted to limit the number of terms one can be President of Venezuela, Chavez wanted unlimited terms as long as one was fairly elected. The people said no, we want limited terms to prevent the possibility of dictatorship. This was a victory for Democracy in Venezuela as Chavez said he would respect the wishes of the people and step down after his term expires.
I think we should reward the people of Venezuela for their vote of Democracy by buying our gas at Citco whenever possible. Since Chavez has been in power most of the profits for oil now go back to the people for healthcare and education and less to the oil companies and their military proxies.
On the contrary when you buy from the European oil companies Shell and BP or the American companies like ExxonMobil, you support financing ruthless dictators who torture and kill their people in Burma, Nigeria, Congo, Sudan, Indonesia, Colombia...and many other places. Also buy wind and solar produced electricity if possible to help not only reduce arm sales to murderous dictatorships, military gangs and death squads protecting oil company assets but also to reduce CO2 emmissions into the air which will stimulate numerous ecological disasters if we don't act now.
Buy free range, organic and biodynamic whenever possible here you support better treatment of the animals we eat (which translates to much tastier and higher quality, though more expensive) and our environment (less toxic chemicals in or soil and water as well as fewer pesticides injested by our children, even if you do wash well, because pesticides seep into the produce). By doing this you support the "good" industries making them eventually more competitive with the "bad" food industries like Tyson and Conagra which torture their animals in animal factories, and produce genetically manipulated plants were farmers are forced to by seeds at ever increasing prices (since genetically modified plants no longer create their own seeds they have to be bought from DuPont, Monsanto and similar who will have soon a monopoly on our food and therefore control of our freedom).
Don't buy anything made in China because they have children slave labor working 14 hour days, this means you can not shop at Wal-mart and similar, buy local art or American produced stuff or European produced stuff where you know labor and environmental laws are respected. Make sure that if though the product is American or European that it is actually made 100% in those countries.
We can change the world and protect our liberty with our credit card as well as with our vote and our voice and our pen, if each one of us gets active We The People really do have the power, to keep our power.
For me there is only one Republican we can intelligently vote for and that is Ron Paul all the others are corrupt, will bring more war, and some are down right fascist. On the democratic side all are OK but some are much better than the others for preserving our liberties, our national morality and our middle class economy. From best to worst in my opinion I will vote: Kucinich, Dobbs, Biden, Edwards, Obama, Richardson, Clinton. All would be ok but why settle for the worst when you can have the best.