Proving that no good can come out of the words “Black Friday” and “Wal-Mart”, a stampede of people this morning killed one worker and is being blamed for causing a shopper to miscarry.

A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.

Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too…I literally had to fight people off my back.”

It really saddens me to read how people have lost sense of basic concern for the well-being of others just so that they can get a bargain.

The Reverend Billy, of the Church of Stop Shopping sent out Ten Commandments on Buy Nothing Day 2008, good to keep in mind as the madness continues.

THOU SHALT

1) Forgive people, yourself and everybody else. We all shop too much.

2) Know your Devil. Shoppers are only dancing in the land of ten thousand ads.
Consumerism is the system. Corporations are the agents of the system.

3) Respect the micro-gesture. Magicalize the foreground.
Fore-go the plastic bag and grab that bare banana– Amen!

4) Practice asking for Sweat-free, Fairly-traded products. That’s the rude that’s cool.

5) Buy less and give more. Giving is forceful, the beginning of fantastic new economies.

6) Buy local and think global. Love Your Neighbor (buy at independent shops) and Love The Earth (walk to, bike to, mass transit to – the things you need.)

7) Citizens can buy or not buy, produce or not produce. We can change
to a sustainable personal economy. Then corporations and governments will change.
Envision the history of a product on a shelf. Workers and the earth made that thing. Resisting Consumerism is an act of imagination.

9) Complexify. Don’t be so easy to figure out. Consumers tend to regularize.
Shopping at big boxes and chains make us all the same. Viva la difference!

10) Respect the heroes of the resistance. A small band of neighborhood-defenders who staved off a super mall with years of protests? Beautiful.

It’s our turn now. Change-a-lujah!

Via / The Daily News