Wednesday Walk: In the Bag
Wednesday Walk: In the Bag
A local grocery store stands in solidarity while a national retailer runs out of bags
Welcome to Willoughby Hills!
Every Wednesday, I offer a few short ideas that I hope will inspire you to do some more reading, thinking, and exploring. Let’s take a little walk together and see where the path leads…
Grocers for Peace
I’ve written before about the amazingness that is River Valley Co-op, a local grocery store here in Western Massachusetts with two locations.
In the past, I’ve discussed how they educated me about bad labor practices at a kombucha brewer and how they smartly have a “leave a bag, take a bag” bin for sharing reusable bags.
But today’s callout has nothing to do with groceries and everything to do with current events. Every week, I receive an email from the Co-op with a listing of items that are on sale at the moment. But this week’s email was different. The subject line was “A Statement for Peace.”
Before the usual weekly sale items, the Co-op Board of Directors voted to express solidarity with a statement put out by the National Co+op Grocers about what they termed the “Israel-Palestine War.” River Valley Co-op not only shared the national statement, but went on to add their own lengthy commentary.
You can read the full statement here, but here’s a few highlights:
Trying to navigate highly sensitive and divisive issues as community-owned grocery stores that want to create more welcoming and safer spaces for more people is never easy. We believe as co-ops, we can look to cooperative values to share with our communities not who we stand against but rather what we stand for:
We believe in human dignity and that all people have the right to live in a peaceful society free from violence, hate and discrimination in all forms including on the basis of religion, ethnicity or origin
We reject antisemitism, anti-Palestinian racism, Islamophobia and genocide of any people
We condemn the senseless attacks against civilian populations and recognize harm done to innocent victims whose lives have been taken as well as those who continue to be forever altered by this violence
We stand in solidarity with humanitarian aid workers, including International Rescue Committee, Doctors Without Borders, and World Central Kitchen, by calling for an immediate and sustained ceasefire, compliance with international humanitarian law, release of all hostages and an end to the blockade of humanitarian aid to the 2.3 million people living in Gaza
We know this message will not go far enough for some and we respect the right of every individual to free speech on this issue.
The statement also discusses donations that both the national organization and my local co-op have made, includes information on local vigils, and links to several groups for further education. I’ll add those links here too:
I was pleasantly surprised not only that a grocery store felt the need to make a statement at all, but that it was willing to do so in a relatively bold sense, at least compared to many other businesses.
The general culture of most businesses seems to be to keep quiet about what are deemed political issues with the fear that some customers may feel alienated.
In this case, I see the genocide in Palestine as a humanitarian issue less than a political one, and was happy to see my grocer affirm basic human rights. (The store is also very welcoming of LGBTQ+ shoppers, which many may see as political, but I also see as affirming humanity. And they are one of the only area businesses to still offer masked shopping times for the immunocompromised.)
Mixing politics and business can be troublesome, as sticker printing company (and apparently also a hot sauce company) Sticker Mule found out earlier this month. I was one of the people on the receiving end of an email with the subject line “Trump 2024” signed by Sticker Mule Anthony Constantino after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
The email was also posted to Sticker Mule’s X (Twitter) account and read in part:
“I don’t care what your political views are but the hate for Trump and his supporters has gone too far.
People are terrified to admit they support Trump. I’ve been scared myself.
Americans shouldn’t live in fear. I support Trump. Many at Sticker Mule do.
Many at Sticker Mule also support Biden.
The political hate needs to stop.”
Predictably, things haven’t gone well for Sticker Mule since, perhaps because in addition to condemning political violence, it also encouraged people to buy Trump T-shirts.
The silver lining in all of this was that many smaller sticker companies had their accounts surfaced and business moved to them from Sticker Mule.
But back to River Valley, it may seem strange that a grocery store is making a statement against violence and genocide, but the more I think about, it’s really strange that more companies and individuals aren’t speaking up against this.
It is a humanitarian crisis, one which us Americans are complicit in because our tax dollars are providing the funding. We need more businesses to follow the lead of River Valley and the other Co-ops speaking out.
No Bags
A few days ago, I was heading into my local Target store when I noticed this sign on the front door.
It felt a bit strange to imagine a giant store like Target without a single shopping bag.
But then again, it also felt okay.
We have been primed to expect every purchase at every store to be bagged up for us, whether it’s a cart full of groceries or a single tube of toothpaste. Maybe it’s time to rethink those assumptions. Besides, the plastic grocery bags that most stores offer kind of suck.
I have a habit of bringing my own bags with me to the store. I also collect reusable bags from Whole Foods Market stores when traveling. I have quite the collection these days, including bags from Hawai’i, Florida, Texas, Connecticut, and most recently Georgia. I like the size and durability of the Whole Foods bags, as they resemble a paper grocery bag and are quite strong.
We recently went to a bakery in Vermont and were offered a reused cardboard box for our purchases, similar to how Costco reuses boxes instead of giving out shopping bags. It felt good and it made sense.
Single use plastic bags are banned in many places and at the beginning of this year, Aldi stopped providing plastic bags, only offering reusable bags for sale. Kroger is said to be phasing them out next year.
Even in my days as a Toys R Us cashier more than two decades ago, I hated giving out bags for small purchases. If somebody were buying something small, say a single action figure or a video game, I would always ask if they wanted a bag. If they did, no problem. But many people upon being asked, realized that they didn’t need one and would decline.
I can’t find any recent news about the plastic bag shortage at my local Target, but when I asked the cashier at that store about the lack of bags, she said she thought it was affecting other retailers too, possibly including Lowe’s. I’m not sure how reliable her information is, nor do I have any sense of if this one Target was just late receiving a shipment or if there’s a larger outage at foot.
Still, it seems like a good reminder that maybe some of the things that we assume can never change, like free plastic bags at the checkout counter, should be rethought and adapted.
I publish new issues every Wednesday and Sunday. Sign up to always receive the latest issue and support my work:
Other Wednesday Walks
If you’ve missed past issues of this newsletter, they are available to read here.
Future generations, perhaps even the youngest among alive right now, are gonna condemn us for so much of what seems to be the norm: plastics, anything described as single use or disposable petroleum's prevalence, and likely mobile devices and their corresponding technologies. Private sector companies should stick to their knitting and stay out of the political/humanitarian issues.
We are definitely at the point where its going to take business that do pay into the tax system and provide our basic needs to step up and say hey, this isn’t how we want to do business and this is inhumane.
Plus, we have to get you a DC Whole Foods bag, it’s got a landmark folks aren’t expecting and a color that’s unexpected too!