community-based, non-corporate, participatory media
First meeting of The Starbux Sux Project.
by wheatpaster
Tuesday July 29, 2003 at 08:34 PM
starbuxsux@heartofdarkness.org (email address NOT validated)
for Pittsburgh Indymedia: A new project to bring the shady business practices of Stabucks Corp. to the public is meeting August 2nd at 6pm in the apartment above the East End Community Thrift Shop, 5123 on Penn Ave. next to the TMC.
Do you hate Starbucks? Are you unhappy they moved into your neighborhood and the hip little coffee shack down the road closed down? Does it irk you when the greed of a few wealthy corporations ensures every neighborhhood looks exactly the same? And doesn't their coffee taste like unfiltered charcoal?
Of course. Starbucks sucks.
Starbucks Corporation has a history of opening new chain locations where a locally owned business is prospering. This quote is from an unnamed former employee: "Starbucks purposely finds the little, privately owned coffee shops and drives them out of business. It is their agenda to monopolize the market and get rid of any competition. This is how they plan their real estate."
Starbucks also has reneged on promises to feature Fair Trade Coffee. Due to the pressure of PLANTA's grassroots campaign, Starbucks introduced whole bean Fair Trade Certified coffee to 2,300 stores on October 4, 2000. Starbucks promised they would brew Fair Trade coffee once a month. Yet this promise has been a token effort. The other 29-30 days of the month Starbucks continues to feature coffee that exploits agriculture workers. According to PLANTA: "Many small coffee farmers receive prices for their coffee that are less than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt."
Starbucks also has a history of questionable treatment of their workers. Starbucks just settled a class action suit in California in which former workers were awarded 18 million for cheating workers out of pay and other wrongdoing.
The Starbux Sux Project will meet August 2nd at 6pm in the apartment above the East End Community Thrift Shop, 5123 on Penn Ave. next to the TMC. The meeting is not too far from the new Starbucks on Liberty Ave. You know, the Starbucks that used to be an independently owned theater and is really close to a bunch of COOL non-chain coffee shops.
We hope to show when big corporations move in, local businesses go bankrupt. When the corporate agenda invades the third world, indigenous people suffer the same fate. Being a project sprouted from the Pittsburgh Organizing Group, Starbux Sux supports a consensus-based model and diversity of tactics, and plans to work closely with other local efforts against corporate globalization and neo-liberalism. We could use your creativity and energy to spread this message, so please attend the first planning meeting of The Starbux Sux Project.
i
by i
Wednesday July 30, 2003 at 03:28 PM
Yeah! Let's not let the market decide! The public doesn't know what's good for them, let's save them with our enlightened minds! Who cares if we throw careless quotes around about what 'a former employee' says. I heard from a friend's 2nd cousin's neighbor, who's daughter's boyfriends ex-mechanic once sat next to a janitor that cleans Starbuck's offices, that their board members are really all Zionists!
I can't decide
by The Market
Wednesday July 30, 2003 at 03:40 PM
How can I decide, since I am not a sentient being, but an abstract concept? How can I decide?
Market Fair
by m.
Wednesday July 30, 2003 at 05:01 PM
I am by no means an economist, but perhaps there needs to be some clarification:
What the Starbucks Sucks folks are trying to say is that Starbucks, with its infinitely greater resources, is seeking to drive out competition--not encourage it.
i's 'let the market decide' is almost a false dichotomy: the market WON'T decide (primarily because it is not sentinent) because Starbucks will see that the homegrowns CANNOT compete. Therefore, stacking the cards in their favor. Succinctly put: FAIR trade is FREE trade.
According to Adam Smith (quite down capitalists), a free market REQUIRES many, many competitors. When competition is removed, the market ceases "to decide"...think economic Stalinism.
On a more local note: A. Carnegie did very much the same thing as Starbucks does. He would often undercut the prices of his competitors, force them out of buisness, and then jack up the prices again--forcing a local monopoly. His success is due in part to the resources at his command to DO SO.
This is one of the flaws in 'free-market' thinking...
read for discussion
by wheatpaster
Wednesday July 30, 2003 at 06:29 PM
starbuxsux@heartofdarkness.org (email address NOT validated)
I'm not interested in responding to attempts to provoke a smack-talking session. I'm interested in giving both my neighbors and agricultural workers throughout the world a chance at a decent life. Maybe we can talk Saturday.
To understand the damage being done to coffee growers, the second largest import in the U.S. to oil, causing what has been called "sweatshops in the fields", enter "PLANTA" and "coffee" into a google search, or type this address in:
http://www.globalexchange.org/economy/ coffee/activists/174.html
On markets
by bugg
Wednesday July 30, 2003 at 11:39 PM
The free market? It's worth a shot, I suppose. (That's paraphrasing something Chomsky once said)
The problem with the market is that it isn't free. Corporations in South America prevent organization among farmers. To boot, because there are hardly any opportunities available to the typical farmer, they may end up supplying at too low a price simply because they do not have any choice. The free market system requires that all participants can make the decision to buy or sell freely. That's not how it is.
Re: On markets
by Saleh
Thursday July 31, 2003 at 06:25 AM
salehw@yahoo.com (email address NOT validated)
I agree inequity is a problem with free markets when compared to regulated (socially controlled markets), but not the problem with markets in general, which is that they are based on competition and exchange of commodities. We can have a better world based on mutual cooperation developed through the experiences of liberating outselves from the forces of competition, and realizing that we're all in this world together as one humanity.
The inequities in exchange values, production values, and consumption/use values cheat workers of the social value of their labor, and money as an exchange mechanism debases our social capacity to create a world where we can produce for each other on the basis of our social consciousness and human social potential.
and
by Stephen Donahue
Thursday July 31, 2003 at 10:27 AM
sdonahue412@hotmail.com (email address NOT validated)
And starbucks won't let you take a piss in their toilets unless you buy something first. Screw that! FREE TOILETS FOR EVERYBODY!
Nice Discussion
by wheatpaster
Saturday August 02, 2003 at 11:23 PM
starbuxsux@heartofdarkness.org (email address NOT validated)
The discussion today was nice, and actions may follow. Keep an eye out for fliers and creative resistance in front of your neighborhood corporate charcoal-water distributor. E-mail us if you are interested in the campaign!
why don't you ...
by 2 beers
Sunday August 17, 2003 at 11:50 AM
protest by NOT BUYING STARBUCKS CHARCOAL WATER ??? Oh no, you have to make up some wild assed conspiracy theory about Starbucks and then go on some ridiculous "campaign" against them becasue they have been "too" succesful for your simple minded leftist world view that eschews indivudual successs. Don't give me this crap about Starbucks running the small business guy out of town. If the small coffee shop shuts down it is probably because it was not well run in the first place and should ot have been in business. In Squirrel Hill you have a Starbucks less than 500 yards from Cafe 61C which has been around for at least 10 years. You have Kiva Han which has been around for years even though there are Starbucks everywhere. And there is Avant Garde Fave, Beehive. So the point is that if the coffee buying public wants the local coffee shop then it will be around. If you want your little leftist coffee hole then fine, open one, and then you can charge the $57.00/cup that you will need to stay open to the handful of unbathed leftists that will frequent your place (and simultaneously drive away the larger universe of paying customers who probably don't want to hang out in some dirty backwater leftists cafe which wreaks of clove cigarette smoke, bodyodor and bad atttitude).
FREE EWAN KENKESMEARSE !!!! FREE THE IMC OPPRESSED !!!!
Not "a conspiracy"
by wheatpaster
Thursday August 21, 2003 at 05:39 PM
I cite my sources, and my facts. Try it sometime. Especially that tidbit about the $57 cup of coffee.
yeah, but
by 2 beers
Thursday August 21, 2003 at 06:28 PM
your sources are suspect at best and usually just plain stupid, wrong or some combination of the two. My source for the $57.00 cup of coffee is an extensive knowledge of business operations and an above average command of math. You have to charge for your products a price sufficient to cover the costs of producing the product and delivering it to the customer. If you had to cover all of your overhead by selling coffee to the ten or twelve people who might frequent your little "Bodega de Melee et Rebellion Guache" would probably result in a $57.00 cup of coffee. My other sources are that I looked out the window in Squirrel Hill and Cafe 61C is still there, right where it has been for the past 10 years (and so is the Starbucks .. I think there are actually three of them in the vicinity of Cafe 61C now).
Dissent
by empty beer can
Friday August 22, 2003 at 03:24 PM
Yo, 2 beers when you are looking out the window in Squirrel Hill do you also see all the anti-bush stickers. I bet that gets you hotter than a Starbucks double mocha.
coffee
by beverage
Friday August 22, 2003 at 03:42 PM
Who cares! It's coffee. You got a number of choices of places to buy coffee. Businesses come, businesses go. Tel est la vie.
what you don't understand
by coffee kills
Sunday August 24, 2003 at 09:31 PM
Why do people care? Because if a company eats up all the usuable land in a third world country to grow coffeebeans and ship them to the rich yuppies of squirrel hill to drink coffee, then there's something wrong. Don't you think?
It is the bestthing to happen to Juan Valdez
by 2 beers
Sunday August 24, 2003 at 10:58 PM
Having someone actually willing to buy his land is a good thing for that 3rd world nation. It is the only way they can ever hope to no longer be a 3rd world nation. Think about it, no one would pay a plug nickel for an acre of a 3rd world nation. And then along comes starbucks and they say "we'll pay you handsomely (even of it is $100 an acre it is handsome in the 3rd world) if you will grow coffe on your pied de terre". Three cheers for capitalism. I am sure that the 3rd world land owner will agree.
Starbucks Is Great!!
by Splash
Wednesday October 08, 2003 at 06:25 PM
Starbucks is the best, what the heck are you guys talking about, it is by far the best coffee in the world, hands down. What I am seeing is just bitter resentment from those who can't brew some half decent coffee. Dont knock Starbucks its my favorite store!!
right...
by .
Wednesday October 08, 2003 at 11:47 PM
You know, the Starbucks that used to be an independently owned theater and is really close to a bunch of COOL non-chain coffee shops.
You mean the independently owned theater that shut down how many years ago and was recently renovated and leased to Starbucks (half of it, the other half will get leased to someone else)? The independent owner of that awesome theater which was hemmoraging money for years is now making a hefty profit off the evil Starbucks.
Which "COOL non-chain coffee shops" are you referring to? I know of none in that area which are any good. That entire area is either italian grocers or bars/restaurants.
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