Student group protests Wal-Mart spree

Fifteen members of the IU chapter of No Sweat!, a labor rights organization, attempted to block shuttle buses of shoppers from entering Wal-Mart for IU's traditional Midnight Madness shopping frenzy Friday night. Group members linked arms and carried a banner that read "Rolling back prices --\nand workers' rights," holding their ground as buses attempted to get past, members said.\n"One of the buses was kind of trying to run us over," group member and IU senior Bridget Kennedy said.\nThe protest lasted for about half an hour, until Bloomington police arrived and advised the chanters that they were trespassing on Wal-Mart's property, Kennedy said.\nBloomington police received two calls about the protesters just before 11 p.m., said Bloomington Police Department Detective Sgt. David Drake. One was reportedly a customer complaint and the other call came from a store manager at Wal-Mart, who said that a group of college students was protesting outside the store and disturbing the customers, Drake said.\nFour Bloomington police officers were dispatched, Drake said. After the officers arrived, they reported that the students were leaving.\n"The police were very reasonable," Kennedy said. "But no one in Wal-Mart even came out to talk to us before they called the police."\nWal-Mart spokeswoman Jami Arms said her company was glad so many students chose to shop at Wal-Mart last weekend.\n"Unfortunately, there were a few that were disruptive and had to be asked to leave the premises," Arms said in an e-mail.\nAfter leaving Wal-Mart's property, the group tried to block buses from leaving Wright Quad. Though No Sweat! members successfully prevented the bus from leaving for a few minutes, they believed that the police had been called and decided to leave, group members said.\n"I don't like Wal-Mart," said freshman Andrew Verteramo, who watched the protest unfold. "There are too many small businesses out there that are getting put out of business by it."\nVerteramo agreed with the protesters against Wal-Mart, but he said he wasn't planning to go to Midnight Madness anyway.\nSome, on the other hand, found the protest to be both inconvenient and ineffective.\n"I didn't think there was much of a point to it," said freshman Joanna Barnett, who was on the bus No Sweat! tried to block from leaving Wright Quad. "They blocked the bus for about 10 minutes, but after that they just left, and we went to Wal-Mart anyway."\nThe 10 or so other students on the bus were grumbling and annoyed because of the delay, but the driver kept his cool and said that he'd call the police, Barnett said.\nAlleged human rights abuses in sweatshops, low wages and poor working conditions are at the forefront of a laundry list of grievances No Sweat! holds against the world's largest retailer.\n"Wal-Mart consistently seeks the lowest common denominator, regardless of whether it is wages, worker's rights or environmental standards," Kennedy said. "Do we really want IU to send the message to its freshmen that we should abuse workers across the world?"\nThough she doubted anyone decided not to go into Wal-Mart because of their protest, Kennedy considered the event a success.\n"There were a few hecklers, but a lot of people were curious and willing to listen to what we had to say," she said. "I think we got our point across"