keep up the good work!

Viva direct action.

A mother goose rhyme you never heard of due to capitalist corporate censorship:

"They hang the man, and beat the woman
for stealing the goose from on the Commons
But the greatest villians they let loose
That steal the Commons AND the Goose!"

The GAP Corp and their lackeys are the real vandals who are killing the Sacred Groves

I DONT THINK THE VADALS SHOULD TARGET JUST THE GAP STORE IF ANYTHING ITS EVERY STORE ON THAT BLOCK JUST TRYING TO EARN A LIVING BECAUSE WHAT WAS ONCE THERE BEFORE ALL THE STORES? SACRED GROVES AND ORCHARDS PEOPLE NEED TO GET OVER IT AND GET ON WITH THEIR LIVES VANDALS LIKE THAT ARE IN THE WRONG NOT GAP.

Tell that to the underpaid workers who make the garments that passes for trendy fashion at the GAP. Fuck GAP. more power to the ELFs, whomever they may be...

"Underpaid" workers? Your labor is worth whatever you're willing to trade it for. "Worth" is entirely subjective. There is no such thing as "exploitation". Whatever someone chooses to work for, under whatever conditions they choose to accept, that is THEIR choice. They're free to take their labor somewhere else.

And dont tell me it's the only way these peasants can make a living. Get back to nature, learn wildcrafting, build yourself a shack in the woods, hunt, fish, and live your own life.

Oh, wait, cant do that here - the environmentalists wont let us occupy the enormous "protected" forests. I guess environmentalists would rather see us all working for The Man and supporting the system, instead of living free.

Vandalism is not the way to go. If these people have the support of the community, then why don't they simply stage a protest in front of the Gap instead of vandalising it, where the only people to see the results of their action are there at 9:00 AM? Or making comments on Indymedia.

Workers have a choice about where they work, up to a point. The point comes, however, when they may just have to take whatever job they can get to avoid starvation. Even in Santa Cruz, the workers are often working for so little that they have to live in part off of their savings, from previous better days. I call this "subsidizing the employer", where the worker actually pays for the privilege of working for "The Man". I gave that up, just recently, to go my own way. But I still face the reality of trying to make it in the free market economy.

Before 1900 there were 2 million acres of old-growth redwood trees in northern CA. there are now less than 100,000 acres left.

The Mendocino Redwood Company (Fischer Family, Gap Inc.) bought 235,000 acres of forestland from Louisiana Pacific in 1998. Much of this land had been destroyed over the last half century by clearcutting and burning, and MRC now continue the practice in order to supply its main distributor, Home Depot, with redwood decks and furniture.

MRC claims to be an "environmental steward" of the land, but of the 235,000 acres they have pledged only to protect 85 acres of Old Growth Redwoods. Last year, MRC applied for a federal permit to be held exempt from the Endangered Species Act of 1973, in order to speed along their logging process while wreaking havoc on the Northern Spotted Owl, wild Salmon, and other creatures which reside in this once densely populated forest.

See how much land The Mendocino Redwood Company owns:

corporateswine.net/mrc_own_map.pdf

If your clothing bears the tag of the Gap, Old Navy, or Banana Republic then chances are it was made in a sweatshop the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, China, or Indonesia. Gap takes no responsibility for the conditions of its sweatshops, where union workers are harrassed or beaten, and children as young as 12 are working 14 hour days behind a sewing machine for pennies an hour.

www.corporateswine.net/gap.html
www.gapsucks.org

Gap vandal fined cleanup fee
By SHANNA McCORD
Sentinel staff writer

santacruz.indymedia.org/otherpress/display/386

i'm keepin' you in my prayers...

Just a note to the gentleman who suggests that everyone is free to sell his or her labour in precisely the manner s/he prescribes.

At their begginnings, men and women are free and equal. However, in their everyday lives they will, out of necessity, enter into relationships with each other in order to produce the means of existence. This they do through the medium of commodity exchange.

The problem arises when a labourer, a free and equal individual, finds that the means of producing these commodities are privately owned-almost exclusively. I'm talking about factories, banks, corporations, mines and farms, the ownership in these means of production and in the commodities therein produced being protected by private law.

S/he then finds that s/he must sell his/her labour to the owner of the means of production in order to produce the means of exchange.

Or he could choose your suggestion, and a very intelligent and informed one it is at that-to fish, hunt or make nice little trinkets to sell to tourists like the native americans are forced to becuase their land was stolen (sorry, manifestly destined to be explored and developed, and so much better it looks too!!.

The fact of the matter is that material factors outwith the control of the individual concerned will necessarily limit the choices available to him/her when s/he udnertakes the task of obtaining the means of existence, and to treat their decision as being informed by freedom is ridiculous; to protect this relationship in law by treating the parties as formally equal entirely unjust.

In certain circumstances the only option available is sale of labour to a sweatshop factory owner (or the fishing etc, you muppet). THAT is the material ECONOMIC condition that the Gap EXPLOITS (not exclusively) and they should be pilloried for doing so. As should the Capitalist mode of production which creates the condition in the first place.

Incidentally (sorry I like long self-indulgent comments but by arrogance does not strike to the heart of my arguments) the Gap should be quite happy it only has Green paint to deal with.

The price of the labour they purchase is tiny; the profits created huge. However, the contradiction in this relationship is found upon examination of the importance of the labour force to the Gap. No labour equates to no commodity which in turn equates to no profit. (I was tempted to write No Logo, but resisted, almost)

This is why Trade Unions are so important. By standing together and refusing to work for any less than a decent standrad of living and REFUSING steadfast to be seduced by the lure of false consciousness (the idea that one day the man driving the nice big car could be you, when it manifestly will not)the labourforce can present the capitalist with an easy choice: vastly reduced profit or NO profit.

I console myself with the lessons of history. Societies where the strongest elements in the production process do not have their agenda adequately represented always finish with a revolution where these production relations are "Burst-Asunder" (did I just quote Karl Marx-sharp intake of breath).

Until such times as they do, I'm quite sure the Gap would prefer Green paint (id prefer red).