In loving, living memory, John Melançon 1928 – 2007
Research the hell out of the costs born by society due to the way McDonald's does business:
- unhealthy food, cost of health care, lost productivity
- trash produced
- environmental destruction where cows graze, such as Amazon destruction
- loss/degredation of the local water table due to the parking lot
- contribution to global warming due to traffic
- underpayment of employees
One or two volunteers stand outside each of the 15,000 McDonald's 24/7 (or quickly learn when the busiest times are) and cheerfully ask people to pay a tax on their purchase to reflect its true cost.
And actually send/spend that money where it belongs:
- community health groups, healthy alternatives
- litter pickup, brownspot remediation
- indigenous and environmental groups protecting the Amazon
- local water protection efforts
- tree planting and other global warming combatting
- charity and job training, hell send a check to the city government to make up for the welfare payments it is making to working mothers
And *adjust* the tax, publicly, for things done at that local McDonald's.
Note that it is important that this money really be spread around, so that no one comes to depend on it. The goal is to stop McDonald's from hurting our planet and communities, not develop a funding model around it.
Even people who don't pay may think a second time about their drink purchase, say, which is a focus of bad health and profits for both McDonald's and the evil Coca-Cola -- and this is information that can be imparted, day after day, to anyone who purchases at McDonald's.
The point is that everyone who has ever had any kind of gripe against McDonald's can get involved, and add their issue - employment discrimination, animal products in the French fries, the bloody unsafe overheated coffee that they didn't pay that much for - can get involved.
Repeat at Wal-Mart or anywhere else (Target can have funding of anti-LGBT politicians added to their litany of harm inflicted on society) -- and explicitly and unashamedly target the corporations attacking us.
The point isn't that we'll be able to put the company out of business in the short trem-- the point is that we are communicating with ... nearly everybody. That we propose alternatives and in fact are pointing them out and helping provide some resources to them, and get to talk about doing something more substantial with all sorts of people. That if we convince someone to spend five dollars less than they would have, turn down that impulse buy, that's five dollars less that can be spent attacking the common good.
This is the sort of thing made more possible by Visions Unite— to learn more about this coming network for all people who give a damn, get on this focused, high-relevancy one-way mailing list for people interested in massive all-way communication that is even more focused and relevant. The power of deciding what goes out to a network of people belongs to the network, not to whichever fool (like me) set up the mailing list first. With a way to scale our communicationa and coordination, we can better do the wonderful, needed work to build a more just, more free, more awesome world. Seriously, this is my life's work. Sign up.