Students Resist Wal-Mart

Is this constant fear

The 900 trucks

Coming my way

Just crossing the street

Will take all day

With its location

Right next to our school

The noise and the lights

Will surely turn us into fools

This place to unload

Is something we don’t need

Something so wrong

I fear it is greed

What of the jobs it offers to bring

Sounds so exciting

That I can sing

But what are the guarantees?

Well, here’s one for you

It promises to kill thousands of trees

Destruction of our land

Contaminating our water

Polluting our air

That’s all we'll get

If this distribution center is built here

Taming the Beast

Patrick Lauppe, 11th grade

[Turn key]

The monster reawakens

From uninterrupted slumber

Of dreamless sleep

Or sleepless dreams

Grumbling in monotone.

Suddenly,

A chorus

Spreading far across

Black

Broken

Asphalt.

Beasts in harmony

Singing of daily toil,

Disgruntled.

Hundreds

Coughing morning phlegm

Of chain smoker

Spreading

Upward Outward.

Skeletal structure creaks

Under precious cargo

In steel turtle shells.

Display bright

Inviting

Colors

(camouflage, perhaps?)

Making subservience

Servitude.

[Pedal down]

They move;

Now faster:

Packs

Migrating

Swiftly but surely.

Now a stampede:

A fatal

Display,

A wall.

Not overcoming:

Menageries

Minutiae

No match for stampede.

A rubber ball

A symbol of innocence

Swallowed.

A rogue textbook

Knowledge

Burned.

Surroundings

Melt

Mix

Boil

With speed.

Lumbering packs

Spasmodic coughing

Burning rubber.

[Brake depressed]

Strange behavior

Slowing

Pack condenses

Grabs asphalt

Protesting joints.

Halt:

Sanctuary found.

Mild grumbling

Shells open

Cargo extracted.

The mindless predator

The bloodthirsty crusher

The tenacious pack

Belches excrement

And turns

To face the enslaved.

[Turn key]

The Giant

By Fue Xiong, 11th grade

The 1,100,000-foot giant stands over all

Covering the land

Destroying the 11,000 crops of nature

The 324,000 armies it possesses

Their poisonous gas released into the

ether

Evading the seminary

In search for the weak

Shrinking the air of life

Many acres, it conquers

Its palace of solitary, stretch over

4,353,000 square feet

Machinery troops crowd the boulevards

of destination

Travel the world

Polluting the heavens

Innocents suffer the torture

Of destruction

Stop not this madness

But that that cause this device of

treachery

This giant of disaster.

Official publication of UFCW 8-Golden State Jacques Loveall, President