WHERE: Boulevard Manuel Avila Camacho 647, Mexico DF

WHAT: Mexico City -- Mexican progressives plan a spirited protest outside the Wal-Mart shareholders meeting in Mexico City this Tuesday, November 14th at 9:30 AM. Led by the actress Jesusa Rodriguez, they will speak out against the company's anti-labor and anti-community practices. "Mexican progressives are concerned about the low wages Wal-Mart pays its employees, the low prices it pays to its suppliers, and the disregard Wal-Mart has for the cities and communities where it establishes its stores," said Ruben Garcia, the director of a new campaign called "Buy Local, Not Wal-Mart," which is housed at the human rights organization Global Exchange. "Wal-Mart is the poster child for what's wrong with corporate globalization."

Mexico has the second most Wal-Marts in the world, after the United States. The company has 845 "retail units" and more than 140,000 paid employees in Mexico. Mexicans have been organizing against Wal-Mart for years, though their efforts have mostly been local and on a small scale. Local activists, business people, and academics tried and failed to prevent Wal-Mart from opening a store within site of Teotihuacan, the oldest archeological site in Mexico. They succeeded in stopping Wal-Mart from opening in the towns of Patzcuaro and Atizapan de Zaragoza, a suburb of Mexico City. More recently, Mexican progressives have been protesting at Wal-Marts in numerous cities over the last few months because of campaign contributions by one of Wal-Mart Mexico's top shareholders to a smear campaign against presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

The protest outside Wal-Mart's shareholders meeting comes on the heels of a successful bi-national meeting of Wal-Mart critics held this past Saturday in Mexico City. The meeting was attended by 75 people and was intended to intensify the local efforts to reign in Wal-Mart in Mexico, and coordinate them nationally as well as bi-nationally. Local business owners, labor unions, human rights groups, public markets and academics were all represented at the meeting. Coming out of the meeting, they decided to work together to prevent Wal-Mart from harming workers, local businesses, public markets, the environment, communities and historical sites in Mexico. The meeting was sponsored by Buy Local, Not Wal-Mart and the Frente Nacional Contra Wal-Mart.

According to a study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. for Wal-Mart has been hit financially by the efforts of workers, politicians, small business people and others who vigorously criticize the company. Its reputation has suffered to the extent that McKinsey & Co. says that 2% to 8% of the company's customers have stopped shopping there, "because of negative press they have heard."

In Mexico, it was recently announced that Wal-Mart's shares fell 0.18 % in October.

Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world. It owns 6,689 stores in 15 countries worldwide, employs 1.3 million workers in the United States and 500,000 abroad, as well as millions more in the factories of its suppliers. Because of the company's enormity, its business model has a huge influence on workers, businesses and communities around the world; so far Wal-Mart has used that influence to ruthlessly drive down costs as a means of making profit, violating a vast array of human rights and labor rights along the way.