Throughout my life, I have always known that it is not easy to fight injustices. I grew up in Jersey City and started to work during summers at the age of fourteen. I quit school just prior to sixteen and went to work full time because after 22 years my father had decided to leave my mother and someone had to do it. My mom was trying hard to go back to work after being a housewife for all those years but her health was not so great and she just couldn't do it long.

I made God only knows so many mistakes. When Mom and Billy died in 1974 I lost the only advisors I had my entire life...I was on my own. There have been many instances where if...

When my area developer swindled me out of goodness knows how much I went as far as filing a lawsuit against the company...I did it myself...it wasn't easy. I just came up against a dead end when their attorneys continued to throw everything they could in my path. I didn't have the money to go to New York and fight it the rest of the way...now it seems like a memory and nothing more but it did teach me that this world is a world where if you have enough money to fight for your cause you have a chance to win. If you don't have any money to fight oh well.

It is fine for someone like Robert Greenwald to run a production company financed by liberal elites and liberal organizations to do as he wishes to anyone and he has no responsibility to be fair when it comes to using people.

Along with the corporate officers at Walmart who are paid millions and allowed to ignore the real problems that over time millions of workers have had.

Continuously the extreme left and right wing elite do as they wish and are heard because they have money and power. It makes no difference if they are right, wrong or just in the entire thing for a laugh.

They use people on a daily basis under the cover of being righteous. I am a bit impatient. Probably because I fear that as I did with the lawsuit, once again for a lack of money and a lack of knowledge I will allow what I know is the right thing go unsaid because I have not the ability to put it out there.

Seriously, It gets old to be taken for granted. Used, misled and ripped off and have no recourse simply because there is not enough money to fight it and make the people with endless resources realize what is right is right. It makes no difference who's side you are on.

I could promote my book or writing as anti everything...if I were really extreme I would have a much better chance at actually being noticed. If I had the ability or if I had the energy left I could wait a bit and file a lawsuit in the state of California against Robert Greenwald when he uses something in the film that I told them about and was already in the book I wrote.

I don't know if I have the energy to do it again. Do it again and lose out because I come to a dead end.

What will it mean?

It means that a man with money and able to ask for donations to push his film making will in some way promote himself and his agenda using my information to do it. Without my permission he will be able to use the time and energy I have spent over the years and I will never even be acknowledged as a person who originally knew about all of it and made the attempt to make things right.

It would be nice if I were in a circle of people, where because I knew someone I could have someone else censored.

It would be nice if someone, anyone would just listen and realize that I am not only doing all of it because of the notoriety but because what is right is right.

Sure, I would like to make money doing all of it, I would be nothing more than a liar if I were to say that I was only doing all of it for the pleasure of waking a few people up. The problem is, I am not wealthy and I do not have an organization that is funded by anyone.

Seriously, Robert Greenwald has picked on Walmart because he is trying to be more like Michael Moore. I doubt that his reason is to be the savior of millions.

I picked on Walmart because somehow I hoped I could fix the culture that a very good man founded the company on.

I would have, while I worked for them been happy to share the things I knew.

Seriously, now that they have decided to make me into what they would call a traitor, I probably shouldn't care about the company or those left behind.

If they had listened, there would never have been a book. If Walmart had listened, if Lee Scott and Rob Walton were not so high and mighty there would have been a better place for the workers and I would not be where I am.

The main problem was I could not continue to work for liars and ignore the unethical situations that were occurring on a daily basis. I could not watch as associates were mistreated only because it was easier to do it the wrong way instead of really taking an interest in what was happening around me. I had to buck the system because it was and is flawed.

I could have continued to have a paycheck come in every two weeks that was only a mode of surviving until something else came along or until I could actually make someone realize what I was saying.

The Walmart Culture was a cult. It was almost a religious institution. It was people working on the art of making a retail company the best it could be and loving every minute of it even if they were not getting much from it in the way of wages and benefits.

It was an icon of something right in the world that went very wrong.

About the Author

Julie Pierce has worked in the retail sector for more than thirty years. She has been a union member of the UCFW Union and the afl-cio more than once and has worked for more than one large retailer during the course of her career. She attended Gulf Coast Community College, Panama City Beach, Florida, in the nineties in the pursuit of a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications.

Some of her work has been published during the eighties and nineties in various editorial pages of newspapers in the state of New Jersey and Florida. She also did some work as a community reporter for a weekly newspaper in Panama City Florida. Other work includes an article in the Gulls Cry, the Gulf Coast Community College newspaper.

She is the wife of TSgt William F. Pierce Jr. (retired) USAF and the mother of three children and one grandchild.