Walmart heiress Alice Walton received a letter today, even if she hasn’t read it.

“[It’s] not just Thanksgiving dinner that’s an issue. It’s dinner every night,” La’Randa Jackson wrote to Walton. Last year for Thanksgiving, Jackson and her family didn’t have turkey and gravy like other families. They couldn’t afford it, because Jackson, who is now 20 years old, works at a Walmart in Cincinnati, Ohio, earning $8.75 an hour. To help her mother pay for food, Jackson collects food stamps and is a regular at her local food bank. It’s still not enough, so she says she and her mom skip their meals in order for La’Randa’s brothers to have enough.

Jackson is not alone. Various Walmarts have turned to community food drives to help their workers. Last year, an Ohio Walmart put out food bins to collect canned food for its workers. According to employee advocate organization OUR Walmart, a Walmart in Indiana is sponsoring a bake sale to raise money for its struggling workers. In Pennsylvania, one store has put out a giving tree for Christmas, asking workers who are better off to donate to their colleagues who are in need.

The irony is that the retail giant prides itself on its efforts to battle hunger. In her letter to Walton, Jackson notes that it is likely that the heiress and her family, which is worth about $145bn, previously donated to the same food bank that she frequents.

“In 2013, we donated more than 571 million pounds of food – the equivalent of 369 million meals – to local food banks and hunger relief organizations like Feeding America and its 200 food banks across the nation,” reads Walmart’s website. “We know we can make an impact nationwide by inspiring associates to fight hunger in their local communities. In fact, 4,100 associates volunteered more than 13,000 hours toward hunger relief efforts in 2013.”

The associates who rely on the local food banks for their meals are not impressed. Walmart cashiers earn, on average, $8.48 an hour, which is more than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 but less than the $15 an hour that workers say they need to stay above the poverty line.

“We don’t want your food bins or your bake sales. We work hard and we are not looking for charity. What we want is for you to pay us fair wage ... so that we can pay for our own groceries,” said Cantare Davunt, who works part time at Walmart in Apple Valley, Minnesota, earning $10.10 an hour. She walks 20 minutes to work to save money on transportation and lives on ramen.

“I am working as many hours as I can get,” Davunt said. “I had $6 to buy groceries after I paid my bills [last month] – not credit card bills, just bills like electric and heat.” She added, “But even a month of ramen costs more than $6.”



Both Davunt and Jackson are featured in a recent report by Michele Simon, a public health lawyer at Eat Drink Politic. The report, named Walmart’s Hunger Games, links Walmart’s business practices to the hunger of its workers. As part of that effort, OUR Walmart has created a Tumblr with the same name, Walmart Hunger Games, featuring “true stories of hunger and food insecurity from Walmart workers.”

Low wages were the reason that Jackson, Davunt and others joined the OUR Walmart movement, which is planning a day of protests against Walmart on Black Friday.



Etta Giles, 85, leaves the New Hope Lutheran Church with a Thanksgiving turkey and ingredients for side dishes and dessert provided by the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Some Walmart workers rely on food banks such as this one for their meals. Photograph: M. Spencer Green/AP

The movement says it aims to get higher wages for Walmart workers and highlight their poverty and food insecurity. For the last couple of weeks, leading up to Black Friday, when they expect the largest protest ever, Walmart workers across the nation and the world have been participating in smaller protests to highlight different issues that they face, including low pay, discrimination and hunger.

“The two key ways that Walmart is contributing to the downward crisis in America are low wages and part-time work,” Simon told the press. “Essentially what is going on here is Walmart is the nation’s largest poverty incubator.”

In her report, Simon notes that retail positions make up the fastest growing job sector, with one in 10 retail employees working at Walmart. This October, 15.4 million Americans worked in retail. General merchandise and department stores employed 3.1 million workers. Walmart alone employs 1.3 million Americans. According to Simon, as many as 600,000 Walmart workers work part-time, even though they would prefer full-time schedules. Walmart’s definition of full-time is 34 hours a week.

The letter isn’t the first time Jackson has attempted to get Walton’s attention. Earlier this year, the campaign flew Jackson to New York, where she was arrested for blocking traffic in front of Alice Walton’s apartment building.