(BUFFALO, NEW YORK) – The United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW)-led 2017 Trump & Walmart Make America Worse College Tour kicked off in Western New York earlier this week at Buffalo State University, where a number of Labor Leaders and Elected Officials spoke out about the need to educate students on how they can stand up for a better America and against what they described as the “Trump/Walmart agenda.”

People posed beside a life-size cutout of President Donald Trump, holding signs that read: Trump & Walmart – Making America Worse! (accompanied by a cartoon of a grinning Trump grinning behind Walmart’s trademark happy face icon (Pictured below on the left: Jenny Divish, an Organizer with the UFCW’s National Organizing Department in Washington, D.C,, who is participating in the college tour, and on the right: Western New York Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 200 United Business Representative Robert Mahoney/WNYLaborToday.com Photo).

The UFCW also had a 30-foot RV wrapped with a similar and colorful cartoon-like message, with the addition of “Coming to a College Near YOU!” (Pictured Below/WNYLaborToday.com Photo).

The Trump & Walmart Make America Worse Tour, which was organized by Making Change at Walmart and hosted along with the Buffalo State University Pride Alliance, has plans to stop at more than 25 college campuses throughout the month of September to expose the shared values and agenda of Trump and Walmart– which are both promoting the privatization of public education, profiting from low-wages and debt economy – which in the process is dividing our country, said Jenny Divish, an Organizer with the UFCW’s National Organizing Department in Washington, D.C,, who is participating in the college tour.

Several speakers - including Western New York AFL-CIO Area Labor Federation (WNYALF) President Richard Lipsitz and UFCW Local Union 1 Western Area Director Mark Manna, addressed an estimated crowd of about 50.

“Just like we’re ‘building up an alliance’ between youth and students and the Workers Movement, ‘this question of the struggle for economic democracy and political democracy are not detached.’  ‘They are one in the same struggle and the more we remind ourselves of that, the greater our unity can be,’” Lipsitz said.

The UFCW’s Manna told those assembled: “Every law (Trump is) ‘going to push for, is going to benefit the Walmarts of the world, not the Working People of the world.’  You have a president ‘who is on the side of the largest corporation that pays low wages, takes millions of dollars in tax breaks, and is against Working Families.’  ‘At any age it’s hard to say that you’re going to change the world, but you can change your world and you can do it with the economic power that every person in this audience possess.’”

Fight For $15 Organizer Desmond Abrams also spoke, saying: “Right now, ‘one in five children go hungry in Buffalo’ and ‘you can bet a good chunk’ of their parents are working at conglomerates like McDonalds and Walmart.  ‘The only way we can stop a Trump and Walmart agenda is from the grassroots.’  ‘From the bottom up is how we get our solutions.’” 

And Daniel Michael Hyatt of the Pride Alliance at Buffalo State said: “Trump and Walmart’s agenda ‘is not good’ for minorities, it’s ‘bad’ for Workers, it’s ‘bad’ for students, and it’s ‘bad’ for America.  ‘We need to stand up, we need to fight’ - and the ‘only way that can happen is with grassroots organization,’ rallies ‘like this across the country, across different campuses, across different divides.’ We need to ‘bridge that together and stand up against Trump and Walmart.’” 

Amy Ritter, who serves as Communications Director for Making Change at Walmart, said: “Donald Trump and Walmart ‘share the same values that are destroying our education and ability to have a real shot at a future.’  Through this tour, ‘we hope to make this message clear: Who you support matters.’ ‘Where you shop matters.’  ‘Stand up for a better America.’  ‘Stop the Trump-Walmart agenda.’”

Making Change at Walmart Making America Worse Tour will stop at a number of prominent college campuses this month, including: Cornell University; Penn State, Ohio State; the University of Michigan; the University of Georgia; and 20 other campuses throughout the East, Midwest and South. 

Also speaking at Tuesday’s (September 5th) event were U.S. Congressman Brian Higgins of Buffalo and New York State Senator Tim Kennedy of Buffalo.

You can learn more about Making Change at Walmart at www.changewalmart.org.