When I decided to go undercover and infiltrate an ex-gay ministry I expected to be privy to a lot of prayer, self-loathing and maybe some heavy-handed personality realignment.

I didn't expect to be doing the handjive at sing-along Grease, which is where I sit, clap-and-slap happy in a row of fold out chairs inside a cozy Colorado living room.

Now can you hand-jive, baby,

Oh can you hand-jive, baby?

Surrounding me in giddy spectatorship are 25 men and women who suffer from "unwanted homosexuality."

But no one's suffering at the moment. There are Twinkies to eat, margaritas to drink, and a DVD player set on closed caption so we all get the lyrics right.

Projected on the sort of fold out screen normally reserved for family vacation slideshows, Danny Zuko has dissed his summer love for the last time.

Stumbling into his former flame, the notorious Cha Cha DiGregorio, the two doff their dates and set Rydell High's gym floor ablaze with 1950's dancing as envisioned through the sexed up lens of the disco decade.

About half the guests are decked out in leather jackets, cut off T-shirts, chiffon dresses, even a few satin "Pink Ladies" jackets.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,

Born to hand-jive, oh yeah!

The woman to my right has decided that Cha Cha's having a little too much fun on the dance floor.

"Slut!"

She follows her exhortation with a naughty giggle.

In the middle of "Greased Lightning," with its none-too-coded lyrics (you know that I ain't braggin, she's a real pussy wagon), Scott, a sprightly ministry staffer, stands up, shakes his arm and tells the young Travolta:

"Danny, Stop Being a Potty Mouth!"

Scott has spent the last 13 years in this ministry and tonight's party is his brainchild --a follow up to last year's sing along Sound of Music. Normally, he patiently ministers to those on the frontlines of the "struggle with sexuality and relationships." But tonight he's letting loose, facing the audience while his outstretched arm hovers across the room in lock step with the T-Birds.

Before going undercover to see what ex-gay America was all about, I imagined it might be any number of things: hook up central for closeted Christians, a cracked out revival meeting or merely a cult.

What I found was less sensational and a lot stranger.

Because I couldn't have imagined an experience that revealed less about the divide between straight and gay America, than the deeper chasm of understanding that separates secular and Christian America.

And I could never ever have imagined I'd be singing show tunes with a bunch of people dressed straight outta the malt shop.

The Gayest Summer

I first set foot in the ex-gay ministry Where Grace Abounds at the start of what was to become the gayest summer in American history.

Let's review:

June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court strikes down sodomy laws in 13 states, decriminalizing consensual gay sex and setting the stage for the culture war's ultimate battle royale: gay marriage.

August 5: The Episcopalian Church votes in the Rev. Gene Robinson as its first gay bishop; dissidents talk splits.

And oh, those summer nights where Queer Eye for the Straight Guy's preening power fags teach heterosexual men in the ways of applying product, grilling asparagus, and all things fabulous.

Where Grace Abounds is located where gays abound, in the heart of Denver's Capital Hill neighborhood -- a place where rainbow flags hang proudly from apartment balconies, where King Soopers is better known as "Queen Soopers," and where Diedrich's coffee shop brims with well groomed boys.

But outside a church around the corner, Where Grace Abounds' smiling greeters welcome scared strangers, and hug returning friends. The person I notice first is Scott, the de facto cruise director for Thursday night's meetings and one of five people on the ministry's fulltime staff.

Short and bouncy with big eyes and a buzz cut Scott is invariably dressed in low rider jeans and a neatly tucked in polo shirt. He's the type of person who would set your gaydar into a beeping tizzy from two time zones away.

As my face becomes familiar over the next few weeks, he makes a point of greeting me by name with a smile and squeezing my upper arm. I know better than to mistake it for a come on, but it's a gesture foreign to any straight man I've ever met.

Downstairs, in an unpretentious basement of fluorescent lights, pea green carpet, and dry erase boards the weekly ritual begins.

"Hi, and welcome to Where Grace Abounds. Can anyone tell me why we exist?"

Less ontological than rhetorical, the question is followed by awkward silence before someone breaks it with:

"Where Grace Abounds exists to guide and support men and women who seek to understand sexuality and relationships and to inspire all people to know and personally appropriate God's plan for their sexuality and relationships."

Despite this mouthful of a mission statement, God's plan is rarely spelled out. In small group discussions, members seem painfully aware that such a plan might mean canceling Internet service and its accompanying lure of pornography, or of avoiding certain neighborhoods, certain bars, certain parks and certain people.

But beyond avoidance and celibacy, where God wants them to go is the big honking question that keeps many coming back (and not out) for years.

When and Why

Where Grace Abounds was founded shortly after Mary Heathman's stepson came out of the closet in the mid 1980s. The news forced this Denver rape crisis counselor to study books on psychology and scripture, attend meetings of all sorts, and arrive at two difficult conclusions. Her stepson's sexuality smacked head-on with her understanding of scripture; the two could not be reconciled. And, churches were not a pillar of support.

"Most churches don't know how to deal with these issues, or the way they deal with them is not effective," Heathman tells me and eight other initiates on our first night at WGA. In the months that follow, I'd hear echoes of her statement again and again.

WGA's program consists largely of informal lectures from members and guest speakers followed by small group therapy styled discussions. The ministry is a non-profit so everything's free, but like most religious entities, a donation basket is passed around at the start of each meeting.

Staffers and volunteer ministry leaders tell us that there are many plausible theories on what causes homosexuality. But they say that focusing on the "why" is not as important in our healing process as reconnecting with God.

Nevertheless, there's one "why" theory that gets more play than others and it comes from Dr. Elizabeth Moberly and her book Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic.

Moberly and WGA make a clear distinction between homosexuality as an orientation and homosexuality as behavior. The former, they claim, is not the least bit sinful. In fact, it's a corrective developmental response to a broken or severed relationship with a same sex parent. The impulse to reestablish this bond, "the reparative drive" as its known, is actually healthy.

The problem, we're told, is when this orientation becomes sexualized in adolescence. Sexual activity with the same gender derails the healing process.

But ... why do boys with caring dads still go gay?

But ... why do girls with Mommy dearests not grow into lesbians?

Such buts are invariably pre-empted by a staffer who admits that, "we just don't know."

Scenes from the Struggle

The folks who find their way into WGA are mostly men between 20 and 40. Almost all come from conservative or fundamentalist Christian backgrounds. Many arrive upon the recommendation of a pastor, or more often, a Christian counselor.

While WGA was established to deal exclusively with homosexuality, it soon found itself welcoming people reeling from other sexually related problems like sex and pornography addiction, problems that were too hot for most churches to handle.

For the first 12 weeks, new initiates are segregated in "Foundations," a mandatory 12-week acclimation program designed to familiarize us with the scriptural and psychological concepts that underpin the program.

"Small group" is where we're encouraged to open up, to take risks, to speak in "I statements," about our struggles with sexuality and relationships.

Group starts with the facilitator, a WGA staffer or volunteer, asking if we brought anything with us to share, or if we just need some "check in" time.

One of WGA's buzzwords is "struggle," but in group I can only think "stilted." It wasn't until my fifth week that I witnessed someone with the guts to put his cards on the table.

Dressed in typical Colorado outdoorsy apparel, T-shirt, shorts and Tevas, Eric complains that "there's guys everywhere." That is, guys he's attracted to. Back in Denver for the summer, unemployed and staying with his parents, he confesses that a few hours earlier he'd "jacked off with two other guys in a bookstore."

Scott asks him what he needs from the group. He thinks for a moment before saying that he just needed to get it off his chest.

I find out later that Eric has since moved to Marin County outside San Francisco to be part of a live-in ex-gay ministry. Before moving, he'd spent several years at WGA. It's been a long struggle; one that he gives no indication that it's anywhere near being over.

I hear a lot of these stories in small group.

Like Peggy, a married woman who fell in love with a woman in her church. They had an affair, they knew it was wrong. Hoping for support and guidance, they confessed to their pastor. They were told, "We don't know how to deal with this" and were asked to leave their church.

I hear about Matt, who phoned his mom after a month of no communication. He recently told her about his struggle with his sexuality. She met his questions with single sentence answers. He says she can't understand "how this could've happened in my family."

I hear the stories of two middle-aged pastors, both fathers. One with a lesbian daughter, the other with a gay son. The former says he's trying to figure out how to deal with "the girlfriend." He's going to be polite, he says, but the girlfriend won't be coming home for dinner.

The other pastor's son came out nine years ago and told him, "If I didn't accept his homosexuality, I didn't accept him."

Now his wife is dying and he's terrified of losing both her and his son.

Scott Baio Anyone?

All meetings kick off with an icebreaker. On my third night, the question was, "In what historical period would you most like to have been alive?" We go around the room, giving first names and our answers.

Scott said he wants to live in the big band era so he could "go to those Ricky Ricardo clubs every night." Christopher chooses Victorian England because, "they had the most amazing furniture. I'm not kidding!"

I say I want to be an adult in the mid 1980s so I could gain a more thorough appreciation for cultural luminaries like Scott Baio and David Hasslehoff, before they become targets of Gen X ridicule.

An hour later, a guy tells me that when he was fourteen he used his sister's name to send away to Tiger Beat magazine for Scott Baio centerfolds.

At moments like this, I want to stand on my seat and scream: YOU ARE ALL SO GAY!

But I never do.

Battle Plans

Eight weeks into Foundations, I'm sitting on a cushy white couch, staring at a dry erase board with its magic marker outline of the enemy's battle plans.

Donny is tonight's speaker and the enemy is -- who else? -- Satan. A member of the WGA's leadership team, and a WGA vet, Donny calls tonight's talk "The Battle from Within and Without."

Donny tells us he's been married for 19 years, but for much of that time he was active in "the lifestyle," the ministry's buzzword for all things gay. He sites a statistic that 87 percent of Americans claim to believe in God, while only 47 percent claim they believe in Satan. He finds this odd.

"How strong is the enemy?" He asks. "As strong as God lets him be."

Donny relates his struggle with homosexuality and sex addiction to a larger struggle with honesty. During his teen years, deception took the form of secretly compiling "my version of pornography" -- namely, photos of guys clipped from sports magazines.

Donny says he never wanted to be homosexual; he always knew it wasn't what God wanted for him. But after getting married, his sex addiction started getting out of control. "If one wants to understand how powerful the enemy is," he says, "all you need to do is to try and walk away from a sexual addiction."

On the board he sketches a crude house to show us more of the enemy's entry points. Satan comes through the front door with events like 9-11 or Columbine. The backdoor is via humanism, which he describes as "You know, Jesus, Buddha -- it's all good."

His talk is spruced up with a few bullet points which, like many WGA lectures, bounce freely between pop psychology and evangelical fervor.

- Our desire to be liked is in direct conflict with our desire to be known (by God).
- The enemy's biggest weapon is secrecy.
- Addiction cannot coexist with dignity, self-respect and personal freedom.

And, the real kicker:

- Change is never a guarantee; it may or may not occur.

Ex-gay or Gay AA

WGA's approach to reversing that which mainstream psychology has long agreed is irreversible is infuriating. While there's no fire and brimstone sermonizing, no one telling us we're on a highway to hell, there's also a lot of lying by omission and other canards.

At no time did I ever hear anyone acknowledge the possibility that two gay people could have a healthy, loving relationship. It just wasn't in the cards. Similarly, the constant conflation of homosexuality and sex and porn addiction, not to mention one night stand whoring, doesn't jive with any lesbian I've ever known.

Toward the end of a small group session I decided to ask Scott a question that has been on my mind for awhile.

"Is this ministry really ex-gay or more like gay AA? "

I can tell it's something he's been asked before.

"So are we all just bunch of dry drunks?" he asks in response. " Alcoholism, I think is more of a behavior problem, where homosexuality is more of a developmental problem."

Scott says that people often come to WGA with the idea that they can get a quick fix. "Uh yeah, um, can you like make this stop please?"

Scott's point is that "the process" doesn't provide quick fixes. Even after 13 years, he says, he's transitioned from being actively homosexual to his current state of non-practicing bisexuality.

When he's not dealing with Thursday nights, Scott helps coordinate educational outreach programs for churches and Denver-area Christian schools. He knows that most people will probably assume things about him. He's 40 and he's used to it. From time to time he speaks with friends he knew from "the lifestyle" and says they invariably condescend to him with comments like "Well, I guess if it makes you happy, that's good."

Scott's retort: "They want to celebrate diversity, but as long as you think just like they do."

One thing Scott says he loves about Where Grace Abounds is that it doesn't go for the quick fix, or try to get people to pretend to be something they're not. Nowhere could this be more obvious than in Scott's office, whose most striking feature is a life-size cardboard cutout of Buffy from Buffy The Vampire Slayer -- a show famous for its gay following.

He says this sets the group apart from other ex-gay ministries that are not comfortable with the ministry's flamboyance. Activities like Grease singalongs, he says, don't fly in much of ex-gay America.

"I think if I'd gone to any other ministry, I wouldn't have made it."

Goodbye to Sandra Dee

The California sun is setting as Sandy sits alone on an expanse of concrete. In the aquifer below, Danny Zuko has saved Greased Lightning's pink slip from the clutches of The Scorpions.

Graduation is just a scene away and Sandy is mourning her innocence.

Sandy, you must start anew

Don't you know what you must do

Once again, the woman next to me chimes in, "Don't do it, Sandy. Don't do it!"

Hold your head high, take a deep breath and sigh

Goodbye to Sandra Dee

If Grease is about anything besides shooby doo wop doo wop, it's about how a won't-go-to-bed-till-I'm-legally-wed sensibility can't last long in America's oversexed teen culture. This message couldn't be more opposed to everything I've heard during my summer at Where Grace Abounds.

But no one's mining for ironies right now because Danny and Sandy are singing their love in skintight leather.

Grease ends with the class of Rydell High pledging that they "will always be together." If WGA has lasted for 16 years, who's to say it won't last another? Regardless of the cultural and legal strides gay America is bound to make, scripture will still be scripture.

After hearing so many stories of hurt, so many testimonies that are less about viable recovery than successful coping, I'm only convinced how tough the struggle is for people like Scott and Peggy, Matt and Donny.

But when they hold up the evangelical panacea, that all their desires of the flesh and the heart can -- maybe -- be taken away through a relationship with God, well, they might as well be singing: Ramma lamma lamma ka dingity ding da dong.

"Got any nachos ready?"

That's what Joe Hendrix said to the folks at the Radio Grill, his employer's in-house snack bar. Hendrix was on his way to punch out from his shift in the meat-cutting department at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Jacksonville, Texas; eight months earlier, in February 2000, he'd voted yes in the first successful election for union representation at a US Wal-Mart store. For failing to pay when placing his nacho order, he was fired.

Seventy-two-year-old Sidney Smith also voted yes; he got axed for eating a pre-weighed banana on the checkout line. Such were the excuses offered by management as union supporters were systematically routed from their jobs. But this was well after the real damage had been done, when Wal-Mart announced two weeks after the Jacksonville vote that it was switching to case-ready, or pre-cut, beef and would be eliminating meat-cutting operations in 180 stores. Wal-Mart claimed its decision had nothing to do with the organizing drive, but the union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. Although the board ruled in the union's favor, the timing of the news contained a chillingly clear message to Wal-Mart workers nationwide: This is what you can expect if you try to organize.

Wal-Mart's legendary ferocity in such situations has, until recently, kept unions from trying to make inroads in its million-strong work force. But after more than a decade of pussyfooting, the United Food and Commercial Workers union and the Teamsters are gearing up to take on Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., with the former taking the retail stores and the latter handling 100-plus distribution centers. For the UFCW, this undertaking is less the result of newfound militancy than it is about mere survival. Seventy percent of the union's 1.4 million members work for national groceries like Kroger and Safeway, as well as smaller, regional chains. With a strong presence in the top 100, mostly urban, markets, the big chains can hold steady in the face of Wal-Mart encroachment. The regional chains, however, are getting walloped. And with Wal-Mart circling on the fringes of larger markets, its lower wages and benefits will likely erode those enjoyed by UFCW members.

In its 40-year reign Wal-Mart has amassed a jaw-dropping trophy rack of titles -- "world's largest retailer," "world's largest private employer" and the recently acquired "world's largest corporation," edging out ExxonMobil for the top spot in this year's Fortune 500. The chain accounts for 6.4 percent of the nation's retail sales. With K-Mart, until recently its closest rival, now in bankruptcy, the path is clear to ever greater domination.

The only Wal-Mart store to unionize successfully was in Ontario, Canada, abetted in no small measure by the province's once-progressive labor laws. But the fledgling union was broken by the company's flat-out refusal to recognize the contract. While a climber at Mount Everest base camp can point to the many individuals who have summited and lived, a Wal-Mart worker trying to join a union knows no such consolation. Two unions, neither a paragon of union democracy or member mobilization, face an employer that has been growing by 15 percent each year, recession and all: In the context of a labor movement that has not been weaker since the 1920s, with a legal system seemingly rigged against it, this is an Everest ascent with no Sherpas in sight.

Wal-Mart manifests itself in three main forms: The traditional Wal-Mart retail store, which peddles everything from panties to Pennzoil and averages about 90,000 square feet; SAM's Club, a warehouse club store where "members" pay an annual fee to receive greater discounts on dry goods and groceries; and Supercenters, the company's biggest growth vehicle, a combination retail and grocery store clocking in at 190,000 square feet. This year, Wal-Mart plans to open a new one every other day.

"Wal-Mart's strategy is very similar to Mao Zedong's," says retail analyst Burt Flickinger. "Conquer the countryside first and take the cities second." If this sounds alarmist, consider the Neighborhood Market. It's a prototype grocery store roughly the size of three 7-Elevens. In the past few years Wal-Mart has deployed them for greater market saturation in its urban strongholds like Oklahoma City and Dallas. While zoning laws and real estate costs impede the development of most forms of Wal-Mart in the larger metro areas, the trim Neighborhood Market might squeeze into places a Supercenter could never dream of occupying.

SAM Walton built his empire on a belief that rural America saw more business than anyone in the corporate world was recognizing. This vision -- combined with a zealot's dedication to low overhead, undercutting the competition through lower profit margins and higher sales volumes, investment in technology and aggressive growth-blazed a trail for an imperial corporation that now operates in nine countries.

Walton has been dead for a decade, but he lives on as a deity, the customer-service superego of Wal-Martians nationwide. So entrenched is the myth of "Mr. Sam" as a benign patriarch that rather than contradict it, the UFCW plays along, with campaign messages about "restoring Sam's vision." Unfortunately, Walton's vision never included unions. As Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Ortega chronicles in his book In Sam We Trust, Walton was bent on maintaining low labor costs, paying workers subminimum wages when he could get away with it and showing no qualms about threatening store and warehouse closures to beat back union campaigns. The company's trumpeted profit-sharing plan and "open door policy" for addressing grievances were all born out of the pleading of Walton's unionbusting consigliere, John Tate. Tate believed that Walton could circumvent labor problems by convincing his workers that he was on their side. For Walton, this turned out to be a winning strategy -- a full-time union-prevention program.

Sam drove a pickup truck, shot quail and probably spent more time studying KMart than KMart's own executives. He embodied a peculiarly American paradigm that endures at company headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, to this day. He was a self-made, rock-em-sock-em, capitalist cowboy in an industry devoted to peddling every fathomable consumer good, and yet he remained puritanically frugal in his personal and corporate expenditures.

Unlike the Gap or Starbucks, Wal-Mart is not selling brand lifestyle. Its aesthetics in architecture and advertising are decidedly no-frills, its corporate offices stark. Executives pay for their own coffee, and even CEO Lee Scott has been known to share a hotel room on business trips. Wal-Mart's subordination to the bottom line permeates all levels. For instance, to curtail frivolous energy consumption, lights, heat and air conditioning at all 3,289 US Wal-Marts are controlled from Bentonville. Not surprisingly, this ethos hits those at the bottom of the food chain the hardest.

Managers are under considerable pressure to keep profits up, and one of the few ways they can achieve this is by cutting operational costs, of which labor comprises about 50 percent. Former managers and employees attest to an unofficial policy of putting experienced "associates" -- as the Wal-Martian wage slave is eloquently titled -- out to pasture through firing for minor infractions or pushing them to quit by other means. Why pay $10.50 an hour when a new hire can be culled from the street for $7?

A perpetually churning work force offers the added benefit, from management's perspective, of keeping the union out. By its own admission, Wal-Mart burns through 70 percent of all new hires each year, a considerable number in a work force of over a million. As Bernie Hesse of UFCW Local 789 in the Twin Cities explains it, the paradox of retail organizing is "I'm working retail, this job sucks. If I don't like it I'll go get another job that pays $6.50 an hour." While many retail workers don't see their jobs as being worth a long, arduous battle for representation, they also cower at the real consequences of supporting a union: demotions, reduction in hours and "got any nachos ready"-style firings.

ALThough the union faces skepticism and fear among workers, it has discovered a few potent organizing issues -- most notably, healthcare. Effective January 1, a full-time associate with two children and no spouse would pay $36 a week for basic coverage and $3.50 for dental, in addition to a $350 deductible for each individual on the plan. This tallies out to more than $3,000 a year for someone earning less than $16,000. Should it be any surprise that only 38 percent of Wal-Mart associates elect to have coverage? When the company announced a 30 percent hike in premiums this fall, it gleefully noted that associates had a "CHOICE to elect what will be done with 1/2 of the Wal-Mart contribution to our 401(k) account." One of these so-called choices was to "direct it toward paying health care rates." This change was illuminated in a video so slick that SAM's Club cashier Alan Peto said, "If I didn't know any better I really would have thought they had done me a big favor."

Just for shits and giggles, dial (501) 273-8300. That's Wal-Mart's twenty-four-hour "Union Hotline," designed for store managers to call on the first whiff of union activity. Your kind message will activate the beeper of an associate in Wal-Mart's "People Division." Assuming you are a store manager (and not a pinko prankster), your call will be promptly returned. If your associates are talking union, a flying column of unionbusters will be quickly dispatched to put out the fire.

Since the UFCW began talking to meat-cutters en masse in 1999, the People Division has increased from 12 employees to nearly 70. In terms of preparedness, though, Wal-Mart has always trumped the unions. Before any national campaign was afoot, Wal-Mart was publishing and distributing manuals like "A Manager's Toolbox To Remaining Unionfree," producing videos and running two-day workshops for store managers stressing their role as the "first line of defense" against a union campaign.

On paper Wal-Mart stays within the bounds of how an employer can legally respond to a union drive. "They're cosmetics," says unionbuster-turned-union-adviser Martin Levitt. "The company will wave them like a flag to show that they know the law, but once management and supervisors have been pulled into one-on-one meetings with the unionbusting forces, they are carefully programmed on how to break the law and told clearly that their very job depends on doing so."

While a store manager has likely been briefed on extralegal maneuvers, the dirty work is often delegated to nonsalaried department managers with no knowledge of labor law. Gretchen Adams, a co-manager at a Las Vegas Supercenter, was instructed by her district manager not to hire anyone with union experience, while Stan Fortune, a former department manager and security guard, was told to solicit grievances from union supporters, implementing raises and promotions to buy their loyalty. "I never knew I was breaking the law," he says. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Jessica Moser Eldred said the company follows all state, federal and local labor laws. "In no circumstance do we deviate from them."

Part of Wal-Mart's strategy is to deny contact between workers and the union. When it owns the land on which its store sits, it will invoke trespassing laws. "It got to the point where as soon as the organizers got out of their cars, the security guards would be in the parking lots telling them to leave," says Alan Peto.

In other cases, managers or security guards shadow organizers throughout the store, making it impossible for them to speak to workers. Organizers from the UFCW international staff are currently barred from all Wal-Marts under an injunction that forbids solicitation. The company has infuriated shoppers suspected of being union organizers by ejecting them; they've even booted Girl Scouts and Salvation Army bell ringers for fear that contradicting its no-solicitation policy will give the union an inroad.

Faced with the inevitable litany of unfair-labor-practice charges from the union in response to its illegal maneuverings, Wal-Mart can count on the glacial pace of the labor board to stall the campaign. If the board rules in the union's favor, the company suffers a slap on the wrist, posting a notice of company malfeasance in the break room. This is union organizing still haunted by the ghost of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act.
The UFCW is now attempting to build a case before the NLRB arguing that Wal-Mart's violations are not the result of a few rogue store managers but part of a systematic policy of illegal intimidation, surveillance and terminations, all designed to keep workers from organizing. The union has filed forty complaints against Wal-Mart in twenty-four states, resulting in forty complaints issued by the NLRB against the company.

The UFCW hopes ultimately to attain remedies like "affirmative workplace access," a corrective ruling from the board that allows organizers to talk to workers in break rooms and to rebut management's captive-audience meetings, where workers are deluged with anti-union speeches and videos. Rulings for affirmative access are rare, and they typically take many years to attain. But they have been delivered with great success to UNITE at Fieldcrest Cannon and SEIU at Beverly Nursing Homes. Given a labor board stacked with Bush appointees and Wal-Mart's legal motto of WDWDW (What did we do wrong?), however, chances of an imminent victory are remote.

IN THE 14 years since Wal-Mart opened its first Supercenter, the UFCW has run a damage-control campaign bent on stemming the tide of expansion and sullying the company's image. The union has helped call attention to Wal-Mart's use of sweatshops and child labor overseas, as well as its bogus "Buy American" program, where the company wrapped itself in a "made in the USA" flag until it was revealed that most of its apparel was made in overseas sweatshops. The union also forged coalitions with antisprawl activists to stem Wal-Mart's growth.
All of these are noble pastimes, but without a strategy to organize workers, about as effective as pummeling the Taliban with passages from The Betty Friedan Reader. Until recently, it was hard to tell if the UFCW was boycotting Wal-Mart, organizing it or simply functioning as a thorn in its side. The mixed messages provide the People Division an opportunity to inoculate its associates with videos like "Wal-Mart Under Attack," which shows footage of UFCW rallies with members chanting "Wal-Mart: Not in My Neighborhood" and highlights various local efforts to get union members to sign pledges not to shop at Wal-Mart. When many associates openly identify with the company, the message that the union is against Wal-Mart packs a punch.
In the past year, however, the UFCW seems to have developed a more focused approach. Their line in the sand is Las Vegas, a city with a strong union presence in the service sector. While unionized groceries enjoy 90 percent of Vegas's market share, Wal-Mart is making headway with five Supercenters, five retail stores and four SAM's Clubs. Since March of last year, the union has been organizing in Las Vegas, with some activity in northeast Ohio and Texas. In Vegas, the UFCW hosts a radio show and maintains a Web site, which chronicles Wal-Mart's anti-union campaign and offers a needed arena for counterarguments and open communication among workers. (However, 12 percent of the website's hits come from Bentonville.)

This past November, workers at Las Vegas SAM's Club Store 6382 were set to vote in the third storewide election at a US Wal-Mart. But as the election approached, the company went into a hiring frenzy, disrupting the laboratory conditions required by the NLRB. Watching its support ebb as the company packed the unit with new hires-all of whom were subjected to anti-union videos and meetings-the union filed charges, which resulted in the board's decision to block the election; on March 28, the NLRB issued a complaint against the company, but the best the union is likely to get is another election with little to guarantee that Wal-Mart won't do the same thing again.

And what of the Teamsters? So far, their activity has been limited to two locals in California and Missouri. At a San Bernardino distribution center, a recent election was lost by a swing margin of 28 votes -- an impressive result considering management was promising $3 raises in the week preceding the election and that the campaign was the work of a single organizer. Since Wal-Mart's distribution systems are models of efficiency and integral to the company's success, the Teamsters and UFCW might give Bentonville a run for its money if they coordinated their efforts, applying simultaneous pressure by engaging both truckers and retail workers, thus stretching the capacity of the People Division. But in light of Teamsters organizing director John Murphy's stated goal of transforming his department into "a desk and a telephone," and the union's overall stagnation under Jimmy Hoffa, it's hard to imagine they're going to attempt such a conquest anytime soon.

THE UFCW, for its part, has taken a largely top-down approach to the campaign, which has been guided by pressure tactics coming from union HQ in Washington-with some exceptions. "I get members asking me how it's going, how many people have signed cards, and I say what's the point? Why go through a regular election just to get knocked down?" says UFCW organizer Bernie Hesse. "I'm not trying to go store by store; I'm trying to build a social movement." Hesse's Local 789 has launched a campaign called "You Are Worth More" for retail workers in the Twin Cities. Rather than home in on one particular company, Hesse's local is planting roots in the community, establishing itself as a presence among a multiracial work force at metro-area Targets, KMarts and Wal-Marts.

There's no single war-winning strategy for bringing the union to Wal-Mart workers. Given the UFCW's history of bowing to hostile employers and suppressing its own dissidents, it remains to be seen whether the union is movement building or just circling wagons around its most endangered markets. At risk of excessive parade pissing, consider that even if SAM's Club 6382 wins an election, there are still 3,288 more to go. Wal-Mart is likely to be a decades-long struggle, fought by a largely female work force with no union experience. The struggle is now being waged by a vanguard of union lawyers. Ultimately they will have to take a back seat to shop-floor workers, member organizers and, most significant, the communities where workers live. When the lines between union and community collapse, an employer's traditional mode of attack -- labeling the union an alien third party -- disintegrates, and the campaign becomes less dependent on legal wrangling. Then, when Wal-Mart denies workers access to the union, wrecks an election or fires activist workers, the outrage does not come from a lone UFCW mouthpiece but from a movement.
Given this campaign's stakes -- both real and symbolic -- a movement is what Wal-Mart workers need. "If these retailers are going to be the jobs of the future, if we've really switched from a production to a service economy, than what is so revolutionary about insisting that they pay a living wage?" asks Bernie Hesse. Millions of associates and citizens may have to ask this question a million more times before a movement becomes something tangible, and not just a feel-good progressive mirage.

John Dicker is a freelance writer based in Brooklyn, New York.