This week in the War on Workers: More on Walmart's historic day

It's hard to get the big picture of dispersed, often independently organized Walmart strikes and protests. Walmart is claiming that basically nothing happened, nothing to see, move along, no workers were really involved, all this was the work of outside agitators. But while the number of strikers was smaller than the number of allies who came out to support them, it was clearly an unprecedented number of workers staying off the job on the busiest shopping day of the year. And it's worth remembering that there would have been more workers on strike if Walmart hadn't already fired some in retaliation for their earlier activism. Here are some snapshots:

• Josh Eidelson updated throughout the day and spoke to strikers in several states.
  

  Paramount, California striker Maria Elena Jefferson told The Nation this afternoon's mass rally was 'Very emotional. Very big. We were hoping that there would be a lot of people from the city supporting us, and we thought there would be supporters from other stores, and every time I looked around, it was bigger than bigger.' (Jefferson was interviewed in a mix of English and Spanish.) She said that the willingness of three workers to get arrested sent an important signal to management that workers are 'willing to take the risk' and 'what we're doing is right.'

  According to Make Change at Walmart, while standing in the middle of the street this afternoon, one of the three arrested workers, Charlene Fletcher, said, 'We are serious about improving our jobs and ending retaliation at Walmart. No matter how hard we work for Walmart, my husband and I can't catch up on our bills. But when our co-workers speak out about problems like these, Walmart turns their schedules upside down, cuts their hours and even fires people.'

• Much credit to Rep. George Miller, the ranking Democrat on the House Education and Labor Committee, and Rep.-elect Alan Grayson for showing up to support Walmart strikers.
• For more Creative Commons-licensed pictures of Walmart strikers and supporters, check out Document the Strike.
• Coverage from the New York Times, Marketplace, CBS Baltimore.

Remember that while Walmart is the target of these protests, and is, as the largest employer, the one that exerts the most influence on the U.S. retail industry, it's far from the only massive employer forcing its workers to come in on Thanksgiving day or the very early hours of Friday, and far from the only one keeping its workers poor and desperate for more hours of work.