The Friday after Thanksgiving is one of the slowest news days of the year. Very little happens, other than people shooting each other in retail stores’ parking lots and burning down their houses while trying to fry turkeys. That helps to explain the overabundance of coverage last week for protests against Wal-Mart stores.

Wal-Mart employees were supposedly going to walk off the job en masse, rising up against the retail giant’s abusive practices and low pay. “From this day on, ‘Black Friday’ should be remembered as a pivotal day for working people at Wal-Mart and everywhere,” Mary Kay Henry, international president of the Service Employees International Union, said in a statement.