Members of Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop will be voting on more than work shift arrangements at the Coop’s monthly General Meeting in March. They’ll be deciding on whether they’ll be having a co-op wide referendum about the Coop’s stance on human rights.
On the agenda for the March 27 meeting is a proposal spearheaded by a diverse group of the Coop’s members on holding a referendum to determine the Coop’s participation in the global nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel’s violation of international law and human rights. Members hope the vote will bring some sort of conclusion to over two years of heated arguments in meetings and in the pages of the Coop’s biweekly newspaper. A vote in favor of a referendum would allow all 16,000 Co-op members to vote on the boycott. Opposition to even voting on having a referendum has been fierce. Those in favor of a Co-op boycott are hoping for a yes vote on the referendum. Without it, only members present at a General Meeting (typically a few hundred) could vote on whether the Co-op will join the boycott. ”On an issue that Co-op members feel so strongly about”, according to one of the organizers of the boycott, “it is essential for the entire membership to have a voice”.
Disagreement about a boycott hasn’t been confined to the newsletter . One member of PSCF Members For BDS was assaulted by another member while shopping and several others have been verbally abused. Some non-affiliated members, however, have written to the group saying that the BDS debate has allowed them to publicly voice their support, which they felt they couldn’t do before.
Historically, the Coop has been active in boycotts: it opposed apartheid-era South Africa long before the call was widespread, joined in the boycott against Nestle, and in recent years has boycotted such companies as Coca-Cola and Flaum Appetizing for labor rights violations. For many, the proposal to boycott Israeli goods is the most contentious issue the Coop has ever dealt with. Turnout for the March 27 meeting is expected to be so high that Coop staff has reserved the auditorium of Brooklyn Technical High school, estimated to hold 1,700 people.
With a date set, and coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Daily News, and Metro, the pace of organizing has stepped up – as well as the level of vitriol by anti-BDS coop members.
In the meantime, “PSFC members for BDS” continues to spread the word. Upcoming events the group has sponsored include the screening of the documentary Until When on February 28 and a presentation by Joel Kovel on the environmental crisis in Palestine/Israel on March 17th.
Go BDS!
Great!
The same kind of BDS campaign should be on every campus!
i wonder if the announcement of the vote will inspired non members to join the boycott to be able to vote?
this is excellent news, thanks for the report.
My impression is that once the vote has been taken, and which ever way it goes, the EDUCATIONAL VALUE of this important BDS event will dissipate.
Let’s hope for a BIG anti-BDS turn-out so there can be a noisy (and educational) fight, like the co-op decision and follow-up court case in Washington (with its so-valuable SLAPP result for the co-op which was sued).
It would be wonderful to find a way to provide BDS education on a continuing basis, keeping the “friction” going so that more people can learn about BDS and, of course, and primarily, about I/P.
“They’ll be deciding on whether they’ll be having a co-op wide referendum about the Coop’s stance on human rights.”
LOL. No, they will not. They will voting on whether to have a referendum on whether to join an extreme political movement that favors discriminating against the State of Israel while doing nothing about real human rights violators around the world. They’ll be voting on whether to hold a referendum to boycott companies like PeaceWorks, which promotes Israeli-Palestinian cooperation and works for an end to occupation and the two-state solution, and in the process, hurting the Palestinian farmers the company works with. They’ll be voting on whether to hold a referendum to rob Coop members of the right to exercise their individual consciences rather than having political extremism forced upon them. They’ll be voting to hold a referendum on whether to make the vast, vast majority of Park Slope’s Jewish community feel extremely uncomfortable.
This IS a vote for many things. Human rights is not one of them.