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Headlines : CorporationsTaking on Coca-Cola
The Coca-Cola boycott got handed a major victory at the end of 2005 when New York University and the University of Michigan voted to join in on the ban. For a good primer on why there is a boycott, see this article by a GNNer in openDemocracy.net.
[Posted By atrain]Republished from Business Week
It’s early Monday morning, but Ray Rogers has the full attention of some 70 students in a Rutgers University classroom. For nearly half an hour, the 61-year-old labor activist rails against Coca-Cola Co., taking the beverage giant to task for allegedly turning a blind eye as eight employees of Coke bottlers in Colombia were killed and scores more were threatened or jailed on trumped-up terrorism charges over the past decade.
“The reality is that the world of Coca-Cola is a world of lies, deceptions, corruption, gross human rights and environmental abuses!’‘ thunders Rogers, a legendary union activist who cut his teeth organizing a highly publicized campaign against textile maker J.P. Stevens & Co. in the 1970s. He slams his hand on a desk. ``But this is where it’s going to stop! We’re going to put an end to this once and for all! How many of you will stand up against Coke?’‘ One by one, roughly half the students lift their hands. In response to Rogers’ charges, a Coke spokeswoman says the activist ``has no facts to support his claims.’‘
Despite the vast generation gap and Coke’s rebuttals, Rogers’ diatribes are starting to resonate on campuses from New Haven to Ann Arbor…
Posted by atrain
Ari Paul has written for The American Prospect, In These Times, Tikkun, Z, Punk Planet, openDemocracy.net, Reason and other newspapers and magazines. He is also a reporter for The Chief-Leader, a New York weekly covering labor in the city.
Corporate imperialism involves mass murders and serial murders and assassinations. Banana republics involved such abominable conditions and migrant farm workers in the U.S. have been virtually enslaved, just earning enough in many cases to pay back the agri-monopolies for their food and shelter.
It seems almost trite to say that the contemporary soft drink industry adds brainwashing, diabetes and cavity filled mouths to the modern corporate scenario.
Yet, for thousands and thousands of years children just drank water, milk and some kind of fruit drinks (a mixture of water and fruit and sugar), but mainly children just drank what their mom gave to them. Corporate soft drink, sugared cereal, candy, and junk food advertising, in addition to cigarette advertising have brainwashed half or more of today’s Americans. This is much much heavier than it seems on the surface.
I find it mildly endearing that we can even turn brown sugar-water into a reason to kill people…
If you ever get a chance, the documentary Big Sugar was very good…
Big Sugar is a two-hour documentary that pierces the hidden history and modern power of the sugar cartels. It explores how Big Sugar worked eight million African slaves to death to create an international empire of wealth, power and staggering political influence. Today, its payola-sweetened scientists and politicians deny Big Sugar is behind another form of sugar slavery: the soaring consumption of pop and sugar junk food, which has created a worldwide obesity crisis.
Big Sugar is written and directed by Brian McKenna, the 2004 Gordon Sinclair Award-honouree for broadcast journalism. The two-part documentary is produced by Sylvia Wilson and Stephen Phizicky. Arnie Gelbart is executive producer.