[Peace-discuss] NYT: politicians weigh in on boycott Israel debate at Park Slope Food Coop

[Robert Naiman]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/nyregion/boycott-plan-at-park-slope-food-co-op-draws-politicians-opposition.html
Advertise on NYTimes.com <http://www.nytimes.whsites.net/mediakit/>
 Boycott Plan at Food Co-op Is Opposed by City Officials
 Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Michael Rieman, center, handed out fliers opposing a boycott of Israeli
products by the Park Slope Food Co-op. A vote on whether to hold a
referendum on the boycott is expected Tuesday.
 By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUM<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/michael_m_grynbaum/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
Published:
March 26, 2012

Many of New York City’s leading politicians said Monday that they opposed a
boycott of Israeli products by the Park Slope Food
Co-op<http://foodcoop.com/>in Brooklyn, speaking out on the day before
the market is expected to hold
an initial vote on the proposal.
  Related

   -  Divisions and Irritation in Food Co-op’s
Debate<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/nyregion/at-park-slope-food-co-op-a-debate-and-disinterest.html?ref=nyregion>(March
24, 2012)
   -  Big City: Food Co-op Politics Leave a Bad
Taste<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/nyregion/politics-at-the-park-slope-food-co-op-leave-a-bad-taste.html?ref=nyregion>(March
4, 2012)
   - Times Topic: Park Slope Food
Co-op<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/park_slope_food_coop/index.html>

 Connect with NYTMetro <http://www.facebook.com/NYTMetro>
[image: Metro Twitter Logo.] <http://www.facebook.com/NYTMetro/>

Follow us on Twitter <https://twitter.com/#%21/nytmetro/> and like us on
Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/NYTMetro/> for news and conversation.
 Readers’ Comments

Share your thoughts.


   - Post a Comment
»<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/nyregion/boycott-plan-at-park-slope-food-co-op-draws-politicians-opposition.html#postcomment>
   - Read All Comments (79)
»<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/nyregion/boycott-plan-at-park-slope-food-co-op-draws-politicians-opposition.html#comments>

  Christine C. Quinn<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/q/christine_c_quinn/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
the City Council speaker, called the idea “ill conceived.” Bill de
Blasio<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/bill_de_blasio/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
the public advocate, said it was “madness.” Scott M.
Stringer<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/scott_m_stringer/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
the Manhattan borough president, described the proposal as “an anti-Semitic
crusade.”

Asked about the issue at a news conference in Brooklyn, Mayor Michael R.
Bloomberg<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/michael_r_bloomberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per>called
Israel a close financial and political ally and said he wondered why
the co-op would conduct a foreign policy debate.

“Why any of this has anything to do with selling food, I don’t know,” Mr.
Bloomberg said.

The mayor said he would encourage New Yorkers to do more business with
Israel, not less, and noted that Israel itself had been formed after a vote
at the United Nations <http://www.un.org/en/>, then in Flushing, Queens.

“I think it has nothing to do with the food,” he said of the boycott. “The
issue is there are people who want Israel to be torn apart and everybody to
be massacred, and America is not going to let that happen.”

The proposed boycott, an outgrowth of an international movement that pushes
for divestment and sanctions against Israel, has pitted neighbor against
neighbor at the 39-year-old co-op, a Brooklyn institution known for its
organic produce and its socially conscious membership. Co-op members are
scheduled to vote on Tuesday on whether to hold a referendum on the
boycott.

The boycott would be largely symbolic, because the co-op carries only a
half-dozen or so products imported from Israel, including paprika, olive
pesto and vegan<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/v/veganism/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>marshmallows.

But the debate has been divisive, and is taking place in an affluent
neighborhood with an energized, highly active constituency that turns out
in droves for local and citywide elections.

“It’s my home turf,” Mr. de Blasio, a longtime Park Slope resident and
likely mayoral candidate in 2013, said in a phone interview on Monday. His
office had issued a written denunciation of the plan over the weekend.

“I really have a lot of respect for the co-op and its history, and maybe
that’s in part what’s motivating me,” said Mr. de Blasio, who is not a
current co-op member. “I’m pained that an organization that has done so
much good would wade into these waters.”

Unlike Mr. de Blasio, Ms. Quinn has not issued a formal statement regarding
the vote on Tuesday. But the speaker, who is also planning a run for mayor,
quickly responded to a reporter’s inquiry on Monday and spoke at length
about her own experiences visiting Israel, including a trip in 2007, when a
rocket attack occurred nearby.

“The relationship between New York and Israel, in my opinion, is very, very
significant, and something I feel very, very strongly about,” Ms. Quinn
said. “This boycott is ill conceived. I don’t think there should be a vote,
and I hope that is what happens.”

Asked for his view, Mr. Stringer, another likely mayoral candidate, issued
a fierce denunciation, writing in an e-mail that the co-op “should not be
torn apart” by a proposal he deemed anti-Semitic. “This action is an
unwarranted attack on one of America’s strongest allies and an
embarrassment to our city,” he wrote.

Israeli politics is a topic close to the heart of the city’s sprawling
Jewish population, a group that has proven decisive in several high-profile
political races in Brooklyn and Queens in recent months.

“New York’s neighborhoods have their own foreign policy,” said Mitchell L.
Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University, who
added that the inclination of New Yorkers to weigh in on world events can
have political implications for local elections.

“The boundaries of New York’s mayoral campaigns are infinite,” Professor
Moss said. “Everything is potentially an issue.”
     A version of this article appeared in print on March 27, 2012, on page
A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Boycott Plan at Food Co-op
Is Opposed by City Officials.


Saturday's article:



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/nyregion/at-park-slope-food-co-op-a-debate-and-disinterest.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=Park%20Slope%20coop&st=cse
March 23, 2012
Divisions and Irritation in Food Co-op’s Debate
 Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Outside the Park Slope Food Co-op, Felicia Glucksman, above center, lobbied
Jon Crow against a boycott of Israeli goods as Sarah Wellington, in
background, pushed for a vote on the issue.
 By KIRK SEMPLE<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/kirk_semple/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

A graphic designer came to buy ingredients for dinner. So did an
entrepreneur and a musician, an engineer and a law firm employee — all
streaming into the Park Slope Food
Co-op<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/park_slope_food_coop/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in
Brooklyn for its bounty of organic produce, artisan cheese and
fair-trade coffee.

The foot traffic the other night reflected in part the changes in Park
Slope, an increasingly upscale neighborhood where the store was founded 39
years ago by a group of shaggy idealists inspired by the socially conscious
ethos of the time.

Now, though, this cultural and retail anchor on Union Street, which counts
about 16,000 members and had $45 million in sales last year, is engulfed in
a debate that evokes its social and political roots: whether to boycott
products from Israel to protest the Israeli government’s policies toward
Palestinians<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/palestinians/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>.


The debate has splintered the membership, turned neighbor against neighbor
and provoked threats of litigation. Yet above all, many people seem
uninterested in, or even annoyed by, all the arguing. Their reactions point
up how the co-op has evolved from a countercultural upstart into a
neighborhood institution as conventional as children’s soccer leagues on
Saturday morning.

As one co-op member, an Internet entrepreneur, put it, “A lot of people
couldn’t care less about the progressive stuff.”

On Tuesday, at the co-op’s monthly meeting, members will vote on whether to
hold a referendum on the boycott — “a vote on a vote,” as some have taken
to calling it. Turnout is expected to be so large that organizers have
shifted the meeting from its usual location, a nearby synagogue that fits
350 people, to the auditorium of the Brooklyn Technical High School, which
can hold about 3,000.

The push for a boycott is part of an international lobbying effort against
Israel called B.D.S., which stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.
Boycotts are intended to pressure Israel to withdraw from the occupied
territories and recognize “the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian
citizens of Israel to full equality,” according to the movement’s Web
site<http://www.bdsmovement.net/>.


In recent years, calls for anti-Israel boycotts have embroiled food co-ops
around the country, including those in Sacramento and Davis, Calif.;
Seattle, Olympia and Port Townsend, Wash.; and Ann Arbor, Mich. All but the
effort in Olympia have been unsuccessful.

The Park Slope debate has percolated for several years but started
gathering force in 2010, spawning competing groups. Members use the co-op’s
biweekly newsletter, The Linewaiters’ Gazette, to air their views about the
boycott and, more broadly, Middle East politics. The issue has been debated
on local blogs and has filtered into the national news media.

Opponents have accused boycott supporters of anti-Semitism and contended
that a boycott would achieve nothing, pointing out that the co-op carries
at most about a half-dozen Israeli items, including SodaStream soda makers,
organic paprika and bath salts.

“I can’t believe how much attention this is getting,” said Barbara Mazor, a
founder of an antiboycott group called More Hummus, Please. “It’s very
strange. It’s a grocery store!”

“We’re being asked to take a position that’s not going to make a bit of
difference,” she added.

Boycott supporters said that the symbolism mattered and that every bit of
pressure on the Israeli government counted. “It’s saying, if you want to be
valid in the eyes of the world, you have to cooperate with international
law,” said Liz Roberts, an activist with the Park Slope Food Co-op Members
for B.D.S. group.

The supporters said accusations of anti-Semitism were unfair and a
diversion, and they pointed out that some in the co-op’s boycott lobby are
Jewish.

The aisles in the store have remained largely civil, but emotions have
boiled over on the sidewalk out front. Pro-boycott activists say they have
been kicked, pushed and spat on.

While the co-op has a reputation for
vegetarian<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/v/vegetarianism/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>fare
like kale and quinoa, it also stocks the kind of upmarket products
found at Whole Foods, like grass-fed beef, chocolate scones and craft beer.
Prices are often far lower than at other supermarkets because labor is
provided by members.

Members are required to work a shift of 2 hours and 45 minutes every four
weeks. Jobs include stocking shelves, running the register and staffing the
child care room. The co-op also has a small paid staff.

Membership has grown so rapidly in recent years that at times, checkout
lines snake through the aisles. Many members are from other neighborhoods
in Brooklyn and even elsewhere in New York City and the region. The co-op
also prides itself on its racial diversity.

“I see people from everywhere, from all layers of society,” said Jörgen
Wahlsten, a software engineer from Sweden and a co-op member. “It’s become
more and more mainstream.”

The co-op is no stranger to political action, approving boycotts on the
sale of products from South Africa, Chile, Colorado, General Electric,
Coca-Cola and Domino, among others.

Joe Holtz, the co-op’s general manager and one of its founders, has been in
the fray of all of those debates. He was a 22-year-old college dropout when
he and eight friends decided to form the co-op.

“The co-ops came out of that whole upheaval of different movements: the
civil rights movement, the women’s rights movements, anti-Vietnam War, the
gay rights movement,” he recalled. “We were very attracted to the idea that
cooperation meant working together and that working together would make for
a better world.”

The other boycotts were adopted without much fuss, he said, because there
was near-unanimous support. But this is the first time the store has waded
into Middle East politics, he said, and never has the debate over a boycott
been so threatening to the stability of the organization.

“This just reeks of divisiveness,” said Mr. Holtz, who opposes the boycott.

For many members, it seems, the vote could not come too soon.

Outside the co-op the other night, activists from each side of the debate
tried to buttonhole members, only to be ignored by most.

“Can we encourage you to vote no?” an antiboycott activist asked as he
thrust a leaflet at Ron Eugenio, who was with his wife, Jenny, and
daughter, Violette.

“I’ll read it and figure it out,” he replied, quickly moving away.

As the couple carried their purchases to their car, Mr. Eugenio, a case
manager at an intellectual property law firm, and Ms. Eugenio, an
admissions director at a private school in Manhattan, said they joined the
co-op for the healthy, inexpensive food.

“It’s not to make a political statement,” Mr. Eugenio said.

As she waited for a car to pick her up, Nechama Marcus, a graphic designer,
patiently listened to an activist’s arguments. After a pause, she said
cheerfully, “I’m for good food!”

The activist moved toward another target. Ms. Marcus looked down at her
brimming shopping cart and sighed. “I have a lot of cooking to do,” she
said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

*Correction: March 24, 2012*

An earlier version of this article erroneously stated that Liz Roberts was
a member of the Park Slope Food Co-op B.D.S. board. Ms. Roberts is an
activist with the Park Slope Food Co-op Members for B.D.S., but no such
board exists at the Park Slope Food Co-op. Additionally, an earlier
correction in this space wrongly stated that the Park Slope Food Co-op did
not have a board; it does. Additionally, the first name of Nechama Marcus
was misspelled.


-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20120327/ee89f83b/attachment-0001.html>