Regarding the Co-op Israeli boycott: Because of the way in which it was accomplished, the boycott is a manipulated farce. The membership was not consulted. The process was not followed. The level of secrecy used to keep the agenda hidden clearly indicates how controversial the manipulators knew this issue was and what it would do to the community. They did not care. They have ambitions to be players on the international scene and used our co-op to get attention for themselves.
In 1991 I bought my house near the co-op so that I could walk there. For 20 years I was an almost daily shopper, for most of my family’s food. I was shocked, depressed, and made physically ill by the way the boycott was handled. I have not shopped there since it was passed.
I feel that the boycott should be overturned and put to a vote by the membership. A “co-op” that allows itself to be so obviously manipulated is not worthy of the name and should be prevented from expanding. I completely support the plaintiffs of this lawsuit.
Ahna Stoller, Olympia
As an resident of Olympia I thought I would chime in about what is appropriate behavior for a group of disgruntled, disenfranchised and basically dissed Olympians. Olympia is all about transparency, collaboration and egalitarian and consensus based decision making. When all of those awesome values are absent, ignored, abused and misused (as they were in the Olympia Food Co-op’s less than above board process of making the decision to boycott Israel) then Olympian residents and Co-op members should have every right to sue. I think advocating for oneself is also an Olympia value. So much of the social change that has happened in this country has happened through the legal system-often as a last resort. This is a last resort situation.
A proud and vocal Olympian,
Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg
Thank you for your recent article, “Suing the Olympia Food Co-op is Anti-Olympia.” I appreciate your condemnation of the lawsuit against the Co-op as totally contrary to the values that so many Olympians “hold dear,” and your appeal to the plaintiffs to return to those values by dropping the lawsuit. However, I ask you to reconsider your equation of the plaintiffs’ legal depredations with the activism of the Co-op members who initially advocated for the boycott, as well as your dismissal of the boycott as an empty symbolic gesture made “at the [Co-op’s] expense.”
Activist members who advocated for the boycott of Israeli goods, such as myself, did so precisely because it aligns with the Co-op’s admirable mission to join the provision of healthy, local food to the work of creating a more just and sustainable world. Advocates for the boycott had no money or powerful organizations standing behind us; we had only community support for upholding the Co-op’s values, and the long educational legacy of local activist groups like the Rachel Corrie Foundation. How can local activists working to advance the Co-op’s vision of social justice possibly be compared to those who are suing the Co-op with the help of a powerful pro-Israel organization and representative of the Israeli state?
The boycott is indeed symbolic, as were the first consumer boycotts against apartheid South Africa. Yet it is precisely because these small actions contain the seeds of transformative change that powerful forces are working so hard to undermine them. Since 2005, when Palestinian civil society first called for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), the Co-op has been involved in this issue. By honoring the call, the Co-op has reaffirmed that which distinguishes it from Whole Foods, its commitment to building a better world. It will emerge stronger for it.
David Langstaff, Olympia BDS