U should get Coke off campus
I noticed on the first day of the new quarter that one of the Coke
banners hanging on the footbridge in front of Coffman Union had
disappeared.
At first it seemed a radical step -- possibly to push back an
unwarranted corporate signage encroachment. Then I thought that maybe
the spirited action was in remembrance of the more than a dozen
Guatemalan labor organizers who, like the Coke sign, were also
"disappeared" or murdered in a Coke factory during the United States'
corporate-led war on Central America's poor in the 1980s.
In light of such a symbolically loaded gesture, students at the
University should pay attention to a whole litany of similarly
destructive yet largely unknown Coca-Cola initiatives.
Coke is currently a leading sponsor and financial supporter of the
ruthless Abacha regime in Nigeria, which has jailed members of the
elected government and continues to slaughter indigenous people in the
quest for corporate profit. Coke has monocultural Minute-Maid
plantations in the once abundantly forested Brazil and Honduras. Coke
has held 50,000 acres of Belizean rain forest with the plans to
clear-cut it. A Coke bottling plant is polluting the Tiete river in
Brazil and Coke is planning another bottling plant in the Sierra Do Japi
environmental sanctuary -- also in Brazil.
Coke reneged on the promise it made eight years ago to use recycled
plastic in its bottles and now the mega-corporation ignores widespread
claims that it's a major factor in the collapse of the soda bottle
recycling market.
Around the world Coke has aggressively pushed its unhealthy drinks to
the detriment of the poorest people -- an epidemic health problem called
"commerciogenic malnutrition." Coca-Cola has been cited by the Federal
Trade Commission for misleading advertising.
Students should be especially concerned since Coke already has a history
of intimidation of critical thinkers. In Mexico the rector of the
University of Queretaro was fired for defending an open-minded professor
against attacks by a local Coke affiliate.
In Atlanta in the late 1980s the editor of the Journal-Constitution was
forced to resign after a member of the Coke board of directors
criticized an article exposing grand jury investigation of Coke's
criminal activity. Just recently a high school student was suspended for
wearing a Pepsi T-shirt to an Orwellian "School Coke-Day."
All this damning evidence, which is just the tip of the iceberg,
strongly suggests that the University is eligible to terminate its Coke
contract, since already Coke fails "to perform one or more of its
material duties" under the exclusive beverage and sponsorship agreement.
That duty is "to enhance the quality of the student experience."
But Coke, through a Minneapolis-based public relations firm, is also
pursuing other exclusive campus contracts across the nation. Fortunately
many campuses are preventing the further loss of democratic inquiry at
their schools.
The supposed $28 million our school is to gain from this deal is very
misleading, since more than 50 percent of that amount is in corporate
subsidies such as marketing and deductions, including free use of the
University's trademark for off-campus Coke promotion. The rest of the
money is premised on projected sale increases to Coke's new captive
audience of supposed problem solvers.
Here's a noncommercial toast to free thought, health, the environment
and labor: Boycott Coke and get Coke off campus!
Drew Hempel,
graduate student,liberal studies, 1998
oops - they censored it!!
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