One Killer Coke activist strikes back


by Dave Hancock
contributing writer

WSN columnist Jonathan Cipriani's latest piece asserts that allegations of Coca-Cola's complicity in human rights abuses in Colombia are without factual basis because no such claims have been proven by Colombian government investigations ("Does Coke kill? Campaign hardly proves its case," Nov. 18).

Yet the Colombian justice system has a well-documented history of failing to pursue and fully prosecute human rights abuses. Organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have said human rights crimes in Colombia repeatedly go unpunished. Even the U.S. State Department acknowledges that when such human rights abuses involve anti-union violence, there is little chance of full prosecution through Colombian legal channels.

In addition, an independent human rights delegation led by New York City Councilman Hiram Monserrate in January emphasized the Colombian government's inability or unwillingness to pursue allegations of Coca-Cola's complicity in anti-union violence.

Cipriani also cited a recent lawsuit filed against Coca-Cola and its Colombian subsidiaries in a Miami court as further proof of the beverage giant's innocence. Coca-Cola was initially dropped from the suit, leaving its Colombian partners to defend themselves.

As Paul Klebnikov wrote in Forbes magazine in an article titled "Coke's Sinful World," "Coke is almost wholly dependent on the bottlers for its own results ... The biggest bottlers aren't subsidiaries of Coke, nor are they completely independent. Coke effectively controls them by maintaining big equity stakes and a heavy presence on their boards, and by providing their main source of business. Yet it keeps its stakes in the bottlers below 50 percent, thereby avoiding getting hit with their piles of debt and any unpleasant liabilities."

Claims of subsidiary "independence" are little more than symbolic, as Coca-Cola has shrewdly positioned itself to maintain a controlling stake in its bottling partners while divesting itself of all legal responsibility for its heinous actions. That the Miami court has upheld the suit against Coca-Cola's subsidiaries sends a clear message that the accusations against these "independent" partners clearly have merit.

Cipriani also claims that violence perpetrated by right-wing paramilitaries against Coca-Cola union leaders is merely the tragic and accidental outcome of paramilitary conflict in Colombia. But it turns out that even Coca-Cola doesn't buy that argument. Monserrate's delegation learned that Coca-Cola has never even conducted an internal investigation into the lethal violence perpetrated against its employees.

So what can we do as a university in order to address this situation? First off, an independent investigation led by an objective human rights organization is needed. Luckily for NYU, we and more than 100 other American universities belong to an organization called the Worker Rights Consortium - a group whose purpose is to investigate allegations of labor rights abuses.

To date, MacCalester College, Carleton College and DePaul University have already asked Coca-Cola to work with the Worker Rights Consortium in order to investigate the violence in Colombia.

Yet Coca-Cola has refused to agree to a preliminary meeting. In fact, Coca-Cola has refused to allow for any independent investigation, going so far as to rebuff its own lawyer when he approached the company's CEO with a proposal for such an investigation last year.

If Coca-Cola won't respect repeated calls for an investigation, we need to show them we're serious about removing their few products from our campus. This will send a clear and poignant message that NYU expects the same commitment to human rights from Coca-Cola as it does from any other company whose products grace our campus.

Finally, Cipriani raises the concern that the impact of a Coca-Cola boycott will invariably hurt those that it intends to help by eliminating sorely needed jobs in Colombia. But the very people whose jobs are in jeopardy - the men and women employed by Coca-Cola's bottling plants in Colombia - are issuing the international call for a boycott.

And an NYU boycott of Coca-Cola's products will have a truly negligible financial impact on the sales of this beverage behemoth. The impact of the proposed boycott is intended to be symbolic, leveraging the high-profile name of NYU.

Now that you have the facts, make sure that your student representatives vote to uphold NYU's tradition of social responsibility at the next meeting of the University Committee on Student Life. Act now, speak up and contact ucsl@nyu.edu. •

Dave Hancock is a member of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke at NYU. E-mail responses to opinion@nyunews.com