I would first like to thank Luke Calhoun for his article about the Coca-Cola campaign on campus. The Macalester community should consider the points he raised about the campaign and weigh their validity along with the voices of the Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC) and other activists on campus working to discontinue our relationship with Coca-Cola. Calhoun suggests going to the www.killercoke.com web site for Coke’s response to the boycott’s allegations, which SLAC has also encouraged students to do in our door-knocking and literature. Everyone on campus should absolutely consider Coke’s responsibility (or alleged lack thereof) for the death of trade unionists in Colombia, and whether or not this company is one that Macalester should have an exclusive contract with.

Calhoun expresses doubt that Coke has “a motive” in “a conspiracy” to “assassinate union members,” which was never SLAC’s argument. Rather, as Luis Adolfo Cardona, former Coke employee and trade unionist in Colombia has explained directly to the Macalester community (in speeches in March ’03 and ’04), Coke has bottling plants in Colombia in which workers are being prevented from organizing a union, to the end that nine union organizers have been killed. Coca-Cola has done nothing to step in and protect their workers, and therefore, Cardona and other employees have asked our school specifically to take a stand against the company in solidarity with their struggle.

In thinking about the validity of the claims against Coca-Cola, I have a hard time finding “a motive” for Luis Cardona to make up stories of his own kidnapping and invent “a conspiracy” against Coke. Yes, Coca-Cola does “benefit the community in many ways” in Colombia, as Calhoun points out, but this is not an excuse for allowing unethical labor practices to continue. In a country where it is extremely dangerous to organize a union, Coca-Cola has the responsibility to uphold the labor standards that are consistent with company policy in bottling plants all around the world (Forbes highlights the relationship between the Coca-Cola Company internationally, in the United States and in Colombia at www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/ 1222/086.html).

It is very important to consider the potential harm such a boycott could have on Coca-Cola workers in the United States, and I’m glad Calhoun’s article brought this to the community’s attention. In the December 12, 2003 edition of The Mac Weekly, five SLAC members wrote an article entitled “Coke boycott needs a dialogue shift,” in which they acknowledged this very same issue, an issue that continues to be of great concern for SLAC. As an organization we are committed to workers’ rights locally and globally and we have no interest in compromising one for the other, which is why, before protesting at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Eagan, Minn., we informed the Teamsters Union (who represent Coke workers around the Twin Cities), who were supportive of our attempts to highlight labor abuses against workers in Colombia. This boycott can threaten the pop culture image of Coke in order to pressure the company to meet workers’ fair labor demands abroad without threatening the jobs of workers domestically.

In fact, four days after the rally in Eagan (part of a national day of action initiated by the Killer Coke boycott), Coca-Cola agreed to meet demands of hunger striking workers in Colombia who had been denied relocation to alternate facilities after the bottling plants they worked in were shut down due to unionizing efforts. The work of activists in Colombia and abroad as a part of the ongoing international boycott on Coke generated enough bad publicity to convince the company to negotiate with workers, but, had no negative impact on domestic Coke employees. However, the aforementioned negotiations will not address Coca-Cola’s disregard for current workers’ right to organize, which is why the Macalester community must actively participate in the boycott. As participation in this recent day of action illustrated, taking a public stand to show our dissatisfaction with Coca-Cola Enterprises can influence company policy.

Macalester has a history of responding to international injustices through changes in our economic investments (including divesting from South Africa during apartheid), and we must continue this practice. SLAC is asking Macalester College to file a complaint with Coca-Cola, to ask the Workers’ Rights Consortium to further investigate the situation in Colombia and to discontinue our relationship with the company. We welcome an open dialogue surrounding the Coke campaign, and we are certainly not “leaping into action” as was suggested in the last Mac Weekly, for we have thought about the difficult issues the boycott brings up and educated ourselves to all sides of the argument; we encourage the entire Macalester community to do the same.