Coke Activists Conference

international | worker & community struggles and protests | event notice Monday January 31, 2005 12:45 by Lasc - Lasc colombia at lasc dot ie 01-6760435

A meeting of coke activists from Ireland and Britain

This is a chance for activists to meet and excange ideas on how to build the campaign against killer Coke

Activist Conference.

The International Campaign against Coca-Cola
Building the Network and Mobilising the Boycott

1-6.30pm, Saturday 26 February 2005
Leeds University Union.
(Next to “Parkinson steps”, about 5 mins by taxi from the train station)

1-2.30pm, Introduction

Speakers:
Rosie Kane- Member of the Scottish Parliament for the SSP
Juan Pablo Ochoa- Colombian student activist
Gearoid Oloingsigh- Latin America Solidarity Centre, Ireland
Amit Srivastava- India Resource Centre

Plus representatives from COBAS in Italy, Colombia Solidarity
Campaign in UK and from Leeds University.

2.45- 4.30pm, Workshops

(1) Boycott in the Universities (2) Trade Union Week of Action
(3) Mobilising in the Community

4.45-6.30pm, Final Session

Building the Networks and Uniting the Campaigns

There will be a party after the conference with music and dancing, and plenty of time for hard-core supporters to continue discussing tactics.

Supporters of the campaign in the area are offering accommodation on Saturday night; please bring a sleeping bag. To register for the conference, and to request overnight accommodation, please contact us ASAP at:

[email protected] [email protected]

The India Resource Centre are organising a “Reality Tour” of Bradford at 10am on the Saturday morning, to meet communities affected by racism, find out about their struggles and solutions and see for yourselves what is really going on. There will be limited accommodation available on Friday night for those interested. Please let us know if you want to take part.
The International Campaign against Coca-Cola, of which the boycott of all their products is a part, was launched by Sinaltrainal (Colombian Food and Drink Workers Union) on 22 July 2003. The campaign is a response to the campaign of repression orchestrated by Coca-Cola against the union that resulted in the murder of 8 union activists, and the torture, imprisonment and displacement of many more unionised workers. The campaign has the support of the 2 main trade union federations in Colombia. The campaign runs alongside a court case in the USA which accuses Coke of employing paramilitary death squads to kill union members. Despite Coke’s denials and assurances, their chief counsel in the case recently resigned when it turned out that Coke had never investigated any of the accusation. They had consistently claimed to have done so.

Coke’s abuses of their workers and the communities in which they operate are not limited to Colombia. In India, communities across the country are struggling against the company after its avaricious business practices have caused extensive water shortages for local populations. The BBC even discovered that Coke was handing out their toxic waste products to farmers and claiming that it was fertiliser. Upon investigation, this sludge was found to have high levels of lead and cadmium and was severely polluting land and water sources. Furthermore, Coca-Cola in India was found to contain up to 30 times the levels of pesticide that is allowed in Europe. Coke has responded to protests by employing violent repression against protesters. They have also attempted to use their economic muscle to manipulate and undermine local democratic institutions that have repeatedly found Coke responsible for causing water shortages and have ordered that Coke plants are shut down.

These are merely two of the better known campaigns against the abuses of the world’s largest drinks company, but Coke operates in similar ways across the globe. Trade unionists have been murdered in Guatemala and Peru, child labour used in El Salvador, black workers have been systematically discriminated against in the USA, and around the world workers laid off and replaced with temporary staff on short term contracts and no benefits. And who can forget the Desani fiasco in the UK. Poisoning perfectly good tap water and trying to sell it for a pound a bottle.

Its time to “Just Say No!” Boycott Coca-Cola!

Colombia Solidarity Campaign
India Resource Centre
Latin America Solidarity Centre