Students protest Coca-Cola

When Associated Students UCLA representatives speak at their
monthly board meetings, the room is usually relatively quiet.

But at the ASUCLA board of directors’ meeting this past
Friday, it was hard to hear their voices over the shouts and cheers
of about 20 students demonstrating outside Kerckhoff Hall and the
muffled murmurs of another 50 or so students gathered on both sides
of Kerckhoff Stateroom.

Representatives from Coca-Cola presented information at the
meeting, stating the company’s position in a debate over
Coca-Cola’s alleged human rights violations abroad.

ASUCLA officials said they wanted to use the meeting to
understand both sides of the dispute, and eventually come to a
decision on whether to continue selling Coca-Cola products on
campus, though no decision was made Friday and no specific date for
the decision has been set.

The push to ban Coca-Cola from campus is the latest example of
ASUCLA reconsidering its sale of a product for social reasons. Past
actions include the removal of Taco Bell in October 2004 over
alleged labor abuses by Taco Bell’s tomato suppliers in
Florida and the ban on cigarette sales from all ASUCLA facilities
in the early 1990s. Taco Bell returned to campus this fall.

The commotion at the meeting was caused by Coke-Free Campus, a
student coalition protesting the sale of Coca-Cola products on
campus because they maintain the company is violating human
rights.

The student organization met with board members at the
board’s last meeting on March 10 to present their allegations
of Coca-Cola’s engagement in inhumane practices against its
workers at Colombian bottling plants.

At the last meeting, they claimed The Coca-Cola Company had
allowed its workers in Colombia to be murdered, detained and
tortured without investigation by their employers.

Ed Potter, the director of global labor relations and workplace
accountability for Coca-Cola, said that before believing the
accusations, ASUCLA should understand the historical context of the
situation in Columbia.

Colombia has been undergoing civil conflict between the
left-wing guerrillas and the right-wing paramilitaries for over six
decades, killing over 20,000 Colombian citizens a year, said Pablo
Largacha, the director of public affairs and communications for
Coca-Cola and a native of Colombia.

“A boycott is not an adequate way to stop the problem of
violence in Colombia,” Largacha said. “What we need now
is to take a more active, constructive role. We cannot do it alone.
We need the help of companies, organizations, the International
Labor Organization.”

Potter pointed out that Coca-Cola is one of those companies that
is trying to help Colombia.

“Coca-Cola has denounced the violence in Colombia on many
occasions,” Potter said. “In July 2006, the
International Business Leaders Forum is conducting a forum to look
at what businesses can do to alleviate the violence, and Coca-Cola
will be there.”

The International Labor Organization will be conducting an
investigation of Coca-Cola’s Colombian workers’ rights
practices, scheduled to begin this summer and conclude in
September, Potter added.

Student representatives from Coke-Free Campus stood to one side
of the room, holding up the printed faces of Colombian workers who
had died over the past few years.

Posters of killed Colombian workers, laying on the ground with
the Coca-Cola logo trickling like blood out of their bodies, were
held up outside against the windows of the building.

Largacha said the deaths of these workers were not the fault of
The Coca-Cola company, pointing to one of the printed images of a
man’s face.

“This man, Isidro Gil, was a bodyguard at the entrance to
his bottling plant. Paramilitary thugs killed him to get inside the
plant and threatened the workers inside,” he said. “But
there was nothing the bottling management could do to stop
them.”

During a question-and-answer session after the presentation,
Alexis Montes, a fourth-year history and political science student
and a member of Coke-Free Campus, said because nine Colombian
workers have died, Coca-Cola does not defend its workers.

“Coca-Cola fails to uphold a human rights standard a
university like this should uphold,” he said.

But members of Coke-Free Campus were not the only students
present at the ASUCLA meeting to participate in the discussion. A
group of members from Bruin Republicans was also in attendance.

Faith Christiansen, chairwoman for Bruin Republicans, said
Coke-Free Campus’ accusations were unfounded and proposals
were not realistic.

“The claims of the Coke-Free Campus coalition are unsound
and unproven and their policies, if drawn out, would be
disastrous,” she said.

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