From mschulter@calweb.com Thu Aug 25 16:14:19 2011 Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:09:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Margo Schulter To: mschulter@calweb.com Subject: Peace at the co-op edit (fwd -- formatting test) (fwd) Co-op peace: Recipe for an ethical feast? For the last year, an earnest and at times sadly acrimonious debate at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op has focused on whether and how the co-op should officially participate in a boycott or selective buying campaign to challenge Israeli government policies and promote peace in the Middle East. While the 110-year conflict now known as the Israel/Palestine question continues to attract the attention of the world, observers in Sacramento may wonder whether peace at the co-op is possible. The co-op debate is a multilayered one. What are the merits of the Israel/Palestine conflict itself? What kinds of boycott or selective buying strategies, if any, might move this conflict in the direction of peace with justice for both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs? Should the co-op as an institution take an official position through the board or the "direct democracy" of a ballot measure? Or should the matter be addressed by consumer education and individual purchasing decisions? To announce my own conclusions at the outset, I am here proposing that a board policy of what I term "benevolent neutrality and open education" might best recognize and honor the ethical values expressed by various sides in this ongoing dialogue. Under such a policy, the co-op board or an appropriate committee would act to compile a consumer information binder, including information on products from Israel/Palestine currently carried by the co-op, along with materials representing a spectrum of community views: everything from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to the Buy Israeli Goods (BIG) campaign. Included in this mix should be arguments for a selective buying campaign in which co-op members and shoppers support those products leading to "a more perfect democracy" in post-1967 Israel (including the West Bank and Gaza) based on full and equal citizenship for Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs alike. Further, the board or an appropriate committee would sponsor educational forums and dialogue sessions in which members and shoppers could learn more about the Middle East, the ethical concerns which motivate local activists ranging from Maggie Coulter and Josh Cadji of the BDS group to Barry Broad and John Boisa of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), and the range of consumer responses and strategies. Keeping such events civil — an educational and ethical feast rather than a "food fight" — may be something of a challenge, but is this not the challenge that any civilized and democratic community must face? One good rule would be that people at such meetings who are undecided, or just learning the facts, should especially be encouraged to ask questions and voice their own doubts and puzzlements. In other words, when a boycott or selective buying movement is a topic of substantial controversy and division at a co-op, the best official policy may be to foster active consumer education, open and respectful dialogue, and free choice by each consumer. To expand upon a familiar maxim: "Think globally, act locally, decide individually." Politics at the co-op: An open and impartial forum The presumption of what I term "official political neutrality" means not the absence of "politics at the co-op," but the free expression of social and political activism through the usual means of consumer information binders, consumer education programs and open public dialogue. Thus the fact that Coulter and other local activists in the international BDS campaign chose the co-op as a forum rather than Trader Joe's or Raley's is a tribute to the special nature of the co-op: not merely a commercial grocery, but an intentional community. At the same time, the co-op community also includes activists such as Broad and Boisa of the JCRC who favor purchasing Israeli products early, often and enthusiastically. A big advantage of official neutrality on the part of the co-op and its board is that, to borrow the words of board member Sonny Eboigbe in a different context, it makes possible a resolution through individual and informed consumer choice where there are neither "victors nor vanquished." Regulating official boycotts: The cooperative principles While "nondiscrimination" rhetoric about co-op boycotts has often been imperfectly reasoned, any thinking and feeling nonviolent activist must recognize the board's valid point. To impose as official co-op policy a blanket boycott on a whole nation, including any sister cooperatives located in that nation, seems almost the nonviolent equivalent of total warfare with its carpet bombing. We ask, "Isn't it unfair to target suppliers, especially cooperatives, simply because of who they are or where they are located?" Ethical boycotts or selective buying campaigns seek to be discriminating — as opposed to discriminatory — by asking what a specific supplier is doing to hinder or advance the struggle for peace and justice. Suppliers in Israel/Palestine who are promoting binational cooperation between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews, thus advancing the cause of peace through inclusion and equal Israeli citizenship for both peoples, deserve our enthusiastic support. It follows that any official co-op boycotts should always be selective, looking at the conduct of a specific supplier. When that supplier is a sister cooperative, a yet more careful and delicate decision is required, because "cooperation among cooperatives" is a basic cooperative principle. Indeed Cooperatives in Israel/Palestine may be one of the most hopeful and powerful forces for establishing, first on a small scale and then nationwide, a new ethic of inclusion and common citizenship. Further, any official co-op boycott should not only operate within these standards of selectivity and cooperation among cooperatives, but should include a positive effort to seek out suppliers and products in an affected region which can promote peace and justice. When in doubt, let each consumer decide While the above regulations will help address concerns that the co-op might call an official boycott as an act of indiscriminate collective punishment against an entire nation (including our sister cooperatives), there remains a reason why official co-op neutrality should be the usual presumption, with consumer education, public dialogue and individual choice as the normal channels for social activism at the co-op. That reason is that when substantial disagreements arise, as they certainly have regarding the Israel/Palestine question and BDS, a contest to determine the official co-op position between two closely and often passionately divided sides is likely to result in lots of discontented members. "Agreeing to disagree" — to have an open and civil discussion, with each member or shopper as the arbiter — makes the co-op an educational forum where all views are welcome, with the board as a congenial host to the diverse community it represents. There may arise international situations from time to time where there is virtual unanimity that a selective boycott is justified, with the boycott against Hitler's anti-Jewish policies in 1933 as one possible scenario. Even here, as discussed above, our co-op would not bar products from any German cooperatives resisting the Nazi policies and affirming Jewish equality. In such situations, an official boycott should call for the near-unanimous agreement of the co-op community, with support by a supermajority vote of 2/3 or more of the members as one test. Such a supermajority rule would leave open the possibility of official boycotts in extreme situations while encouraging activists, for the most part, to focus on the campaigns of consumer information, education and dialogue which the board would positively encourage and foster regarding Israel/Palestine and similar concerns shared by a substantial number of members. Co-op peace regained: Back to the future Some very intriguing alternative histories of the last year at the co-op might be written where certain activists, and especially the board, followed roads not so far taken and arrived at the kind of resolution I am advocating. The important point, however, is that such roads are still open. The main roadblock to peace may be the tendency already observed by the Greek historian Thucydides: In times of public excitement and controversy, those advocating moderation and compromise often remain unheard. His wisdom is summed up in the more modern adage that those who seek the middle of the road may end up as roadkill. A dignified role for the board as impartial and benevolent facilitator, providing an open forum for the social and ethical concerns of co-op community members while maintaining an official neutrality befitting this noble office and encouraging civility in all directions, is a road which deserves to be taken. DISCLOSURE: Since moving to Sacramento in 1984, I have been a co-op shopper, and I was a member from 1985 to 1989. Currently I am a member of the Olympia Food Co-op in Washington State, known for its support of BDS and its policy of carrying products such as Peace Oil, an olive oil marketed with cooperation between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews. Last November, I submitted to the board a proposed boycott policy along the general lines sketched above. Some activists at the time advised me that I was making an official boycott too difficult, while the board expressed its deep appreciation but found my proposal "not consistent with our policy governance structure." As a Jewish activist, I favor the binational ideals of the Rabbi Judah L. Magnes (the Zionist founder of Hebrew University) and the Palestinian Arab scholar Edward Said as a good starting point for peace with justice in Israel/Palestine. -- Elisa Hough Sacramento Press copy editor audiographer.wordpress.com