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Opinion

Help put an end to Coca-Cola's crimes

Timothy O'Brien
Opinion Columnist

Historically, American college campuses have been hotbeds for student activism. In the 1960s, University of California student Mario Savio led the Free Speech Movement, a battle for civil liberties that became the first major student uprising. 

Throughout the Vietnam War, students led nationwide actions and protests for the civil rights movement and against the war. In the 1980s, students led successful campaigns for the divesture of university funds invested in companies doing business with the apartheid South African government. Those student campaigns were instrumental in bringing down a racist government. 

In the late 1990s, Duke University students used their anti-Nike campaign to build a broad anti-sweatshop campaign. The Duke students' activism resulted in the founding of the United Students Against Sweatshops. The New York Times reported in 1999 that the anti-sweatshop campaigns "were the biggest surge in campus activism in nearly two decades." 

United Students for Fair Trade is another such national group. It is made up of more than 100 student affiliate groups and aims to drive college food services to use fair-trade coffee, tea, sugar and various fruits. 

In addition to sweatshops and fair trade, students across the nation are active in the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke. The campaign was organized to expose Coca-Cola's gross human rights abuses at bottling plants in Columbia, Ray Rogers, director of CSKC, said. 

There are 150 campuses with groups associated with CSKC. So far, 33 universities and high schools have terminated their contracts with Coca-Cola. 

The AFL-CIO, the United Steelworkers and the International Labor Rights Fund filed lawsuits in 2001 and 2006 on behalf of SINALTRAINAL, the chief union representing Coke workers in Colombia; several of its members; and survivors of Isidro Gil and Adolfo de Jesus Munera, two of the union's murdered officers, the CSKC's Web site reported. 

Union leader Gil was murdered in broad daylight at the Coke plant in Carepa, Columbia.

The lawsuits charge that Coke "contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union leaders," the Web site said. 

There is an urgent need to hold Coke responsible for its actions in Columbia because of the sordid anti-union history in the country. In the past 20 years, more than 4,000 Columbian union members have been murdered, according to the United Students Against Sweatshops organizer training manual. 

The CSKC lists on its Web site eight Columbian union leaders who have been murdered since 1989. Dozens of other union workers have been intimidated, kidnapped or tortured by paramilitary forces. 

Coke is a multinational corporation that generated almost $5 billion in profit in 2005 and has a huge presence in educational institutions. 

Coke has a lucrative contract to sell its beverages on our campus. When our University administrators sign contracts with Barnes and Noble to run our bookstore, with Aramark to run our food service and with Coke to have the exclusive right to sell beverages here, students have no input. 

Universities exist to provide education, not to ensure corporate profits. By allowing Coke's presence on our campus, we are complicit in its business practices. The value of our degrees are affected by our University's reputation. All students, faculty and staff have a responsibility to make sure that University business conducted on our behalf reflects our ethical standards. 

Campuses cannot be allowed to become money pits for crooked corporations to loot. Our campus community must stand up and demand that the UH Coke contract be terminated. 

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