Guest columnist Jeff Napolitano: Genocide, apartheid on the ballot at co-op

Tables with arts and crafts activities and information about the deshelving campaign at The Campaign for an Apartheid-Free River Valley Co-op’s teach-in held Aug. 25 at the Easthampton River Valley Co-op.

Tables with arts and crafts activities and information about the deshelving campaign at The Campaign for an Apartheid-Free River Valley Co-op’s teach-in held Aug. 25 at the Easthampton River Valley Co-op. STAFF FILE PHOTO/ALEXA LEWIS

By JEFF NAPOLITANO

Published: 10-29-2024 8:00 PM

 

This Wednesday, our local co-op grocery store will have a membership meeting to discuss a petition and poll asking the store to boycott products from Israel. The petition was brought by members of the co-op as part of a worldwide effort to economically and culturally pressure Israel to end its system of legalized apartheid and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that it is currently escalating in Gaza and the West Bank.

The co-op has sent out an unsigned message with a link to the poll that attempts to dissuade its membership from voting yes. This rationale is summed up as “the option to purchase products from Israel is important to many in our community. This is a highly divisive proposal that has brought conflict into our co-op stores that is harmful to people and our shared cooperative business.”

This message begs several questions, with disturbing implications. Why is it “divisive” to suggest abstaining from purchasing products from a country with a brutal form of apartheid and in the middle of conducting a genocide, unless some members actually support that apartheid and genocide?

Something that is “divisive” does not make that thing invalid or not worth addressing. In this case, it means that there’s a belief that a significant number of members don’t believe that genocide and apartheid merit a change to business as usual.

In a fashion that is concomitant with much U.S. media, the message from the co-op didn’t contain the word “Palestine” or “Palestinian.” Once again, those who are suffering have been erased from the conversation. The point of the petition is to contribute to a worldwide movement to elevate the suffering of an entire people, but despite the language of the petition, the co-op’s message literally excluded them from the conversation. That exclusion tells us much about the abrasive response to this member initiative.

The co-op message, after insisting that members should not be allowed to determine what’s sold in the store they ostensibly own, lists a number of factors in the decision to carry a product in the “limited shelf space” of the store. What is not listed as a factor is any consideration of the conditions under which a product is created. Does this mean, for instance, that products created through compulsory prison labor are welcome in the store?

This lack of screening implies that if River Valley Co-op were in existence in the 1980s, its leadership would have eschewed any attempt to place limitations on South African goods created under apartheid. We are in a comparable, if not more urgent historical moment now, and the shame of not acting upon basic human rights and international law will haunt our community.

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If a member-owned community co-op does not have the ability to examine the morality of its choices, then this experiment has failed. Like many others, I did not join the co-op to be a shareholder in a commercial enterprise that blindly pursues financial gains; I joined the co-op because I wanted my values to be reflected in the local economy. Surely some ethical standard should be considered and applied to what fills the shelves in the stores that we collectively own.

Jeff Napolitano is a member-owner and former board director of River Valley Co-op.