To Vote or Not to Vote: Park Slope Food Coop Votes ‘No’ on BDS Referendum

Last night, over 2,000 members of the Park Slope Food Coop gathered at Brooklyn Tech High School in Fort Greene to vote on whether or not the Coop should have a referendum on whether the coop should join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement and boycott Israeli products. 

The final vote, which was submitted through a paper ballot and counted behind yellow caution tape, according to Brooklyn-based writer and avid tweeter who was at the meeting, Chadwick Matlin, was overwhelmingly against the referendum: 1,005 voted to not vote on a referendum to join the BDS movement and ban the half a dozen products made in Israel and 653 voted “yes.” 

Jeff Prant, a co-op member, told The New York Times after the vote:

“A boycott should be by consensus, and there is obviously not that,” Prant told The Times. He said that the boycott may have had good arguments, but the issue was, “outweighed by the divisiveness." 

The vote has brought an end to weeks, maybe even years of debate, which had turned the outside of the Coop on Union Street into a sight of protest, both pro-referendum and anti-referendum protesters passed out fliers and debated whether or not a referendum should be held.

A coop member, Irina Ivanova, told Patch on Tuesday that the debate got so heated that on Saturday there was a fistfight between protesters—ending with the NYPD coming to take the report. 

The BDS group at the Park Slope Food Coop, which has no official connection to the coop itself, says they want to ban Israeli products at the coop, like the Sodastream seltzer maker and replacement cartridges, organic paprika, Israeli couscous, olive pesto, vegan marshmallows and organic yellow peppers, because of “Israel’s violation of international law and human rights,” the group's website says. They want Israel to withdraw the West Bank.

But considering the cooperative only carries seven Israeli-made products, the ban would be mostly symbolic.

Although the meeting’s leaders asked the attendees not to tweet, Twitter was overrun with messages from members typing on their Smartphones to let nonmembers, and the rest of the world eagerly waiting the outcome, know what was actually going on behind closed doors.

Chadwick Matlin, who is a senior editor for Reuters Opinion and wrote a piece for New York Magazine about the vote, tweeted away (see full tweets here), recording what the 46 speakers said to the room filled to capacity:

"This doesn't feel good right now. But neither does an enema."

"When I belong to the coop I belong to justice"

Scene unfolding that is honestly beyond my description skills.

"Revolution is not a dinner party and neither is this"

"For folks who are saying this debate is bringing negativity into the coop. Negativity is already there. It's there in every olive..."

Do you think the referendum is worth the 10k it will cost?" woman asks. Yes if coop wants, friend says. "I didn't ask you what coop wants!"

And even Rabbi Andy Bachman’s speech, which can be found , made it into Matlin’s tweets: 

Rabbi: "bds means one state that will be the end of the state of Israel" man in audience has hands raised as if at revival. 

So, there it is, there will be no vote on whether or not the Park Slope Food Coop should have a referendum on whether the coop should join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction movement and boycott Israeli products. 

But the coop’s BDS group is not defeated. In an E-mail sent on Wednesday from Irina Ivanova and Naomi Brussel, who are members of the BDS group, said that their work is not done: 

“Although we finished with a very significant level of support, almost 40 percent, the results of the vote show that there remains much work to do in our efforts to educate co-op members on the importance of BDS,” the group’s E-mail read. “Despite our loss tonight, we have succeeded in one of our goals: BDS has entered the consciousness of thousands of co-op members and others who had never heard the term before.”

Joe Holtz, a general manager of the coop and one of its founders who is against the referendum, told Patch that he hopes that last night’s vote was the end of the divisive debate.

“I don’t know if it’s the end, it’s not up to me,” Holtz said on Wednesday. “Members can use the democratic system of the coop but I hope it’s the end of this issue, but I don’t know that.”

What do you think? Is the debate about whether the Park Slope Food Coop should join the BDS movement and ban all Israeli products really over? Let us know what you think in the comments and vote in the poll.