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May 2, 2006
Coke boycott update!
You guys, i totally made it all the way throught Lent without ingesting any soda pop, except for a root beer float Ryland made to celebrate good Friday.
I found out something pretty funny: soda pop is actually pretty gross. It's just, like, sugar and fizzy water. I tried having one post-lent to see if i still wanted it. It was difficult to drink the whole thing. ridiculous. I even tried going back to my old love the SLURPEE. couldn't finish it. too sickly sweet. I am officially an adult! It feels good. Now i drink juice, or water, or tea.
Well this revelation was fortunately timed! The Nation just featured an incredible scary cover article on "The Case Against Coke", exhaustively researched and well-argued.
In the past two years the Coke campaign has grown into the largest anticorporate movement since the campaign against Nike for sweatshop abuses. Around the world, dozens of unions and more than twenty universities have banned Coke from their facilities, while activists have dogged the company from World Cup events in London to the Winter Olympics in Torino...Coke has fought back with ads on TV and in student newspapers, part of a mammoth advertising budget that has increased 30 percent in the past two years, to a staggering $2.4 billion [much of it going to Portland's favorite ethically-challenged ad agency Wieden + Kennedy .]"When people think of Coca-Cola, they should think about great hardship and despair for people and communities around the world."The article details what's going on in India, Colombia, Indonesia, and here in the U.S. Read it.
So yeah, I'm personally giving up all Coke products indefinitely. If someone with a legendary sweet tooth like me can do it, you can too. It also means giving up Dasani, Odwalla, Minute Maid, Nestea, Fanta, Sprite, Powerade and others. But it's worth it for a slightly cleaner conscience, right? If you're in college, you can join the list of more than 130 campuses with anti-Coke campaign chapters. It's not going to save the world, but it's one concrete thing you can do.
Posted by Kevin at May 2, 2006 11:39 PM
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Comments
Yeah, www.kboo.fm, Portland's local radical radio station, has aired some pretty chilling reports about coke, too. And there was that one ad man whose story boards coke stole, and he tried to sue them (coke, not the storyboards), and everyone was like, "nobody sues coke! They're in with the CIA!" But he tried anyway. (If I'm just repeating stuff that's in the article, sorry; I'll read it as soon as it loads.)
Anyway, "amen!" to doing one concrete thing.
Posted by: david at May 3, 2006 11:07 AM
good job, Korvin. That is truly a triumph and I am proud of you. I am blessed by a natural aversion to all sugar drinks, so avoiding Coke is not a problem. I am impressed with the global movement and appalled by the idea of spending 2.4 billion dollars on advertising. What the fuck is wrong with the world? People are DYING. I'm also intrigued (probably the wrong word) by the Coke plants that are buying up all the useable drinking water in impoverished parts of India, then repackaging it as Coke and making people buy it. In a country where no one can get fresh water!!!!
Posted by: ritchey at May 3, 2006 11:49 AM
Hey Kevin,
I was telling a friend about Odwalla having been bought by Coke. This friend didn't believe me at first, and I had only heard that from you, so I looked into it for real.
In my googling I found this list of Coke brands which you may find interesing, weird, and/or useful in your boycott.
http://www2.coca-cola.com/brands/brandlist.html
Posted by: Azure at May 10, 2006 7:07 PM