The Park Slope Food Coop’s 67% vote to join the international Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement is the result of years of thwarted efforts begun in 2009, and just now achieved on May 26. It took a top-notch organizing campaign comprised of younger tech-savvy and older seasoned Coop BDS campaigners both spurred into renewed action by the continuing genocide in Gaza in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.
This years-long effort and its successful result has made headlines in the New York Times (two long articles before and after the vote), the Post and Daily News, The Guardian, Jerusalem Times and other Israeli news sources. The boycott vote was discussed during a Brian Lehrer interview with Brad Lander and Dan Goldman, both Jews running for Congress in a Coop district, neither of whom belong to the 17,000 member Coop.
Why the mass interest in a vote at a food co-op? Why the accusations of anti-Semitism used in the Times and elsewhere to smear those of us who voted “yes”?
The PSFC is the oldest and largest member-owned and operated food co-op in the nation, founded in 1973. When I joined the co-op in 1978, Park Slope was a cheap place to live; its decaying brownstones could be bought and renovated, often by the new owners, and had plenty of room to rent the bottom or top floors. They were, also, large enough to house urban communes. I lived with my partner at the unfashionable, far south end of the Slope, in a loft large enough to house our living spaces and a 99-seat theater we built in order to do my plays, which were offered free to our neighborhood comprised of immigrants from Eastern Europe, the Irish from an earlier immigration wave, and the hippies and radicals who were colonizing decrepit Park Slope. Finley Schaef, the radical Methodist minister who had run the Greenwich Village Draft Counseling Center and a safe, but illegal, abortion referral service before Roe v. Wade from the basement of the West 4th Street. Methodist Church, had recently been exiled to Brooklyn. He built a vibrant peace and justice congregation in Brooklyn; he brought his congregants, most of whom also belonged to the Coop, to my radical plays. Coop membership came with a mandatory work slot of three hours every four weeks (with many more members, people now fill a “work slot” every 6 ½ weeks, but as a retired member, I no longer am required to work).
In those early days, the Coop was a bare space without shelving. Lines of paper boxes held potatoes, grains and other staples. There was a Hunt’s Point weekly vegetable run in the early morning (there still is). Cheese orders were written on scraps of paper and brought to the basement, where wheels of brie, cheddar, Havarti, cream cheese (i.e. basics) were cut or scooped by workers, Saran wrapped and brought upstairs; hopefully ready by the time you were ready to check out. The bagels were, from the start, the best I have ever tasted, and I remain a pumpernickel bagel addict. There was no meat or fish, no beer. There was no tofu, there were no cooling apparatus, but there was something called Proctose that came in a can, a dense brown paste of squashed vegetables and grains we used to fry or dice—I am amazed I ate it now, much less served it to guests. Over the years, I, like all other members, worked many shifts doing many different tasks: the Hunts Point 4 am vegetable run, stocking shelves, cutting cheese, cashiering, with my young child sitting on my lap. One lived in fear of missing a mandatory shift—two make-up work shifts are still required for one missed. Shifts always come at the least convenient time.
The Coop has participated in more than 20 boycotts since its founding, all voted on by a simple majority.
Over the years, the Coop, like its Park Slope neighborhood, gentrified. I moved to Clinton Hill in 1987 because the rents were far lower than in the Slope, but I remained a member of the Coop as it, too, evolved. There are rows of coolers, and freezers, now, plus plastic bins with nuts and grains; there are coffee and coffee grinders, a third of the Coop is fresh fruits and vegetables, many organic. There is fresh fish, and beef, and beer, these were each contentious additions, each voted on by members. There are household goods, natural hair dye, tooth pastes, lotions, shampoos and creams. There are still monthly general meetings, usually attended by a few. There is a Coop newspaper, The Line Waiters Gazette, to keep the rest of us up-to-date on Coop business, Coop feuds. It used to be printed on paper, and lines were often long, but is now on-line and with growing membership. Things move faster now. We can pay by credit card. Years ago, we bought an adjoining building—as Coop membership increased to 17,000, the Coop doubled, quadrupled in size. It has become a modern grocery store. Member owned, but supervised by a paid, professional and dedicated staff. The Coop retains its social justice mission and has participated in more than 20 boycotts since its founding, all voted on by a simple majority. We boycotted South African products during apartheid, Chilean products during the Pinochet dictatorship, California table grapes in support of the United Farm Workers campaign for fair pay and safer working conditions.
Through all the decades and all the changes, the Coop has remained the best place, perhaps, citywide, to buy fresh, healthy, organic food at affordable prices.
The Coop has gained a legendary status. Our Park Slope Food Coop is the oldest example of a thriving socialist-democratic, worker owned and run organization that just grows bigger and more desirable. Membership slots are in high demand. Just now, too, we have elected a new mayor in New York City, who ran as a democratic socialist and won, and who was overwhelmingly supported in Coop-centered Brooklyn. The Coop seems a harbinger of bigger changes about to come. Why, the City might be turning socialist—if fair wages, better health care, schools, housing and City-owned food stores are socialist.
Hence, a vote on BDS at the Park Slop Coop takes on special meaning, It is covered widely by the major New York press. And this vote is wildly distorted by that press as well, in order to maintain a status-quo in a city home to 1.4 million Jews, the largest population of Jews outside of Israel. “Anti-Semitic” is the designation used in the New York Times, and all the other news sources to describe the large majority of us who dared to vote “yes” for BDS. The sole exception was The Nation, which wrote, instead, about the intensive, smart, and dedicated organizing campaign, first begun in 2009, that finally led to Tuesday’s “yes” vote. We have been labelled as anti-Semites promoting violence against Jews this entire time. Though 10 progressive rabbis wrote a letter endorsing the BDS vote at the Coop, the New York Times has only quoted, at length, rabbis horrified by the thought. That the PSFC Members in Solidarity with Palestine organizing committee is comprised in large-part of Jewish Coop members, did nothing to halt the anti-Semite slur campaign, which accompanied every step of the long campaign that finally led to the vote. Accusations grew shriller, and more false, the closer the virtual vote by 7,000 Coop members came to finally being held. Never was the plight of Palestinians (who also belong to the Coop, though in far lower numbers than Jews) mentioned in the press. Virtually all major news coverage made it seem as though angry, vicious anti-Semites were hell-bent on tearing the Coop and Park Slope apart, and driving Jews into a new ghetto of commercial grocery stores. We in the BDS movement were said to be busy threatening Jews with violence so concerning that the Coop hired security guards to protect the membership from us. (Not true, as most of the insults were hurled at us by Zionist Jews, and virtually all the threats of violence came from those self-identified Zionists, too.)
Subsequent to the vote, we were denounced, on social media, accused of hypocrisy for using Israeli-invented technology to cast our votes. There has been no mention that the Zoom malfunctioned so that many of us (myself, included) could not actually submit our “yes”. Our monthly general meeting had to be held virtually, the press decried, due to threats of violence against Jews by pro-boycott Coop members. Not so. The meeting had to be held virtually because no space within Coop means was large enough to house the 7,000 Coop members who registered to vote. In the past, when auditoriums were secured, the anti-BDS forces within the Coop were the ones who threatened violence. No one would rent to the Coop. No large venue, not even Brooklyn Tech where Zionists disrupted the 2009 meeting on whether or not to hold a referendum on BDS, would let us return. Hence, a virtual meeting, with what proved to be flawed equipment, was held. At the meeting, the anti-BDS forces raised point after point of contention, until we were all exhausted. We voted to extend the meeting until 11 pm, but, then, suddenly a savvy pro-Palestine member invoked Roberts Rules of Order, correctly. We were able to end repeated discussion of whether or not to hold a referendum, and this allowed us, finally, for the first time, to hold an up or down boycott vote by all those who cared enough. We voted, if our Zooms worked, overwhelmingly “yes”. If every “yes” and “no” votes had been counted, the margin of victory would likely have been larger still.
The BDS movement calls for a boycott against products produced in Israel and the occupied territories (which are growing larger with each passing day as Israel’s military conquers Gaza, turns the citizens of Southern Lebanon into refugees, and while Israeli illegal settlers terrorize Palestinian communities in the West Bank).
Here’s the thing: If BDS can pass at what is now described as the “liberal”, “upper-class” Park Slope Food Coop—why there is absolutely no end to who might embrace BDS. And so terror strikes the New York Times. The antidote to terror is call us “anti-Semitic”.
This need to end settler-colonialism, this need for the creation of an egalitarian, democratic state, with the right of return for displaced Palestinians, is why Coop members, who fought so long, so doggedly, so smartly, to bring BDS to a vote, finally have done so. We are working for a sea change. Many of us are Jews. We are working to fulfill the promise that Jews made to ourselves: “never again” a holocaust, “never again” an ethnic cleansing, “never again” forced expulsion, “never again” hatred based on religion or dubious notions of “race”—and this prohibition against intimidation and annihilation must extend to everyone—Palestinians, too, of course.
As Jews who support the boycott, we believe “Never again” applies to everyone including Palestinians.
The accusation “anti-Semite” today is as defamatory and harmful as “Communist” was during the McCarthy era. It has cost many people their jobs and some their freedom. The accusation “anti-Semite” has been used to unseat college presidents, send Palestinians students to ICE detention prisons, cancel speaking engagements and art exhibits, seriously harm careers, defame our Muslim Mayor and his wife, an artist of Syrian heritage. “Anti-semite” is a weapon to silence dissent. The threat of “anti-Semitism” causes some to self-censor, others to risk livelihoods, reputation, even home and safety (Columbia University graduate, father, husband, Mahmoud Khalil, comes immediately to mind).
Therefore, if educated “elite,” “liberals” as Park Slope Coop members are now called by the New York Times, still the paper of record, after all, who like to eat good food and are willing to work cooperatively, if WE, the privileged, mainly white, people, the so-called essence of this City, can support a BDS vote, then, well, the times are changing. When we vote for BDS, it raises the specter that Israel may someday have to abide by international law—which also includes the right to return by Palestinians to lands seized from them. This vision strikes terror in the minds of Zionists, who now hold on to a majority Jewish-only democracy by increasing violence and fearmongering against the demonized “other”—which now includes a majority of members of the Park Slope Food Coop.
Karen Malpede is an American playwright and director whose work reflects an ongoing interest in social justice issues. She is a co-founder of the Theater Three Collaborative in New York City, and teaches theater and environmental justice at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is also the editor of the notable anthology, Women in Theater: Compassion and Hope (1984).