The goal of the national and international Coca-Cola campaign is to prevent poor working conditions from continuing in Columbia.

Many campaigns began in the fall of 2003, after representatives from Columbian unions went around the United States to spread the word about the practices in Coca-Cola factories.

According to statistics at [1] Killer Coke, seven union leaders in Coca-Cola’s bottling plants have been murdered since 1989, and hundreds of other workers have been kidnapped, tortured, and detained by paramilitaries. On April 20, 2004, the family of Efrain Guerrero’s brother-in-law was murdered when men with machine guns burst into their home at 7 a.m.

Over a year later, these campaigns haven’t stopped. Though Columbian practices have been the main focus, the [2] University of Iowa’s Students Against Sweatshops club listed the following charges against Coca-Cola just in the past year: “violence against bottling plant workers, profiting from child labor in El Salvador sugar plantations, and groundwater depletion and sale of contaminated beverages in India.�

The Columbian group involved in bringing this campaign to light is SINALTRAINAL, a union organization of workers in the Columbian food industry. Since 1982, they have been fighting for fair practices and defending the rights of workers with many multinational corporations who have plants in Columbia, including Nestle and Coca-Cola. They seek alternatives to the today’s practices and worker’s rights.

New York University heard these union worker loud and clear.

“Hearing it firsthand inspired a lot of us,� said Crystal Yakacki, a senior english and gender & sexuality double major involved in the student campaign at NYU. A group of seven students started the group to raise awareness and make changes.

At Macalester College, students heard Luis Cardona speak. Cardona is a former Coca-Cola worker who was kidnapped in 1996 as a right-wing paramilitary death camp attacked the Carepa plant. On that day, December 5th, Isidro Gil, secretary of SINALTRAINAL, was assassinated.

Maggie Gribben, a senior history major at Macalester and member of the Student Labor Action Committee (SLAC), asked herself what she could do once she heard Cardona speak. “I was moved,� she said. “I heard about the campaign before, but actually hearing him speak moved me.�

To begin, many collegiate campaigns distributed flyers heavily across their campuses, along with forming discussion groups, boycotts, and meetings.

Yakacki was inspired by students at NYU who had been involved in sweatshop issues before her. They saw “real tangible results coming from students.�

At NYU, Macalester, and the University of Iowa, students have moved from an educational campaign to meeting with the administration at their schools.

In Iowa, the Students Against Sweatshop (SAS) group is trying to get an ethical purchasing code passed. This code has already been passed at other schools, including the University of Michigan. The code would extend what SAS already stands for – working towards companies upholding basic human rights, and for every corporation at Iowa to abide by these standards.

SAS started with personal boycotts. Now they are looking to educate students and the administration about Coca-Cola in order to get support for the purchasing code. Members of SAS, including senior political science and history double major Alexis Bushnell, are meeting with the president of purchasing at Iowa and demanding that the ethical purchasing code be passed by immediately. The larger goal is for Iowa to not resign with Coke in 2008, when their contract is up.

At Macalester, the same goal is in place. [3] SLAC does not want the college to renew their exclusive contract with Coca-Cola, up in August of 2005, if the company does not agree to an independent investigation into the Columbian labor practices. The code Macalester is trying to place will go through their Social Responsibility Committee of the Board of Trustees, a group of students, faculty, and trustee members.

The campaign, Bushnell said, is giving Coke a run for their money. “With the activism that we’ve done against Coke and action to bring it to people’s awareness, it’s pressuring the administration and reaching the community.�

With Coca-Cola representatives going across the country to speak on behalf of the claims against their company, Bushnell can tell they’re getting somewhere.

Representatives spoke at Iowa in the past, but Bushnell claims they tried to put a spin on the situation that didn’t work for the students and administration. “It was hysterical,� she said. “I was almost shocked. They had no idea what they were talking about. It was cheesy and awful and they couldn’t back anything up, and that actually helped us.�

Yakacki said being at NYU, the largest private university in the country, gives them an advantage and allows them to make national and international news.

Bushnell said with Iowa having multimillion dollars worth of purchasing, the university has the power to do something.

Schools are not trying to make change in isolation from one another. Yakacki has been in contact with people in San Francisco about the campaign. In 2003, a hunger strike was “a moment of mass mobilization among all of the different campuses and there was action that took place all over, including New York, where all of the New York people joined up,� she said.

Many of the student campaign groups are run by consensus with no hierarchy, a testament to the need for fair trade practices abroad as they lead their own groups.

What these students want is to hold Coca-Cola responsible for their employees and the global world.

“Our long term goal isn’t to put companies like Coke out of commission,� Bushnell said. “We don’t want people to lose their jobs. We just want their standards of living to be higher. We want basic workers rights in these companies and for them to live up to this so the workers can survive.�

It’s using power as a symbolic gesture that Yacacki is looking for. “Personally, I choose not to drink Coca-Cola because it’s something I’m personally passionate about,� she said. “We’re not asking students to stop drinking Coca-Cola, but asking the university to use the power, the collective power that they have as an institution, to push towards social change.�