ON THE LINE
ON THE LINE Trouble Brewing at Starbucks Coffee Chicago The fastest growing retailer of gourmet coffee in the United States is the target of a new campaign to win a living wage for Guatemalan...
...that lax quality-control resulted in the sale of some contaminated products...
...The article, by Emmy-award-winning journalist Jon Entine, alleged that some of the Body Shop's "natural" products contained cheap, petrochemical-laden ingredients...
...Just before Christmas, Greenpeace dispatched its ship, The Rainbow Warrior, from Seville, Spain, to Port of Spain, Trinidad, for the start of a series of protest rallies on Caribbean islands and along Central America's Caribbean coast...
...Kelly stands by the story she published: "For all its bluster, the Body Shop has failed to document a single error of fact in our article," she says...
...But coffee workers need a fair wage more than corporate handouts, say activists...
...Four-hundred stores currently serve up Starbucks Guatemalan coffee...
...In December, activists took their case to Starbucks' customers, leafleting at more than twenty coffee shops in thirteen cities...
...Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur, Caricom's chairman, wants the whole region declared a nuclear-free zone...
...The law is unjust and immoral," says Miley, referring to state statutes prohibiting the distribution of hypodermic needles without a prescription...
...Merrill Lynch was the winner in January, for its role as financial adviser in the Orange County, California, bankruptcy...
...They feel drug addicts need to be punished, that they are worthless," says AIDS activist Barbara Garcia...
...Workers earn two cents a pound for picking berries," says Eric Hahn of the Chicago-based U.S./Guatemala Labor Education Project...
...In a conciliatory forum hosted in the January/February issue of the Utne Reader, Eric Utne praised Roddick for "setting the standard for other businesses to follow...
...coffee consumers...
...Japan, using U.S.-furnished technology, contracted years ago with government-owned companies in France and Britain to reprocess spent plutonium fuel...
...Photographers and camera operators outnumbered needle-exchange clients, but Oakland city council member Nate Miley and four of his colleagues were making a point...
...If you look at measures like capital-gains tax cuts and inflated write-offs for equipment and major purchases for business, basically it's corporate America that wins and working people will have to suffer...
...I am African-American...
...Within a week, the publicity-conscious company agreed to a meeting...
...Instead of making single mothers' work more difficult by heaping them with stigma and blame, Duncan believes we should honor them...
...The Clinton Administration has been sitting on a Centers for Disease Control review of the most comprehensive study of needle-exchange programs done to date by researchers at the University of California medical school in San Francisco...
...Signed by chairman Gordon Roddick, the letter stated that Entine's article was "filled with lies, distortions, and gross inaccuracies," with "almost no attempt to observe the normal standards of journalism...
...If convicted, they face six months in jail and a $1,000 fine...
...Some members of the progressive business community have been reluctant, however, to see one of their leaders criticized...
...Peace and justice organizations, religious groups, and Guatemala solidarity committees are participating in the campaign...
...If this is any indication of the way they do business, of their regard for honesty and integrity, I give them a failing mark on all counts...
...The Business Ethics list manager, Stevens-Knox and Associates, learned of the mailing through employees whose names were planted on the list as decoys—a customary practice to guard against misuse of subscriber addresses...
...The Labor Education Project is asking Starbucks to adopt a labor code that would raise wages, provide sanitary housing for workers, ensure minimal health and safety standards, bar child labor, end discrimination against women, and allow workers to unionize...
...continues to prosecute needle-exchange activists...
...Franklin Research and Development, a Boston-based ethical investment firm, awarded the Body Shop its highest social ratings in 1991...
...Even if I was 100 percent correct, however, I could be put out of business...
...Politicians could not afford to oppose a program designed to stop the spread of AIDS among addicts...
...But California Governor Pete Wilson has vetoed needle-exchange bills three years in a row...
...For more information, contact Greenpeace, 1436 U Street NW, Washington, DC 20009...
...While companies such as Reebok and Levi's have accepted codes of conduct for their foreign operations, no U.S...
...But in 1994, Franklin's newsletter supported many of Entine's charges against the company and rebuked the Body Shop for its combative stance toward critics: "The Body Shop's bombastic tactics have set back any legitimate attempts by the company to change...
...Meanwhile, Miley and other members of the city council will continue to volunteer occasionally with needle exchange in the hope that by breaking the law they can help change it...
...An eight-point plan proposed by the Campaign as an alternative to the Republicans' Contract with America promotes such ideas as employment security, tax fairness, family policy, reduction in military spending, and cuts in subsidies and tax breaks for corporations...
...Starbucks downplays its influence over Guatemala's privately owned plantations...
...The Japanese embassy in Jamaica has said that the shipment would leave in February and would take about six weeks to reach its destination, "but we have no idea of the route...
...Body Shop founder Anita Roddick took the cosmetics industry by storm and forged a popular icon of socially respon ¦ sible business...
...But that route would not be feasible this time, because the government of the Philippines has just warned that it would bar any ship carrying radioactive waste from its waters...
...Box 14447, St...
...Growers, however, are susceptible to pressure from U.S...
...William Steif HURRAY FOR SINGLE MOTHERS The first annual Single Mothers Appreciation Day was February 4, 1995...
...Everybody ought to be alerted to the danger—I think it's outrageous," says Edith Bornn, an attorney in St...
...The ad features snorting and squealing in the background by a group of hogs...
...The twelve-nation English-speaking group known as Cari-com opposes the shipment...
...As if to demonstrate this last point, Body Shop lawyers sent Kelly two letters containing "strongly worded legal threats" before she went to press with "Shattered Image," she says...
...312)262-6502...
...The real crime, according to needle-exchange advocates, is that activists continue to be arrested for trying to stem the spread of AIDS in a city with one of the highest intravenous-drug-related HIV rates in the country...
...The small-island governments of the Caribbean have offered warm welcomes to the Greenpeace ship, which has been traveling from Trinidad toward Barbados, Martinique, Dominica, St...
...The St...
...Customer Relations: (800)447-1575...
...Croix, U.S...
...The Body Shop is doing things that need to be corrected...
...We're trying to get people to think about who wins and who loses under the Contract with America," says Cynthia Kain of the Campaign...
...For a campaign organizers kit, contact US/GLEP, 333 South Ashland Avenue, Chicago, IL 60607...
...Lawyers for the five Oakland activists plan to subpoena the CDC review as evidence that needle exchange does not promote drug use and stops the spread of AIDS...
...We just want the law to be changed to make it legal...
...There is plenty of reason to be concerned about safety, according to Princeton University physicist Edwin Lyman, who recently released a study raising doubts about international standards governing sea transport of nuclear waste...
...For more information about Project Freedom or its new publication, Freethinker Forum, write P.O...
...Their contributions to society as well as their extra sacrifices should be recognized and appreciated, their special bond with their children celebrated...
...Sponsored by the Campaign for an America That Works, the thirty-second radio spot, called "Hogs at the Trough," opposes corporate giveaways, tax-breaks, and subsidies by the new Republican-controlled Congress...
...Thomas branch of the League of Women Voters is organizing a "flotilla" to greet The Rainbow Warrior...
...In fact, Alameda County currently leads the nation in the number of pending needle-exchange prosecutions...
...African-Americans are disproportionately affected...
...Starbucks has fueled the explosive growth of coffee bars across the country...
...The Body Shop's litigiousness helped persuade Vanity Fair to nix a version of Entine's investigation...
...Other organizations have since published independent research that corroborates many of Entine's conclusions...
...202)624-6911...
...ACE currently operates weekly exchanges at three sites that are constantly moving to avoid police...
...The Alameda County District Attorney's active prosecution of needle-exchange has put him at odds not only with ACE but with the Oakland City Council, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors, and the mayor, who all endorse needle exchange...
...For more information, contact the Campaign through the Teamsters Union, 25 Louisiana Avenue, Washington, DC 20001...
...Working people can't have the same kinds of influences a Merrill Lynch can have...
...The Teamsters Union, a sponsor of the Campaign for an America That Works, represents bus drivers in Orange County who took a particular hit when the transit system went belly-up...
...Marjorie Kelly, editor and publisher of Business Ethics—a...
...and that journalists who had tried to challenge the company's marketing hype had been silenced with libel threats...
...Mike Zielinski The Real Special Interests A new ad campaign against the corporate-backed Contract with America is hitting radio stations in eighty cities nationwide...
...Former secretary-general of the British Commonwealth Sir Shirdath (Sonny) Ramphal is also supporting the drive against the freighter...
...618)637-2202...
...Virtual slave conditions prevail on the majority of Guatemala's coffee plantations...
...People put at risk in the Caribbean and Latin America deserve to know about these clandestine transports," says Greenpeace's Tom Clements...
...Ralph Stevens, president of Stevens-Knox, is incensed that his services were used against his client...
...Needle Exchange On Trial A tall, soft-spoken local official stood on the street, handing out syringes, alcohol wipes, and condoms to intravenous drug users in economically devastated West Oakland on a recent Saturday morning...
...The Body Shop duped a prominent and legitimate list-brokerage company, a respected magazine, and they duped us," he says...
...She checked and rechecked Entine's sources and scheduled the piece for her September/October 1994 issue...
...That's the bottom line," says Sergeant Ron Jones, speaking on behalf of Police Chief Joseph Samuels...
...In late September, Kelly discovered to her amazement that the Body Shop had acquired her subscriber list without her authorization...
...Needle exchange won early support in San Francisco because of organized AIDS activism in the city's gay community...
...After the program, Mankiewicz helped persuade NPR to run a follow-up story that included comment from Body Shop supporters...
...Organizers highlight the hypocrisy of take-out cups bearing the slogan caring for those who grow our coffee...
...The Labor Education Project is asking coffee drinkers everywhere to pressure Starbucks to implement a code of conduct for the Guatemalan plantations that supply them...
...The coffee giant prides itself on practicing progressive capitalism, touting its employee-stock-ownership plan and health benefits for part-time workers in the United States, as well as good works for the Third World...
...ON THE LINE Trouble Brewing at Starbucks Coffee Chicago The fastest growing retailer of gourmet coffee in the United States is the target of a new campaign to win a living wage for Guatemalan coffee pickers...
...Maureen Clark Islands Shun Radioactive Hot Potato St...
...This article was such a bombshell because it doesn't fit the model in our heads—that socially responsible businesses are the good guys...
...Maximum allowable storage and transport temperatures are too high . . . and appear to compromise safety," Lyman's study says...
...Under Japan's contract with the French reprocessing firm COGEMA, the waste is to be shipped to northern Japan...
...It is still under study," says embassy spokesman Hiroshi Funuakoshi...
...Sources close to the study say the CDC endorses needle exchange and would bolster efforts to lift the ban on federal funding for such programs...
...Guatemala realized close to 40 percent of its foreign-exchange income from coffee sales and more than half of the beans are exported to the United States...
...Its emerging coffee empire stretches from Boston to Seattle, with steady expansion through college campuses and the bookstore chain Barnes and Noble...
...We have to throw out the good guy/bad guy paradigm...
...In 1992, protests by Caricom helped divert a plutonium-laden Japanese freighter away from the Caribbean, along a South Atlantic route back to Japan...
...Yet when the press reported flaws in the Body Shop's progressive image, the company took on its critics as only a $700 million corporation can...
...Labor Education Project organizers see the Starbucks campaign as a first step in holding international firms accountable for exploitative labor conditions abroad...
...A few miles away, drug users in the East Bay have no organized community to advocate for them, beyond the handful of activists willing to risk arrest each week...
...Julie Light Socially Responsible Business Brawl Minneapolis Peddling politics as much as beauty...
...Shortly after publication, National Public Radio interviewed Entine on the air...
...But Kelly refused to back down...
...We believe that speaking out on issues you support—or are against—is a civic responsibility," says a spring 1994 Body Shop catalog insert...
...Eustatius, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, and Curacao...
...Council member Nate Miley says that the outcome of the ACE activists' trial will likely affect how tenaciously the D.A...
...Last year the company donated $100,000 to CARE for projects benefiting coffee-growing communities...
...Like any other company, we should go to any length to protect ourselves when we feel like we're being dealt with unjustly," says Body Shop spokesman Bryan Weaver...
...Parties, presents, flowers, and cards are suggested...
...For more than four months, Starbucks refused to meet with campaign organizers...
...The federal government knows that needle exchange is of critical importance, and for political reasons is hiding it," says Bill Simpich, one of the attorneys representing the five ACE activists...
...Since ACE was founded two years ago, the organization has handed out some 270,000 syringes and about 150,000 condoms...
...Since almost one-third of American households and nearly two-thirds of African-American households are headed by a single parent, 80 percent being women, we feel it is time for society to support their efforts," Project Freedom announced...
...To help publicize the issue, the Campaign is giving out monthly awards to companies that benefit from corporate welfare...
...Virgin Islands A British vessel carrying the first sea shipment of French-processed radioactive waste from j. jAl Cherbourg to Japan .WJ/ * is scheduled to pass C \mZ/ through the CarD ITiK ibbean and the IWARRIDRSI Panama Canal sometime in February, and the people who live along its path are scared...
...Louis, MO 63178...
...In West Oakland, 20 percent of the injection drug users are HIV positive...
...I went to press in the face of threats from an enormous company because I knew that what we printed was true," she says...
...The Body Shop used the list to send out a ten-page refutation to the magazine's readers...
...The idea of celebrating single mothers occurred to Susan Duncan, who recently founded the grass-roots organization Project Freedom, to preserve and promote traditional liberal philosophy in the current conservative national climate...
...With help from public-relations giant Hill and Knowl-ton—particularly from vice-chairman Frank Mankiewicz, a former president of National Public Radio—the Body Shop launched a full-scale counterattack on Entine's credibility...
...202)462-1177...
...For their part, Oakland police say they are reluctant enforcers of the law...
...bimonthly magazine with a circulation of 14,000—incurred the Body Shop's wrath last fall when she published an article entitled, "Shattered Image: Is the Body Shop Too Good to Be True...
...I feel morally compelled to do needle exchange," says defendant Ricky Bluthenthal, a UCSF researcher who spends his work week interviewing IV drug users...
...Starbucks turns around and sells a pound of Guatemalan coffee beans for $9...
...Five activists with a group called the Alameda County Exchange (ACE) go to trial on February 27...
...The cost of getting to the summary-judgment phase— where the judge says there is no basis for this charge—would run $100,000," an amount that would take the business right out of Business Ethics...
...Thomas and a former president of the League of Women Voters...
...The Body Shop denied the charges, dismissed the credibility of Entine's sources, and characterized Kelly's decision to publish the piece as an irresponsible attempt to garner attention for her small magazine...
...Socially responsible business has not wanted to take the Body Shop on," says Kelly...
...The Body Shop story had to be told, chiefly for the lessons it provided those who seek to promote ethical business practices," Kelly says...
...Contact: Howard Schultz, Chief Executive Officer, Starbucks Coffee Company, P.O...
...retailer in coffee requires a code for its suppliers...
...I live in Oakland...
...Yet the people who send their kids to school in Orange County and depend on public services are suffering," says Kain...
...The laws predate the HIV epidemic...
...that charitable giving fell short of even the national corporate average...
...Box 34110, Seattle, WA 98124...
...Other members of the Campaign include Citizen Action, ACORN, Clean Water Action, Friends of the Earth, Jobs with Justice, and the National Family Farm Coalition...
Vol. 59 • March 1995 • No. 3
