Killer Coke pressures U-Albany for Change.

University at Albany students are dropping their Coke habits in the fight for human rights.

Over the past few years numerous workers of the Coca-Cola bottling company in Columbia were kidnapped, tortured, and killed at the hands of anti-union paramilitary soldiers.

This is what the Killer Coke Campaign claims is happening. That is why students across the country, including the University at Albany, are rallying to ban Coke from their campuses. They are fighting to “stop the gruesome cycle of murders;” to force Coke to provide safe working conditions for their employees, according to Ray Rogers, the National and International Campaign Director.

In July 2001 the United Steelworkers Union of America and the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against Coca-Cola on behalf of the SINALTRAINAL, the National Union of Food Industry workers, to try and end their daily life-and-death struggles.

In response to this allegation Coke representatives have repeatedly stated their “company and bottling partners have been valuable members of the Columbian community for more than 70 years and they respect the rights of all employees, including those who choose third-party representation or Union membership.” They also claim that there is “not a single indication” that Coke has links to any armed groups.

However this lawsuit has not produce any results and the SINALTRAINAL have turned to Rogers for help. In April 2003 the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke officially began with a protest at Coca-Cola’s annual meeting in Houston, Texas, and “has had a strong vocal presence at every meeting since,” Rogers said.

According to the campaign’s website Coke is directly affiliated with the paramilitary security forces whom are kidnapping and torturing union leaders and organizers. Currently eight people are known to have been killed by these U.S. trained soldiers, including Isdro Segundo Gil, whose picture appears below.

To stop these unnecessary killings the Killer Coke Campaign has developed six key strategies: cut out key markets such as universities, mount a threat to Coke’s billion dollar image, target top executives to make changes, pressure Coke’s key financial allies to cut ties, work with major institutional investors to stop the money flow, and highlight Coke’s crimes and abuses worldwide.

So far at least 48 colleges and universities have removed Coke machines and banned the selling of Coke products at their campuses, and hundreds more have campaigns working to get Killer Coke off their own.

When Jackie Hayes, a graduate student in Latin American studies came to U-Albany in 2006 she began working with the Students for Workers Rights Group to get university officials to drop the present contract with Coke and adopt a non-exclusive contract with an alternative company.

Hayes and her team of 10 students have been organizing rallies and student protests over the last two years in hopes to raise awareness of Coke’s crimes amongst students. On April 3 they held a press conference/rally outside the campus center making their intentions to kick Coke off the campus clear to all those who attended. “Do we want to be associated with this company that has caused innocent bloodshed,” Hayes frequently asks students in her fight against Coke. According to Hayes about 80 percent of the students she has talked to believe her fight is one worth fighting and are happy to join in the boycott against Coke.

“I think it’s good that there are people out there working against Coke,” Sara Emmert, a sophomore at U-Albany said, when asked what she thought about the campaign. “But more people need to get involved because Coke is everywhere."


Besides holding rallies the group, along with the help of other student organizations, has conducted in-class demonstrations and drafted numerous petitions, the most powerful holding 1211 student signatures. These petitions, given to university officials, such as John Murphy, President of Univeristy Auxillary Services, were signed by random students at U-Albany who were told of Coke's crimes and then decided to take a second look at what they were drinking.

However, their are a handful of students who don't really care if it's Coke or Pepsi they drink. They don't think about politics when they are drinking their soda. Rochelle Raferrty is one of them. "I like Pepsi more than Coke, but I don't really believe all the things people say about people dieing over a drink." She feels if Coke is involved in these types of crimes then what is to say Pepsi or any other muti-national company isn't doing the same thing.

The most recent demonstration was held today with students making their own signs to protest what they find most offensive about the campaign. Hayes also hopes to deliver all the evidence of Coke’s abuses overseas to administrators, “preferably in a wheel barrel.”

Working from Roger’s key strategies, the students at U-Albany are hoping to put a dent into the already tarnished image Coke has spent billions of dollars to create. In June 2004 Fortune Magazine stated, “Coke’s decision not to investigate possible union-related murders at its bottlers in Columbia has become a public relations nightmare.” By making this lack of interest public knowledge student workers across the country are further damaging Coke’s dwindling image, making Coke a product to be avoided. When asked, for this article, if the Coca-Cola Company could explain why people were dieing in their bottling factories they had no comment and when pressured relinquished vauge remarks about how good their relationship with the Columbian workers was.

Along with crushing Coke’s image the Killer Coke Campaign is credited for the resignation of key Coke officials, including former Chair and CEO Douglas Draft, according to a 2004 article from the Washington Post.

They have also been working to get SunTrust, Coke’s key financial ally, to end their involvement with the company. To do this Rogers and his team have been organizing with other union and labor groups the boycott of SunTrust “until the rights and safety of workers is protected.”

Although all of the goals mentioned above have been key in the fight against Killer Coke the final two that Roger has mentioned are possibly the most vital to the campaign. The targeting of major institutional investors and the success in this field has shown the seriousness of the Killer Coke Campaign. Their biggest success according to Rogers is that they “kicked Coke out of the world’s second largest socially screened fund, the TIAA-CREF’s,” Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, College Retirement Equities Fund. This $9 billion Social Choice Account, which divested 1.25 million shares of Coca-Cola Company’s stock, has turned its back on Coke in response to the neglect of basic human rights in the Columbia bottling factories.

The power of the Killer Coke campaign to open peoples’ eyes to the crimes and abuses that the Coke Company virtually ignores everyday has been what makes this campaign so strong. However, this has only been possible through the hard work of student protestors and involved individuals who will not back down from the multi-billion dollar corporation. They feel it is peoples’ right worldwide to know that Coke’s workers are not being allowed to unionize, are forced to work in horrible working conditions that are extremely unsafe, are dying without the slightest acknowledgement from Coke. They also want to share with people the fact that Coke executives make millions of dollars each year with added bonuses while thousands of employees are laid off or paid well below what they should make. They are not making these things up or forcing people to stop drinking Coke they are simply making it the information available to all those who care.

With Coke dropping from campuses all across the country, the latest being New York University this spring, it is only a matter of time according to Rogers that U-Albany ends their contract with Coke. The current contract is exclusive to Coke products, meaning 95 percent of the campus’s beverages must be Coke products. However, this 10-year contract expired this year and university officials are working on negotiating a new one. John Murphy, the man in charge of contracting vendors, hopes to have negotiations done by May 2.

Although Coke’s time at U-Albany may soon be up the fight against Killer Coke is still waging throughout the country. Roger’s states they will not be done fighting until the time “when people see Coca-Cola beverages and ads, and think of crimes and other misconduct so unthinkable that all of Coke’s products become undrinkable.”

Link to more pictures of protests for Kill Coke: http://www.killercoke.org/protestcolom.htm