Posted on 11/03/2011 5:44:45 AM PDT by SJackson
Olympia Food Co-op files motion to strike lawsuit brought against them by members who objected to decision to initiate boycott of Israeli goods.
NEW YORK – A food co-op board of directors Tuesday filed a motion in Washington state to strike a lawsuit brought against them by five members who objected to the co-op’s decision to initiate a boycott of Israeli goods.
In 2010, the Olympia Food Co-op board passed a resolution to boycott Israeli goods, and then became the first grocery store in the United States to officially boycott them. The co-op is a member-based, not-for-profit, natural food grocery store with two locations in Olympia, Washington.
Olympia is the hometown of Rachel Corrie, a pro-Palestinian activist killed by an IDF bulldozer in the Gaza Strip in 2003 when she was in front of a home about to be demolished.
Five candidates endorsed by Olympia Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions were elected to the co-op’s board, which voted to boycott Israeli products as a way to “compel Israel to follow international law and respect Palestinian human rights,” according to a statement the board released.
Lawyers for the Olympia Food Coop Board of Directors filed a motion to strike the lawsuit, saying the suit was an attempt to curtail the directors’ public statements on an issue of public policy.
“We hope the court will strike down this effort to silence the co-op’s principled stand on Israel’s human rights violations,” said Maria LaHood, senior staff lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Allegations that the co-op board acted beyond its power are a thinly veiled attempt to stop concerned citizens from using a nonviolent and historical tool for social change.”
“This lawsuit, which seeks to penalize local citizens for exercising their rights as board members to express views on Israel and the problems in the Middle East, presents a fundamental First Amendment issue,” said Bruce Johnson of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, who drafted Washington’s anti- SLAPP. “Our nation was born in the middle of a boycott of British goods, and boycotts have played an important role over the centuries in our system of freedom of expression, whether the subject is segregation on the Montgomery municipal bus system, lettuce picked by non-union labor, or apartheid in South Africa.”
The lawsuit seeks to prevent enforcement of the boycott policy and to collect monetary damages against the 16 past and current board members. The suit claims the board members acted beyond the scope of their authority and breached their fiduciary duties.
The special motion to strike requires parties who bring a lawsuit to demonstrate that it is not a strategic litigation against public participation — SLAPP — suit targeting constitutionally- protected free speech.
If the motion to strike is successful, Washington’s anti-SLAPP statute, enacted in 2010 to deter such lawsuits, requires plaintiffs to pay lawyers’ fees, costs, and a $10,000 penalty for each defendant.
Boycott goods from the only real government in a region full of potentates and dictators, real smart.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Not a First Amendment issue, the question is whether by refusing to carry Israeli goods, for which presumabaly there was demand or they wouldn't have been there in the first place, the directors are fulfilling their fiduciary duty, which likely doesn't include actions to “compel Israel to follow international law and respect Palestinian human rights. In any case, best luck to the board.
Sounds like they are bent on giving Israel the South Africa treatment for ills imaginary or otherwise (mostly the former).
The amount of vitriol about Jews in the world amazes me as grotesquely out of proportion to any harm they could possibly have done to anyone. Just the other day a guy who ought to know better is telling me some TV preacher let him know that Jews were both lazy bums and overly sharp businessmen, leeching off of other people, and it took all the restraint I had not to slap him upside the mouth. This is not something you can get from a generic New Testament gospel, which complains about a particular set of Jewish religious leaders at a particular time, and which concludes by saying God is willing to forgive them for even the worst of it. Could he be thinking of somebody like Soros, who is a questionable representative of Jews because he repudiated his faith? Do all or even most well placed Jews end up carrying on like filthy rats? It’s news to me if they do. I do know Jews are culturally bent on education, so tend to be more scholarly and less grunt worker than the average person... as if that’s a bad thing? Someone has to be the doctors.
Excuse my rant... I have Jewish blood in my family, but the Orthodox would peg me as clearly gentile, and by faith I am Christian. But where all this vitriol comes from, and why people even want to turn it on people who technically aren’t Jews at all, is a vexing puzzle to me.
Do not be vexed. Jews are ever scapegoats for all the ills sickies will not face in their own person. The Board in question is membered by bigots who love the smell of Auschwitz in the morning. They and their ilk are cancers on the body politic.
Olympia: the hometown of Rachel Corrie.
So true... it is a common Jewish aspiration to be a good person, a quest at which no human has completely succeeded. But like Christians, whose goal is to trust and obey the divine Jesus Christ and be filled up with his spirit, the very endeavor of godliness opens them up to accusations by the immoral of pretending to be “holier than thou” whether or not that’s actually the case. Like you said, scapegoating.
Yes, I know the theological explanation, which is that the devil hates everyone who even tries to be godly, because that’s publicity for his sworn enemy, God. And many students of the bible conclude that there is a role for Jewish prominence in God’s administration of the world in the future, and the devil is not going to wish them well on the way.
Still to watch it play out... I guess this vitriol has to be from the devil. No man could come up with a good reason for it.
Why is it so vexing?
There are only two sides in the cosmic battle.
God & Christ and His people vs Satan and his people.
Lawyers for the Olympia Food Coop Board of Directors filed a motion to strike the lawsuit, saying the suit was an attempt to curtail the directors' public statements on an issue of public policy.Y'know, because the last thing a co-op needs is democracy.
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