YES ON O! Ethical coffee initiative: Protests at Starbuck's and Peet's in Berkeley Monday

Why do you have to make a law to ban this unwanted coffee. Why don't you unite people and just boycott the coffee you don't like. You shouldn't make a law banning everything you don't like. People can make up their own mind's without the help of government.

And as is traditional with Berkeley, dissenters are made fun of. As was the man who didn't agree with the initiative.

it's also just in how you look at things. Really, the selection of things you see at a restaurant and a store are highly regulated or affected by legal requirements. Health inspectors can go to a restaurant and measure the temperature of the dishwash water and the griddle and the center of a hamburger, and the way things are stored, and how old everything is.
You could say that restaurant patrons should just vote with their dollars and feet, and go to restaurant that volunteer to kill the e. coli in the meat i.e. the libertarian philosophy, but instead it is subject to regulation.
Stores can't sell produce laden with certain pesticides, and they can't sell cans of spaghetti sauce done with faulty canning method that would allow salmonella to grow etc. There are all sorts of rules about what can be sold.

Read the measure as it was written and you will find the penalties proposed. Fine/jail for this sort of thing smacks of totalitarianism!!

adolph,

you wrote, "Read the measure as it was written and you will find the penalties proposed. Fine/jail for this sort of thing smacks of totalitarianism!!"

I guess that gets your rocks off, since you love totalitarianism.

The text of the law, posted at this site:

http://www.geocities.com/coffeelawinfo/coffeelawtext.html

includes the following language about the penalty:

Section 4. VIOLATIONS.

Any business vendor found in violation of any
provision of this ordinance shall be guilty of a
misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine not
exceeding One Hundred Dollars ($100) or imprisonment
not exceeding six (6) months, or both such fine and
imprisonment.


Okay, so maybe it would have been less subject to attack from the big businesses (upon the weak-minded public) if the violation had been, say, $1,000 but just an infraction (no possibility of jail time).

The reality is that at most we might see someone get community service for this. No judge in Berkeley is going to give jail time for a cup of coffee. And these corrupt businesses will most likely comply whether or not the violation is an infraction or misdemeanor.

You want totalitarianism? You don't seem too excited about the fact that riding a bicycle on the sidewalk in Berkeley is a MORE SERIOUS CRIME -- $211 fine and up to 1 year in jail.

You ignore the fact that there are already all kinds of penalties associated with the enormous gamut of health regulations imposed upon food industry businesses.

And most importantly, you evidently failed to notice that the real totalitarianism is the economic enslavement of poor farmers and the poisoning of their environment, their drinking water, their air, their land, by corporate strip-farming which caused the price to crash and sent them into desparation.

Now assuming you're not really a neonazi and you actually don't like totalitarianism and human rights violations, tell me, what's worse:

a) Stealing a person's livelihood and their habitat, their traditions, their right to health, and tearing down rain forest in the process; or

b) Threatening a Starbucks' owner with a $100 fine?

Get real!

yo, i think the anarchist community should totally support sending starbucks owner to jail. jail time for big business is a tactic, just like smashing the plate glass and tearing the place down. use thye system on its sorry self until it implodes

wake up and smell the coffee adolph, the drug war has been putting people away for years for drugs as potent as coffee. and you want to protect starbucks owner?

the fact that this initiative is losing right now makes me think either people in berkeley are dumbass tools or else they're paying off the company that invented the new computer voting to fix the election.

yeah that must be it -- 71% of Berkeley voters are either dumbasses or tools.

that what the conservatives have been saying for years and years.

Care to share what those reasons would be?

As you'll see in the video, everyone is either scared of the idea that they'll all go to jail, thanks to a mass produced, misinformation piece; except for the one Rush Limbaugh think white male who argued that since our shoes are toxic and our shirts made with inorganic cotton, that we shouldn't improve conditions for farmers and the environment.

I still haven't heard a credible argument against Measure O, but there's plenty of evidence that voters were mislead.

The video kept me watching because of all the funny little moments. I loved watching people's dialogue too! The personal interaction. Nice touch at the end, drinking the pesticide. Just one suggestion, I think really agro gargling would be the best sound effect to go along with that particular morning ritual, Mister Toxic Man.

Gee, thanks anonymous coffee-house radical for assuming I'm so incredibly stupid and/or naive. Because of the uncomparably persuasive logic of your argument, I now know to leave all my thinking up to you.

At the next election, please spare me from embarrassing myself and tell me how I should vote to make you happy. Thanks again!

Your pal,
Mr. Dumpass Tool of Berkeley

Hi,

Whoever was so careless as to use the term, "dumbass tools" and allow the other side to capitalise on it, just remember that carelessness in anonymity can exact a price.

Like it or not, Berkeley voters went against measure O. I do think this shows real lack of ability on their part, but it was also in the cards -- because of its controversial nature every major political organization except the Green Party and the Guardian (as far as I know) printed up literature (a voter cheat sheet) saying to vote no on O.

O had almost no money, whereas Starbuck's and Peet's had lots.

And you've got to remember that you're in the United States, a land which is morally bankrupt and values private property over life, particularly if it's "those other people" who are suffering. Even in Berkeley.

This doesn't mean the guy* who keeps harping on that one phrase is right. He's not apologizing for his role in the serious issues O meant to address, he isn't suggesting another path, he isn't even giving any argument against O, he's just saying 70% of the voters can't all be dumbass tools. And he's right. But they were wrong, as is he, to oppose O.

Were we to live in a society based on mutual support and consent, thinks like measure like O would never be needed.

-O yeah baby.


* gender presumed based on it being 70% likely that anyone who speaks like such a dumbass tool is male.

on cnn or msnbc on TV , right before talking about someone who invented a bra with flashing lights on it, they listed two initiatives around the country that were voted on yesterday. One was the coffee initiative, which they described sort of poorly. They said 'the people of Berkeley voted 2 to 1 against an initiative to require that restaurants only serve politically correct coffee', but they didn't describe what it was. The other initiative was that poor little town in NE California that had to vote on whether they should change their name to 'got milk?' in exchange for $70,000 for their town library. That was really sad.

Yes to the boycott, but, it will take far too long. May never make the difference. And anyone who cares already tries to only purchase ethical products.

But Nessie is right on the mark with the idea of considering this a learning experience and trying something new.

I am certain that the movement to reign in multinational corporations has not stopped trying things.

People make light of the coffee initiative. There's a lot of real human pain out there because of Starbuck's, Peet's, and all the big corporations (McDonald's, Folgers, on and on) which are getting their coffee from large corporate chemical clearcut monoculture farming.

Given that most people appear to support the initiative once they understand it, it's worth trying again even in Berkeley.

Maybe you should actually try to get to know the 70% of the Berkeley public who voted down the proposition instead of making up facts and relying on prejudice

Dumas,

You can keep reiterating your "point" ad nauseum, you really aren't adding anything new to the debate.

And I agree that most voters are at the whim of large corporations' misinformation.

I would respond that you add nothing new to the argument by repeating the prejudicial opinion that more than 22,000 Berkeley voters are weak-willed, simple-minded, corporate tools.

You just can't come to grips with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, enough intelligent Berkeley voters disagreed with the measure on legitimate grounds

Now you could actually try to get to know some of the (presumedly) "intelligent" but opposing Berkely voters and analyze the measure for its flaws.

But that would require setting aside your pretense of intellectually superiority and treating the Berkeley public as peers.

Oh wait a minute, I forgot What as I thinking?!

i'd love to hear any argument against measure o.

i keep asking.

what part of, "everyone i ask has the same issue: a misunderstanding of the penalties based on the expensive glossy misinformation from starbuck's and peet's" don't you understand?

i don't know how many berkeleyans are my peers, it depends on how you define peer, but i do deeply care about other human beings and that is why i am an anarchist. i think people can work out their problems given the chance. abuses by large hierarchical organizations like starbuck's and peet's stifle that chance.

"Opponents, who have formed a committee called Friends of All Small Coffee Farmers, say they support all three categories of coffee promoted by the measure. For instance, nationally known Peet's Coffee & Tea, which has donated $11,000 to the "No" campaign, already offers Fair Trade and organic coffee blends.

The problem with Measure O, opponents argue, is that it takes the choice out of consumers' hands and punishes farmers who don't have Fair Trade certification, which currently is available only to farmers who work fewer than 10 acres and are members of a cooperative.

"It is a right cause but the way it's implemented, it's very exclusive," says Jeremiah Pick of Jeremiah's Pick Coffee. Pick says he has long-term contracts directly with growers, pays more than $1.26 a pound and works with people who have built schools and brought other benefits to workers' families.

TransFair USA, the Oakland-based nonprofit organization that certifies all Fair Trade products in the United States, is not endorsing Measure O. However, spokeswoman Kenya Lewis takes issue with arguments that Fair Trade certification is a burden.

Certification is free, she says. The 10-acre limit is aimed at the small farmers that TransFair says produce 70 percent of the world's coffee. Co-op membership provides a central contact and means if one farmer runs short, another can help fill a contract."