Vassar College students urge administration to remove Coke from campus

http://midhudsonnews.com/News/Vas_antiCoke-09Nov07.html

Vassar College students urge administration to remove Coke from campus

Town of Poughkeepsie – About 20 students from a consortium of five Vassar Student Association organizations Thursday rallied in support of removing Coca-Cola products from the school.

The students want their college to join 45 others – including NYU, Rutgers, DePaul, Smith College and the University of Illinois in removing the products.

Freshman Thomas Faczhine of Irvington, NJ cited one example of what the students say Coke is doing wrong.

"In Columbia, up to nine union activities have been murdered by a company that Coke bottles for and Coca-Cola has said in the past that it would investigate, and it hasn’t,” he said.

“In India, they’ve done a lot of work against the environment to deteriorating the water table,” he said. Ghana has also been a problem with Coke production, he said.

Faczhine said the college administration, which has met with the student group, said they would weigh their request and keep an eye out to see how many students boycott Coke products on campus.

Colombia: Two teacher unionists murdered in 5 days

http://www.labourstart.org
http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=662&theme=rights&country=colombia

[2007-11-13] Colombia: Two teacher unionists murdered in 5 days
EI deplores the murder of two teacher trade unionists within the past week
Mercedes Consuelo Restrepo Campo was shot dead outside the 'San Juan Bosco' school in the town of Cartago by two armed men on a motorcycle on 7th November the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia – CUT - reports.

Restrepo, who had been a teacher for 30 years, served on the executive board of SUTEV, a regional affiliate of EI member FECODE, in the department of Valle de Cauca.
Her murder follows that of Leonidas Silva Castro on 2nd November. He was murdered in his home in the Barrio Prados del Norte neighbourhood in the town of Villacaro. Castro had arrived home after attending a trade union event. He was an active member of ASINORT – another FECODE affiliate.

Colombia remains the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist. The EI Barometer found that violence against trade unionists is endemic. Union leaders are targets of attacks by armed groups for political reasons. Teachers, who make up almost one-third of the organised work force, especially so.

EI condemns these assassinations and calls on the government of Colombia to bring those responsible to justice.

Vassar Kick Coke writings on PDF

http://www.sendspace.com/file/46uogr
Link for accessing the PDF file on the Vassar Kick Coke CIRC proposal.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1hkx24
Link for accessing the PDF file on the Vassar Kick Coke newsletter issued in the Autumn 2007

*Note: These links are not direct links, and are not the most reliable transfer methods. If the above links fail, please email redunlea@vassar.edu for copies.

a link to the PDF file on the Killer Coke site:
http://www.killercoke.org/kccvassar.pdf