Edinburgh Chiapas Solidarity Group will be picketing Starbucks tomorrow (Saturday 27th August) from approximately 11:45 in light of Starbuck's involvement in Conservation International, a notorious 'greenwash' company, which has been involved in the attempted explusion of Zapatistas and other Indigenous communities from the Montes Azules area of Chiapas. We will be providing free coffee produced by a Zapatista co-operative in Chiapas outside the Starbucks on the High Street in Edinburgh. Feel free to come along and either help us out or help yourself to some free coffee and information. Text of a leaflet being distributed is attached below. Leaflet text: A cup of coffee is not merely a cup of coffee; it is the end product of a whole series of linked events, from growing the coffee plants, harvesting, selling and transporting the beans, to producing and serving the drink. Starbucks portrays itself as a company that cares not just about the cup of coffee but also about all these links. The reality is very different. Starbucks widely publicises the fact that it is concerned for coffee growers through its provision of Fair Trade coffee, yet its most recent figures showed that only 1.6% of the coffee it bought was fair trade[1] and it is deliberately not setting targets for this measure. Starbucks explains this low percentage as the result of limited and inconsistent supply of Fair Trade coffee as well as its general lack of quality (although neither of these seems to adversely affect other companies) and, laughably, the fact that “Starbucks purchases coffee from many sources that are not included in the Fair Trade system�[2]. In other words, they don’t buy much Fair Trade coffee because, well, they buy lots of non-fairly traded coffee! Conservation International (CI), a seemingly benign environmental organisation, is heavily involved in Starbucks’ fair trade programme. However, a close examination of CI shows that this is perhaps the only environmental group with extensive links to some of the most notorious offenders in terms of the environment and both human and labour rights. Mining giant Rio Tinto, McDonalds, Disney, Ford, Shell, Wal Mart, Gap, United Airlines and BP all are either partners of CI, have donated funds or have high-ranking personnel on the CI board. One of Starbuck’s brands of coffee (Shade Grown Mexico coffee) is purchased through CI’s Conservation Coffee programme from areas close to the biosphere reserve in the Motes Azules area of Chiapas, Mexico. This area of Mexico is not only vitally important due to its astounding diversity, but is home to a number of groups that are Indigenous to Chiapas, including many Zapatista supporters who are refugees from paramilitary and governmental violence elsewhere in Chiapas. The Zapatistas emerged out of the Chiapas area in 1994, beginning their on-going struggle for dignity and peace which has resulted in the construction of a number of autonomous Zapatista municipalities both within Chiapas and in other states. During the last eleven years the Zapatistas have seen the government break their promise to give meaningful autonomy to Indigenous communities and have been the victims of numerous killings by paramilitaries, yet their struggle continues. What the Zapatistas offer is a new way of achieving change. Change for the Zapatistas is not achieved by one group telling others to follow their plan but through obeying the wishes of those around them. This fits with their conception of political change as not necessitating seizing state power, but consisting of immediately letting people take charge of their own lives. Conservation International and Starbucks’ role in Chiapas, the poorest state in Mexico, has been hugely controversial, with CI having been accused of making excessive demands in an attempt to gain control of coffee harvests so as to sell them, against the farmers’ wishes, to companies like Starbucks[3]. Equally contentious has been the role of CI in trying to expel Indigenous communities from the area. In 2001, CI provided aerial photographs of settlements to assist demands that they were removed – the attempts to forcibly expel Indigenous Communities from Montes Azules is in violation of Mexico’s international commitments to indigenous peoples and has been claimed to amount to genocide under International Law[4]. After these photographs were provided, villagers in the area were subjected to a campaign of intimidation by government authorities and paramilitaries and remain under threat of eviction. While it is undoubted that there has been environmental destruction in the area, Conservation International tends to blame solely the Indigenous communities and the Zapatista villagers. Contrary to CI’s claims, as an emergency delegation from Global Exchange that flew over the area showed, environmental destruction in the area is concentrated alongside military camps and the Indigenous groups use sustainable organic agricultural techniques. This type of controversial activity is not necessarily new for Conservation International, with it having been noted that “in many countries, the establishment of CI-initiated protected areas have trampled on Indigenous People’s land, social, spiritual, cultural, political and economic rights, without consultation, in deals cut with governments and corporations in the name of ‘conservation’�[5]. A key example is CI’s support for the Meso-American Biological corridor project, a ‘green front’ for the Plan Puebla Panama, a massive scheme to build a new network of roads, light assembly plants and sweatshops throughout Central America, providing cheap, exploitable labour and a front for corporate bio-piracy. This fits perfectly with CI’s overall aim of putting biodiverse areas at the disposal of multinational corporations. Due to its intense alignment with CI, Starbucks are heavily complicit in this activity. Perhaps the extent of Starbuck’s corporate social responsibility can be seen from examining the composition of its board. Surprisingly, for a company supposedly concerned with corporate social responsibility Starbucks admits that “there is not a committee of the board dedicated to CSR�[6]. Despite pious claims about diversity, the sole examples it can point to on its 11-member board are one African American and a single female. Howard Schultz, the chairman of the company, epitomises the board, being over 50 and white. Schultz makes much of his claim that “one cannot stand on the sidelines in any critical debate on what he describes as the ‘fracturing of humanity’�[7]. Despite this, Shultz has proved very reticent on the issue of war in Iraq, perhaps because Starbucks neatly circumvented its own guidelines on only making donations to non-profit organisations when it donated over 20,000 kilograms of coffee via the American Red Cross to the decidedly ‘for-profit’ US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. Starbucks claims that it is concerned about its employees (or ‘partners’ as they are patronisingly called). However, it only appears to be fully concerned if you follow Howard Schultz’s bizarre approach to industrial relations that “if [workers] had faith in me and my motives they wouldn’t need a union�[8]. In order to improve pay and working conditions several branches in New York have been recently attempting to unionise with the Industrial Workers of the World – the result being, as alleged by the National Labour Relations Board, that Starbucks started “unlawfully discriminating against pro-union employees to discourage unionisation�. In May 2005, Sarah Bender, a Starbucks worker and IWW member was fired for her union activity, with this following well-reported campaigns of harassment of other union activists. This despite the first line of Starbuck’s mission statement being to “provide a great work environment and treat each other with respect and dignity�. When interviewed recently[9], Schultz complained that people judged Starbucks more harshly than other large multinationals dealing in coffee. In one sense he is completely wrong – as a market leader their actions have huge consequences and, hence, they should at very least set a positive example. In another sense he is completely right. What makes Starbucks behave this way is not unique to them – they, like companies the world over, are in the process of making as much profit as possible so they can keep their investors and owners happy. The links in the chain that provide us with our coffee, be it coffee workers around the globe, Indigenous communities in Mexico, or poorly-paid workers in New York are superfluous for Starbucks, providing that the end product is delivered and their financial results are not adversely affected. Luckily for us, this view of a world where everything is subjugated to financial results (as capitalism would decree) is not all-encompassing. When we chat to our friends, volunteer to help someone or do something for nothing we are all behaving as anti-capitalists. Our challenge is to behave in this way more completely and more consistently. Howard Schultz himself says we should not stand on the sidelines. Follow Howard. Make the first step. Boycott Starbucks. EDINBURGH-CHIAPAS SOLIDARITY GROUP The Edinburgh-Chiapas Solidarity Group was formed in late 2002 by a small group of Zapatista supporters, many of whom had worked as volunteers in Chiapas. Our aim is to raise awareness of the Zapatista struggle and to provide practical help and support. In Spring 2004 Edinburgh-Chiapas Solidarity Group and Glasgow Zapatista Solidarity Group twinned with the “16th February� Zapatista autonomous municipality. The municipality is in a poor, rural community and has asked us to raise funds to help build a health clinic in their area – this is our primary task at present. Should you be interested in joining us, knowing more about the Zapatistas or locating your local group please drop us an e-mail at edinchiapas@yahoo.co.uk, visit our website at www.edinchiapas.org.uk or send a letter to Edinburgh-Chiapas Solidarity Group, c/o 17 West Montgomery Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5HA. For further information on the IWW and Starbucks contact edinburghiww@yahoo.co.uk or visit either www.iww.org.uk or www.starbucksunion.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] Corporate Social Responsibility Fiscal 2004 Annual Report, p7. [2] Corporate Social Responsibility Fiscal 2004 Annual Report, p29 [3] http://www.organicconsumers.org/corp/starbucks.cfm [4] “Access of Evil: Genocide in Chiapas� from CovertAction Quarterly, Fall 2004 on http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Mexico/Genocide_Chiapas.html [5] http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/AZI3311A.html [6] Corporate Social Responsibility Fiscal 2004 Annual Report, p8 [7] http;//www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1328626,00.html [8] Quote from Howard Schultz’s autobiography reproduced in http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/features/12060/index.html [9] http;//www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1328626,00.html