The Park Slope Food Co-op voted Tuesday night to boycott products from Israel, with 67% of members supporting the measure after years of debate within the Brooklyn institution.<\/p>\n
The neighborhood co-op has been around since 1973, with more than 17,000 members who work there in exchange for shopping access.<\/p>\n
\u201cI advocate for the nonviolent resistance towards the liberation of Palestine through boycotting Israeli products,\u201d member Sarah Wellington said.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
67% of the\u00a0Park Slope Food Co-Op voted in favor of boycotting goods from Israel
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The\u00a0neighborhood institution has been around since 1973, with more than 17 thousand members who work there in exchange for shopping access
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Members say there have been calls within the group to boycott Israeli products since 2009<\/p>\n
The Park Slope Food Co-op said it currently carries only a few products from Israel, including Ecolove shampoo and conditioner and Al Arz tahini.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I see Israeli products stocked on the shelves, even though I\u2019m not buying them, I\u2019m disturbed by the fact that I know that my labor and my money is going toward the purchase of goods from a country that is committing genocide and overseeing apartheid,\u201d said Gabriel Young, a member of the co-op and Park Slope Food Co-op for Palestine.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough this is just one block in central Brooklyn, this co-op can set an example that can spread to other cooperatives, other institutions, to universities and labor unions,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n
The co-op has boycotted goods from places like apartheid South Africa and Chile in the past.<\/p>\n
Members said there have been calls within the group to boycott Israeli products since 2009. The movement gained momentum in 2023 after the war in Gaza began following Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7 attack on Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think supporting Israel right now is a no-brainer thing not to do,\u201d member Chase Madar said.<\/p>\n
But not everyone agrees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a little performative. I think it\u2019s a little ridiculous. Is the world going to change because people buy hummus from a co-op?\u201d said another member who declined to give his name.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really don\u2019t understand how boycotting Israeli products is going to move forward their agenda,\u201d said Patrick McMulty.<\/p>\n
A representative for the co-op said the debate over the boycott has been contentious and emotionally charged. The co-op hired security because of concerns about staff and member safety.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re in your face and they let you know where they stand, and you\u2019re just like, \u2018Hey man, I\u2019m just here to shop,\u2019\u201d said Greg Selig, with Co-op for Unity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Park Slope Food Co-op voted Tuesday night to boycott products from Israel, with 67% of members supporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[109,25,98,100,99,9,24,12,63,1174,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-244939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-olivia-leach","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}