Belching Out the Devil (8 page)

I love New York. I nearly bought the I ♡ NY T-shirt but for adhering to the only rule of fashion that I know: namely don't buy things worn by people you don't like. Walking around the place I keep pointing and shouting, ‘That's where
King of Comedy
was filmed…see, that's the bridge in that scene from
Saturday Night Fever
…if that's Ben Stiller let's heckle him…'. The city is a vast historic map of films and music. I get a coffee on the Bowery hoping that the Ramones once sat here before appearing at CBGBs. Lexington gets me singing the Velvet Underground and Central Park has me quoting Woody Allen.

 

Tall apartment blocks are dotted with white air-conditioning units sticking out of the windows, as if a swarm of flying fridges have just crashed straight into the side of the building. And the sight of them is suddenly wonderful. The plethora of pointy water towers stuck on rooftops like fat fireworks on stilts is amazing. I'm happy enough to gaze idly at hanging traffic lights suspended over the streets or fire escapes and ladders that criss-cross entire blocks. I am a fan. So much so that when I wander past a blue wooden police barrier outside a mosque, presumably ready to corral anti-Islamic
demonstrators, I instinctively squeal, ‘Oh look bigotry…they have that here too.'

 

My visit coincides with Super Tuesday, the big day in the US Primaries when Democrats and Republicans vote to decide who will be their presidential candidate. It is the Democratic race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that focuses New York. Stickers on cars proclaim ‘I'm backing Billary!' and Obama's face decorates Brooklyn windows.

 

I'd gone into a deli to eat and the primaries were the talk of the lunch queue. Now, being English, I'm a little baffled by the number of decisions required to get a sandwich: you have to choose your bread, spread, filling, dressing, condiments, extras and opt out of getting a pickle. Essentially you have to tell them how to make the bloody thing, leaving me momentarily resentful and wanting to shout, ‘I'm not Jamie Oliver, all I want is a sandwich!'

 

As I ponder on rye or sourdough a man behind me strikes up a conversation. He's on a wheelie Zimmer frame, has a face like a tomato with stubble and is dressed in a green jacket. He looks like he should smell of alcohol, though he actually doesn't.

‘Yew voted today?' He says as I catch his eye.

‘No, I'm not eligible to vote, I'm English.'

‘Yew want me t'vote for yew?' he says in a kindly manner, ‘I'll vote for yew. Who yew want me t'vote for?'

‘No, I'm all right, thank you.'

‘I voted twice already today, I did it for my friend here,' he says, gesturing to a man beside him in a black pleated leather jacket and a bobble hat. ‘They didn't recognise me,' he continues.

‘They didn't?'

‘Nah, one time I went in backwards.'

New York City Councilman Hiram Monserrate represents District 21 in Queens. Queens is across the East river from Manhattan Island, but on his side of the river the houses and salaries are much, much smaller. Queens is dirty and quirky. It is essentially a working-class area, you can tell this by the significant increase in ‘Beware of the Dog' signs. Households tend to sit on the side streets off the main road, expressways tend to sit over the main roads and the traffic from LaGuardia airport sits on top of it all.

 

Just off East Elmhurst, on one of those side streets, sits Councilman Monserrate's office, opposite a parking bay for school buses. It has a sign in the glass front window, ‘
Por favor registrese para votar hoy
', a polite reminder to his Latino electorate: don't forget to vote, folks. Inside, some plastic chairs and a sofa provide a waiting area for his constituents. The rest of the office is small and open plan by necessity.

Six staff members sit at desks, handling casework, phoning housing departments, debt agencies or whoever needs to be called off or brought in. Councilman Monserrate's office is tucked away at the back.

 

The councilman does not appear to be a typical corporate critic, if indeed such a thing exists. Monserrate served in the US Marine Corps for four years, spent twelve years in the NYPD and to be honest he looks like his CV. He is stocky and strong-jawed, with a neck you could moor tugboats to; and I'd bet if you were able to snap him in half you'd find the word COP running all the way through his body, like a stick of Brighton rock. His politics is that of a Queens Democrat, a combination of liberalism on issues like immigration mixed with a strong populist streak. He appeared on breakfast TV pitching a notion that New York should be nicknamed Gotham City, as he was inspired to fight crime by his boyhood hero Batman. The idea has all the
political rigour of renaming London Beanotown, but in terms of political PR it underlines his police credentials and ‘record of public service'. So in the context of American politics he is not yet part of the establishment but boy, does he want to be.

 

Despite this, the councilman has been a persistent critic of The Coca-Cola Company since 2004. He worked with New York City's pension fund about how they might use their stockholding in Coke to influence the company, tabling critical resolutions at shareholders' meetings. He has spoken out against the company on US campuses, with students subsequently boycotting Coke.

 

‘So you want to talk about Coca-Cola…' he says as he drops his black overcoat across one chair, scrapes another across the floor and leans back in it.

 

The councilman was introduced to Sinaltrainal's officials in New York in 2003 and found their tale compelling enough to help organise a delegation to Colombia in 2004. ‘My initial impulse: I wanted to know more. At the very least it seemed to me there had to be some truth in what the workers were telling me. That labour reps and workers were being killed.'

 

While planning for the delegation, Councilman Monserrate decided he ought to invite The Coca-Cola Company along too. ‘We have to have some fairness,' he explains, ‘they were invited to participate. They were invited to visit the plants with us. They were invited to join the meetings and join in the discussions. They could have been a partner in this delegation: they refused.'

 

Whether he asked them out of a political desire to be seen to be fair or a genuine sense of fair play, I don't know, but nevertheless the Company declined the offer. ‘I wasn't trying to malign Coca-Cola or FEMSA
⁶
...I'm not a socialist revolutionary.

I am an elected official from New York City.' He says this as if one might harbour a notion the breeding grounds of Trotskyism are to be found in the US Marines and New York Police Department, two bodies not noted for their adherence to dialectical materialism. In truth it is precisely because of his relative orthodoxy that I want to talk to him about what the delegation found out and why he seems to be picking a fight with the company that is so symbolic of America.

 

Councilman Monserrate's 2004 report on the Colombian allegations found not only a distinct lack of action by The Coca-Cola Company and the bottlers but an alarming laissez-faire attitude to the charges levelled against them. Although the delegation was denied access to Coke's bottling plants, Coca-Cola/FEMSA representatives Juan Manuel Alvarez and Juan Carlos Dominguez did meet with them. The delegation asked outright what they had done to investigate the allegations of ties between plant managers and paramilitaries. At first ‘these allegations were vigorously denied,' the report states, but it continues, ‘Alvarez and Dominguez acknowledged that Coke officials had never undertaken any internal or external investigations into these assertions, nor into any of the hundreds of human rights violations suffered by the company's workers.'
⁷
That is, the Colombian bottlers themselves admit that these serious allegations were not taken seriously at all.

 

In his office Councilman Monserrate leans forward, puts one hand in between his legs, grasps the seat of the chair and hauls it closer to the table. ‘Isidro Gil was killed inside the bottling plant. That alone, to me, puts the onus on The Coca-Cola Company to say, “Hey we have a problem here and we have to deal with this problem one way or another”.' He nods his head and stares at me, like he's Robert De Niro. ‘There's a causal relationship between the trade unionists' deaths and
working at Coca-Cola. So at the very least the company in Atlanta has an obligation to try and get to the bottom of it… Coca-Cola, just like any other major corporation, has a responsibility to be responsive corporate neighbours. You can't just chalk it up to the politics of the country. You're Coca-Cola and your logo is worldwide and it started here in America.' His forefinger taps the table pointedly, as if the company is in the room and he is telling it off. ‘I mean we wouldn't accept it in America. Could you imagine it if in a Coca-Cola plant in the USA, a worker was killed because he was part of the union - what kind of outrage there would be!' His mobile phone rings, he looks at the caller's number before pushing it to one side.

 

And as he sits with his back to the office wall which is covered in honorary degrees, citations, community awards and other such chaff of public office, it dawns on me that it's the councilman's patriotism that has put him in the fight with Coca-Cola. American patriotism often entwines love-of-country with love-of-country's-economic-system. The councilman seems to fall into this category. ‘They do represent American Capitalism,' he says in such a way as to put capital letters on both words. ‘And American Capitalism should never be about allowing your workers to be subject to violence or death because they are organising to defend their rights. What does it say about America?'

 

The Carepa murders were the starting point of a new saga of violence and intimidation for the union and though these were the worst cases they were a long way from being the only human rights violations. Sinaltrainal alleged a campaign of murders, intimidation and harassment against trade unionists working at Coke bottling plants across Colombia. But so far The Coca-Cola Company had shown little, if any, interest. So the union responded by doing three things:

This got the Company's and the bottlers' attention. So what did the company do? Was there finally a moment of corporate self-reflection and realisation? No, the bottlers took the union to court claiming that in bringing the US lawsuit the union had libelled and defamed them. I'll repeat it for those of you who might be distracted picking your jaw from off the ground: the bottlers said the union had libelled them by taking them to court in the US. The bottlers even went after 500 million pesos in damages, until the case was dismissed as being without merit in 2004.
⁸

 

Councilman Monserrate discussed the case with Coca-Cola FEMSA representatives in Colombia and he reports that one of the men ‘characterised these criminal charges as a “consequence” of the ACTA case [ie, the US lawsuit], which the delegation interpreted to mean that the company intended the charges as a direct reprisal.'
⁹

 

So according to the bottlers, when the victims of violence and intimidation seek legal remedy they become criminals. Which I would suggest is akin to Union Carbide suing the inhabitants of Bhopal for inhaling their property without permission.

 

In his office in Queens the councilman is flabbergasted. ‘They were facing criminal charges because they filed a lawsuit in the US…this is outrageous! This is ridiculous, this is worse than ridiculous!'

He leans forward in his chair, furrows his brow and purses his lips. With the phone ringing and meetings stacking up around him the councilman has little time, so he seems to be gathering his thoughts and momentum for a final verbal assault. And it comes.

 

‘My question to The Coca-Cola Company,' he pauses, ‘is: are you saying this is just the cost of doing business or is this the business that you are in? Which one is it, because either one is not a good choice. Right? Are you saying this is what Coca-Cola does by design or is it just complacent and allowing these things to happen? Either option is bad.'