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The Park Slope Coop Votes on BDS Tonight

Brooklyn group to decide whether to hold referendum over Israeli products

by
Marc Tracy
March 27, 2012
The Park Slope Food Coop.(tory stewart/Flickr)
The Park Slope Food Coop.(tory stewart/Flickr)

The big night is tonight! With battle lines long drawn, as many as 3000 members of the (16,000-member) Park Slope Food Coop will gather in a Brooklyn school to vote on whether to hold a Coop-wide referendum on whether to cease selling the (very few) products made in Israel or the West Bank. To clarify: this isn’t “Zionist B.D.S.” (although if it were, the SodaStream seltzer-maker would be verboten); this is B.D.S.

There’s really not much else to do except wait to read what happens tonight. Only Coop members are allowed at these monthly meetings, and tonight will be a pretty airtight way of finding out which people you follow on Twitter are among them. (If you aren’t on Twitter, friend-of-The-Scroll Chad Matlin’s live-tweeting last time was virtuosic, and I anticipate a repeat performance: follow him here.) Some suggested reading:

• My curtain-raiser from last month. [THE SCROLL]

• The current mayor as well as most people who want to be mayor are against the boycott. [NYT]

• Carol Wald, a leading advocate in favor of the boycott (whom I interviewed last month), published an op-ed today. [NYDN]

• Hummus frequently seems to find itself at the center of political battles (although actually it’s not one of the products in question). [NYMag]

• An interesting take: the divisiveness of this resolution says as much about the changing nature of Park Slope as the Israel debate. [NYT]

• Neighborhood stalwart Rabbi Andy Bachman gets his final word in. [Water Over Rocks]

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.