We will not be intimidated: Video with Cindy Corrie backs Olympia Food Co-op fight against anti-boycott lawsuit by @AliAbunimah

Originally posted by the Electronic Intifada at http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/we-will-not-be-intimidated-video-cindy-corrie-backs-olympia-food-co-op-fight

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Sat, 01/28/2012 - 17:37

Cindy Corrie is among several people appearing in a short video calling for solidarity with the Olympia Food Co-op in Olympia, Washington and condemning a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Co-op’s boycott of Israeli goods.

Last year, The Electronic Intifada broke the story that a group of individuals were planning to file the lawsuit with the support of StandWithUs and in direct coordination with the Israeli government.

The video and accompanying statement call on those who filed the lawsuit to use existing democratic procedures to get their way, rather than an “aggressive lawsuit which seriously threatens the well-being of a cornerstone of the Olympia community.” It also affirms, “we will not be intimidated or silenced.”

In addition to Corrie, the mother of Rachel Corrie, the activist who was killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza in 2004, the video also features Elizabeth Moore of Olympia Jewish Voice for Peace, Fabi Romero an artist and former Co-op staff member and Jean Eberhardt of Bridges Not Walls.

The full statement, which organizations are invited to endorse, appears on the website of Olympia BDS:

We, the undersigned, stand in solidarity with the Olympia Food Co-op, and condemn the lawsuit filed against the Co-op in an attempt to undermine the Co-op’s commitment to social justice by way of legal and financial intimidation. We call on the plaintiffs to exercise the Co-op’s democratic option – bringing the boycott of Israeli goods to a member vote – instead of launching an aggressive lawsuit which seriously threatens the well-being of a cornerstone of the Olympia community. Lawsuits intended to silence and intimidate those who speak out against injustice should have no place in a democratic society.

For over three decades, the Co-op has enriched the Olympia community by striving to provide healthy, local, and sustainable food, and has rightly understood food sovereignty as one piece of the larger project of building a better world. From its emphasis on cooperative self-management, to its unswerving support for the local sustainable agriculture movement, to its persistent refusal to carry goods produced in ways that conflict with its core values, social justice has always been integral to the Co-op’s mission. The lawsuit against the Co-op is an attack on this commitment to social justice, and, by extension, on all of us who raise our voices against injustice and in the hope of creating a better world. For, as the author James Baldwin once wrote to wrongfully imprisoned Angela Davis, “if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”

We therefore stand in solidarity with Olympia Food Co-op, and say to those who have brought this lawsuit: we will not be intimidated or silenced!

~ Sofia Smith