Report by Eric Baldwin
The April General Meeting of the Park Slope Food Coop drew roughly 400 members both in-person at the Picnic House and on Zoom. The night began with talk of tea bags, plastic seaweed packaging, and orientation bots, and ended with discussions on voting thresholds for boycotts.
OPEN FORUM
The 15-minute open forum covered a lot of ground quickly.
Board candidate Barbara Mazor, speaking first, addressed the Agenda Committee, which she said had sent contradictory responses to her questions and failed to respond to follow-up. “Half truths are not truths,” she said, calling for fair representation of opposing viewpoints.
A staff letter was read aloud next, signed by more than 80 percent of the Coop’s roughly 70 full-time employees, excluding General Coordinators. The letter asked that any boycott proposal be brought forward as a membership-wide referendum rather than decided at a general meeting. “We have a wide variety of opinions on the boycott itself,” the letter said, “but we have come together to request a referendum vote, which would allow every member to vote by email ballot.”
Board member Tim Hospodar, joining via Zoom, responded to what he called “repeated and frankly slanderous remarks” made at recent meetings about so-called bad board members. He noted that neither the Coop for Unity website nor a related Instagram account listed him as a target. “Why are you framing me as a BDS bad guy when there’s no evidence around that?” he asked.
Other members raised concerns about supply chain resilience in light of the Iran conflict and fertilizer prices, the Coop’s plastic footprint (citing, specifically, seaweed products wrapped in individual plastic containers), and the ongoing mask policy. One member made a heartfelt plea to keep mask days, noting that for immunocompromised members, “it’s the least we can do.” Another suggested that members who forget their masks should have to pay for one, to reduce waste from the disposable supply at the door.
A relatively new member, David Tobey, offered a segue into lighter territory. “I know in a time when the Coop feels more divided than ever, we don’t need more dissent,” he said, before requesting that bulk tea be made available in larger bags.
GENERAL COORDINATOR REPORTS
General Manager Joe Szladek presented the Coop’s eight-week financial statement, covering the period through March 29. Sales came in just under $10 million, roughly flat compared to the same period last year, with operating income of about $130,000, a notable improvement over last year’s $68,000. Szladek attributed most of the difference to a one-time factor: the Coop purchased electronic shelf labels in the first weeks of last year’s fiscal period, an expense that didn’t recur this year. The labels, now visible throughout the store, are also laying the groundwork for a planned rollout of the Coop Deals program through National Cooperative Grocers, which would put 100 or more items on sale every two weeks.
The financial picture was broadly positive, though one line item gave pause. Healthcare costs for staff rose 15 percent, consuming much of the savings from a leaner payroll. “They usually don’t lie when they tell you they’re going to charge you more money,” Szladek said of the Coop’s healthcare provider. He added that claims data since week eight has looked somewhat better, and he hoped the trend would moderate by the next report.
The Coop is also adding members in earnest, with two new member orientations per week running through the summer. Chair Committee member David Moss raised the concern that people are now creating bots to secure orientation spots the moment they open online. Szladek confirmed it was a known issue. General Coordinator Matt Hoagland noted the Coop has been leaning toward a lottery system, something more like a Broadway ticket lottery than a first-come, first-served scramble, though no timeline has been set.
Members also raised questions about equity in membership access: as the process increasingly favors the tech-savvy, the Coop risks skewing further toward wealthier, younger members. “We can close our eyes and cater to people who can make bots,” one member said, “or we can offer spots during orientations held in other neighborhoods. It’s our choice.”
COMMITTEE REPORTS
Valerie Vadala, representing the Personnel Committee, announced an open seat for a member with at least five years of HR or organizational development experience. The committee meets once monthly and works with the General Manager and General Coordinators on people-related matters.
Bart DeCoursy from the International Trade Education Squad invited members to a free screening of the documentary WTO 99 at the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on June 6 at 1:00 p.m. He also offered a brisk update on the global trade situation: large importers are expected to be refunded for tariffs paid under court-invalidated policies, while the closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the Iran conflict continues to drive up global oil, fertilizer, and food prices. “Even a full reopening of the strait and an immediate end to hostilities would not spare the economy from significant pain in the months ahead,” he said.
DISPUTE RESOLUTION COMMITTEE ELECTIONS
Three incumbents stood for re-election to the Dispute Resolution Committee: Christopher Cox, completing his first term; Michael Zito, who could not attend and was represented by a written statement read aloud by committee member Dan Weiss; and Weiss himself, now in his third term. Cox described the committee’s work, investigating complaints, interviewing parties, and seeking resolutions that benefit the community, and noted that his partner had mixed feelings about the time commitment. “She also said that I should, maybe, because it’s important work,” he said. “And I think it is important work.”
Members asked questions regarding the committee’s diversity (it currently has no members of color, Weiss acknowledged, though it has had them in the past), recent use of outside legal counsel for a series of interrelated cases (Cox said the committee hopes not to refer further cases to an attorney), and the candidate selection process, given that three incumbents ran for three open seats with no challengers.
All three were re-elected by comfortable margins: Cox 243 to 38, Zito 231 to 44, and Weiss 213 to 58. The results were accepted by the Board.
MAIN EVENT ITEMS: BOYCOTT VOTING THRESHOLDS
The bulk of the evening was spent on two related agenda items on whether to restore simple majority voting for boycotts.
The first item, Restore Simple Majority for Boycott Votes, was presented by Abdi-Hakin Dirie and John Caramichael. They argued that the Coop’s current 75 percent supermajority requirement for boycotts is a historically anomalous rule, introduced in 2016 in a procedurally flawed vote to prevent a boycott of Israeli products. For most of the Coop’s 53-year history, Caramichael said, boycotts passed by simple majority, the same standard used for every other policy decision, including the votes to begin selling beer and red meat. The 75 percent threshold, he argued, effectively weighs some members’ votes more than others. “When we walk into this room, we’re all members,” he said.
Dirie took up the case of the 2017 Tomcat Bakery boycott, involving a Queens company accused of exposing workers to an ICE raid, which received 59 percent support from Coop members but failed under the supermajority rule. “Our choice made other employers in the city more confident that they could exploit their workers without being held accountable,” he said, citing an interview with the director of Brand Workers, the nonprofit that had organized the effort.
Joe Holtz, a Coop co-founder, raised a pointed question from the floor: why did the presentation omit the fact that earlier boycott votes had often garnered 90 percent or more support, making simple majority seem more contested historically than it had been? Caramichael countered that the total number of recorded yes votes to initiate a boycott across the Coop’s entire history was roughly 763, compared to more than 3,500 members who have signed the current petition to boycott Israeli goods. “We’re talking about a different order of magnitude,” he said.
A counter-argument from Zoom complicated the Tomcat narrative: one member said the workers’ union had not requested a boycott, a claim the presenters disputed, arguing that the union had prioritized its relationship with the bakery over the workers’ interests, which is why an outside nonprofit stepped in.
The second item, Revise the Threshold to Change the 75% Supermajority Rule, came from Ramon Maislen. He argued for maintaining the 75 percent threshold on the grounds that it encourages cooperation and protects minority concerns, in keeping with the International Cooperative Alliance principles. He invoked Robert Owen’s 1832 resolution that cooperators should not be identified with “any religious, irreligious, or political tenets whatsoever,” and expressed concern that aligning the Coop with an outside political cause could threaten its autonomy and lead to the loss of longtime members.
His presentation was partly overshadowed by an earlier comment from a Zoom attendee who had used the phrase “Jewish supremacy,” a term that drew applause from some in the room and sharp condemnation from others, including Maislen, Hospodar, and several members across perspectives. The phrase became a recurring reference point for the rest of the meeting, with multiple speakers calling it antisemitic and others arguing it had been taken out of context.
“We are all capable of working with one another,” Maislen said. “Whatever your position, please be nice. Be respectful. Be kind.”
Discussion was wide-ranging and, by most measures, unresolved. Supporters of the supermajority pointed to the risks of narrow majority decisions on emotionally charged issues; opponents argued that any threshold above 50 percent is inherently undemocratic. One member raised the financial stakes: if a boycott vote passed 51 to 49 and even a fraction of the minority left the Coop, the resulting loss of member labor and revenue could raise costs for everyone. Another pointed out, with some economy of expression, that the Electoral College was what gave the country Trump.
No vote on either item was taken at this meeting. The Board of Directors voted to accept the minutes from the March GM and the DRC election, then the meeting was adjourned.