Whirled Vision at the Olympia Food Co-op: Salsa Not-So-Socially-Conscious

author : Austin Kelley topic : Olympia Food Coop

by Austin Kelley

World Vision International, despite it's voluminous PR machine, has long been notorious as a right-wing Christian charity with an extensive history of working worldwide with the CIA, the State Department, and other such agents of US Imperialism. "Salsa So Fresh," made in Shelton, and sold at the Olympia Food Co-op, proudly advertises World Vision as benefiting financially from each sale, and goes on to advertise worldvision.org on each tub of this salsa fresca, for allegedly being an organization that is getting at "the root causes of poverty."

There is a significant concern in this, in that our Co-op has long declared an anti-oppression policy as being central to every aspect of its being, beginning with staff-hiring and training procedures, going on to and including a frequently used policy through which products are continued or discontinued based on social justice criteria. Last November, I was shocked to read the text on the Salsa So Fresh label, which boasts of things clearly in direct contradiction to the Co-op's stated principles. Each tub carries a folksy prose which tells not only the tale of how the couple who own the business first made fresh salsa at a church social and then, because it tasted so good, went on to manufacture it for sale, choosing to donate a portion of each sale to the charity, World Vision. Their advertising seems to imply that not only is this a special food, but that it is also a product based on especially ethical practices, one which benefits our world with each sale.

The contradictions with the Co-op's operating principles seemed glaringly obvious, and so I reported this troubling information through the appropriate channels by filling out the customer feedback form on display at the Eastside Co-op. I expected a prompt reply and the same sort of decisive action as has happened with many other products, but received no reply. After several weeks, I filled out a form at the Westside Co-op, but still received no reply. Concurrent with this process, another concerned community member began filling out the appropriate forms, but also received no reply. This was the beginning of a very long and frustrating process, one with which I have persisted these last eleven months or so. I am given to understand that the two committees that reviewed this matter have responded and have decided thus far not to take action.

Throughout this process much information has been shared with Co-op staff. Here are a few of the more telling citations about World Vision, all of which have been shared with and essentially confirmed by designated representatives of the Co-op staff:

1. World Vision had served as a front for U.S. intelligence in Central America, employing former members of Anastazio Somoza's National Guard to inform on El Salvadorian refugees in Costa Rica. (National Catholic Reporter, 4/23/82)

2. A number of the refugees were liquidated, after being identified as guerilla sympathizers by World Vision operatives. (Idem.)

3. World Vision had also functioned as a front for U.S. intelligence in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War. (Christian Century Magazine, 7/4 -- 7/11/1979)

Award-winning scholar of the Christian Right, Sara Diamond, in her book "Spiritual Warfare," elaborates that:

World Vision has on a number of occasions functioned as an intelligence gathering arm of the U.S. government. In the 1970's World Vision was charged with having collected field data for the CIA in Vietnam. After US troops left the region, World Vision played a major role in the administration of refugee camps... World Vision also became a crucial player in the "yellow rain" campaign to discredit the Soviet Union... 1980, World Vision became one of five agencies working with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees... World Vision workers preached against the "communist religious workers" from the other refugee agencies.

In Testament of the Death Squads, Latin American Studies professor Greg Grandin provides further context by explaining that:

Starting in the 1960s, conservative evangelical theologians such as John Price and Jerry Falwell interpreted . . . defeat in Vietnam as a signal moment of world history in which the US stood at the precipice of collapse. They not only urged their flocks to fight what would become known as the culture wars, the campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, gay rights, and so forth, but to get more involved in foreign affairs as well. Ronald Reagan's crusade against the Central American Left  --  his patronage of the Contra insurgents in Nicaragua and death-squad states in El Salvador and Guatemala  --  was the first extensive opportunity to do so, an apprenticeship that gave the Religious Right its first real taste of its own power within the Republican Party and drew it closer to other groups within the Reagan Revolution.

In order to bypass public and Congressional opposition, the White House outsourced the "hearts and minds" component of its Central American wars to evangelicals. Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum sent down "Freedom Fighter Friendship Kits" to the Contras, complete with toothpaste, insect repellent, and a Bible. Gospel Crusades, Inc, Friends of the Americas, Operation Blessing, World Vision, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and World Medical Relief likewise shipped hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid to the anti-Sandinista rebels and Honduran refugee camps, where they established schools, health clinics, and religious missions . . . (Counterpunch, September 9/10, 2006).

Other sources provide detail on this "charity" and its significant ties to Counterinsurgency and Colonialism:

World Vision was notorious for their programs to benefit counter-revolutionaries attacking civilians during the Sandinista years in Nicaragua. At the Honduran border, they were present in camps used by American CIA to recruit mercenaries against Nicaragua. They were at Sabra and Shatilla, Camps in Lebanon where fascist Phalange massacred the Palestinians. (World Vision Magazine, 1983; "Final Report of Israeli Commission of Inquiry," Journal of Palestinian Studies, Spring, 1983; "Kahan Commission," Midstream, 6-7/83; Guardian, 11/17/81)

Their representatives in the Cuban refugee camps on the east coast included members of the Bay of Pigs operation, CIA-financed mercenaries from Omega 7 and Alpha 66. ("Terrorism in Miami: Suppressing Free Speech," Counterspy, 3-5/84; Guardian, 11/17/81).

These facts alone should be troubling enough to justify a serious meeting with the manufacturers of Salsa So Fresh, informing them that their advertising and funding of World Vision is not at all in accordance with the stated values and principles of the Olympia Food Co-op, and negotiating a clear solution. In addition to the ties to covert operations and the most brutal sorts of human rights violations, it is clear that organizations like World Vision do not, as claimed, get to the root causes of poverty, but rather, they actually contribute to the sorts of structural inequality that result in greater suffering for the poor, worldwide. As Joseph Mudingu explained:

The way the NGOs operate in the countries invaded by, or attacked by the imperialist powers, that makes a mockery of the humanitarian aid, should open anyone's eyes. In Vietnam, for instance, even as the United States dropped bombs creating deaths and destruction on a massive scale, it deployed its NGOs such as CARE (Co-operative Assistance for Relief Everywhere), CRS (Catholic Relief Services), WV (World Vision), IVS (International Voluntary Services), American Red Cross, Vietnam Christian Service, and so on to provide relief and rehabilitation to the war victims in Vietnam. And in Afghanistan and Iraq we have seen how the most savage bombing by the US-led imperialists was accompanied by humanitarian aid. Bombs and bread were dropped simultaneously. As soon as a country is ravaged and people are killed, maimed and uprooted from their homes, the NGOs would step in giving the "healing touch." ("How Genuine Are NGOs?" by Joseph Mudingu, The New Times, Kigali, Rwanda, August 7, 2006)

Mudingu is dropping some real science on us here, as it is certainly true that World Vision is an NGO with a world-wide reach, and now receiving the bulk of its funding directly from the US Government. Not only is World Vision taking government contracts in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where the United States is openly waging war against local populations, but also they are active in many, many areas of strategic interest to Uncle Sam, areas where conflicts other than open war are being fomented, such as: Gaza, The Philippines, Kosovo and Lebanon. On top of this, World Vision's charity converges with "mere" economics, world-wide.

These last eleven months have been problematic in terms of uniting theory and practice at the Co-op. "Going through the system" has not resulted in significant changes in policy towards Salsa So Fresh. While there have been problems in the response of some Co-op staff to this issue, we remain hopeful that our Co-op can, and will, function better in the future.

Problems with slow response by staff, or even non-response, were framed by a decision-making process in which staff are empowered by a consensus-based decision making process in which minority dissent can block action. Because member-owners are not empowered in the same way, the playing field is not really even. We can and should find ways to strengthen member-power, seeing it not in opposition to worker-management of the workplace, but rather as a necessary and important complement to workers' rights. Since the Co-op has so far declined to reveal who specifically amongst the Co-op staff might have been blocking further action on of this matter, it is more difficult to resolve this issue.

It should be noted that neither of the two Co-op staff committees which have reviewed the concerns about World Vision has found significant difference with the facts cited above. Indeed, after much investigation, Co-op staff have confirmed the troubling history of World Vision to be essentially true, and even found further and yet more damning information about their ties to the Christian Right, as well as to World Imperialism. And yet, I have been advised that the official Co-op channels for waging this complaint against Salsa So Fresh have been exhausted and that the end result is that Salsa So Fresh will remain on the shelves at both stores, with the World Vision endorsement/donation intact. Despite repeated inquiries, staff have declined to reveal who exactly made this decision, through what process, and by what rationale.

Throughout this time, those concerned about the matter of Salsa So Fresh and World Vision have been patient and civil as we persisted in trying to get some justice around this issue. The response from staff has been mixed. Co-op staffers have long promised a meeting with the manufacturers, but it is not clear what concrete actions they have taken to arrange it, despite a wait of many, many months. Concern about these issues is growing, not only because of the moral issues specific to Salsa So Fresh and World Vision, but also because of the related structural issues within the Co-op itself, which has long excluded products on the basis of appropriation of indigenous symbolism by non-Natives, whilst it is now in effect supporting an organization associated with the murder of indigenous and colonized peoples around the world. This certainly does not suggest that any or all staff have bad intentions, although it does suggest that participatory decision-making and community accountability should probably be strengthened.

If you, like others, share my concern about the decision to continue selling Salsa So Fresh, in direct contradiction to the Co-op's social justice policy, feel free to investigate for yourself. By the time of the Co-op's annual Fall meeting, myself and others hope to bring announcements of a campaign to resolve these concerns. Look also to either the December/January or February/March issue of the Co-op News, where, hopefully there will be room for an update on this issue, as well as for a more detailed analysis about what these problems might suggest about ways in which we can improve a participatory decision-making process at the Co-op, as well as an analysis of why and how we should strengthen our politics in favor of justice for the poor and oppressed, here and now, as well as internationally.

For more information, you are welcome to get in touch care of:

austinamerican@gmail.com .

[click here for a response to this article written by Co-op staff collective member Grace Cox. ]