Pressure Rises on Corporate Sponsors
Coke, Staples targeted by protestors upset over China's human rights record.
April 28, 2008— -- The pressure on Olympic corporate sponsors is heating up as the torch relay for the games this week returns to Chinese soil for the first time.
Over the weekend under clear skies in Atlanta and New York, activists hit the sidewalks to protest Coca-Cola's sponsorship of the Beijing Olympics. Organized by high school and college students affiliated with Stand (A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition) and Dream for Darfur, teenagers and adults chanted slogans like, "Hey, China, you can't hide, help us end this genocide." (China provides economic and military support to Sudan.)
Saturday's rally in downtown Atlanta, in front of the New World of Coca-Cola museum, brought out 30 to 50 activists. Sunday's New York City rally, on 5th Avenue, saw some 75 protestors, many students (and their parents) from New Jersey's Millburn High School. Claire Arkin, a senior at Millburn and one of the rally's principal organizers, tried to engage the corporate sponsor by speaking to the crowd of the world's complicity in the Darfur genocide, quoting the British philosopher Edmund Burke: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
And on the Boston Commons, under cold, drizzling skies, close to 100 student activists turned out — linking arms, chanting, listening to speakers that included refugees from Sudan and a Massachusetts state senator — to protest Staples' support of the Beijing Olympics.
For weeks the Olympic torch's relay, which began in Athens last month, has been marked by demonstrations, last-minute re-routings and heavy police presence along the route. This weekend's demonstrations come as lines in the sand are being drawn.
On the one hand are human rights groups urging corporate sponsors to speak out publicly against China's human rights record, its suppression of the media, its economic and military support of Sudan, or its violent crackdown on Tibetan protestors.
On the other are sponsors claiming that speaking out against a sovereign government is not their role, that such protests are not in keeping with the unifying spirit of the Olympics.
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