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Pesto-gate: boycott that became a global farce

March 22, 2012 16:00

ByAnonymous, Anonymous

1 min read

Never before has anyone covered all two hours of the monthly meeting of the Park Slope Food Co-op via Twitter - or, for that matter, any other media - as one of its members did last month.

But then, again, never before has the co-op, a 40-year-old progressive bastion in the heavily Jewish neighbourhood of Brooklyn, captured global attention.

The reason for Park Slope's unexpected fame stems from a battle over a proposed boycott of Israeli goods that is only now coming to a head, three years after it began.

Last month's meeting scheduled a March 27 vote on whether or not to hold a referendum on the boycott proposal, prompting one member, an opinion editor at Reuters, to live-Tweet the entire event. "The room is tense with passive aggression," noted one of Chadwick Matlin's first Tweets. "Free Oreos given out, but not free hummus."