Looks just like election day. (Fucked in Park Slope)

As those of you who pay attention to critical foreign policy issues may know, the Park Slope Food Co-op voted yesterday against a referendum that called for a vote on a ban of Israeli products.  Technically, the meeting wasn’t open to the press, but as a part of both the co-op and the media, we try to embrace our multi-faceted identity. We felt it our civic duty to attend.

The atmosphere outside the meeting was something between a gladiator match and a high school student council election. Though we arrived early, a line that could be seen from outer space snaked down the street. We overheard fellow members yapping about “democracy in action” while eating sandwiches. We followed the line for two blocks, and as coop karma would have it, spotted a member on our co-op work shift. The days when we refilled legume containers in peace and harmony seemed distant, but in the spirit of cooperation he agreed to hold our spot while we did a little sleuthing.

We struck up a conversation with Failey Patrick, who, in a word, found the referendum ridiculous. “I’d rather we do something like this to feed the homeless, some shit like that,” she said.

Then we found Hima B., who stood in a cluster of protestors and held a “Vote Yes on the Referendum” sign in front of her chest. After she scolded us assuming her name was spelled “Bee” instead of “B.,” B. explained why she spearheaded the issue years ago.

“We had it [a referendum] for whether or not we carried meat and I’m sure we’re going to have a referendum for the plastic bag issue,” she said. “I don’t understand why this issue has a total double standard that they’re using to essentially suppress us.”

Then a man setting up a tripod caught our attention. “I feel that supporting the boycott is a support for terrorists,” said Yankee Teitelbaum, who was not a co-op member. He then showed us a graphic poster of an Israeli family that had been killed in cold blood, and we had to walk away. We got back in line contemplating the summer we spent in Israel and our complex relationship with hummus.

As we approached the front doors, a woman donning the coop’s signature orange and yellow work vest gave us the scoop on the proceedings inside: find the correct sign-in table, have membership card out and ready, take a paper ballot and do not lose it because it cannot be replaced under any circumstances. (Then she implanted a tracking device in our arm, instructed us to grab supplies from the cornucopia and take shelter in the woods.)

With baggies of dried, unsulfured pineapple rings and organic medjool dates in hand (purchased at the co-op, naturally), we hunkered down in the back of a packed Brooklyn Tech auditorium. Board members sat onstage and spouted off rules (no tweeting, photography, hissing or applause) and platitudes about the democratic process (“no demagoguery, but be as passionate as you like”) before calling the first round of speakers to come on down. Immediately, we tried to connect with civilization via Twitter, only to discover we had no reception.

Here’s how the meeting worked: any members who wanted to speak could drop their names into one of three bags when entering the building: pro-referendum, against, or in between. Board members pulled an equal number of names from each bag; those chosen had two minutes of “air time.” To express agreement with a speaker, we could use Occupy Wall Street-approved twinkle fingers.

The speakers, 46 in all, left no stone unturned in their arguments. They came from all walks of life and referenced Passover, the United Nations, magical co-op moments, the negative feelings of olives left to rot on Palestinian soil because farmers can’t get to them, Apartheid, Bjork, Noam Chomsky, GMO foods, the IDF, justice, kale, couscous, religion, race, sexuality, peace, tolerance, and Sabra hummus (which, according to its website, is made in the U.SA.)

We tried to listen to everyone, but certain folks didn’t deserve our attention, like yellers and white girls sporting feathers and/or dreadlocks. Despite the rules, the inevitable applause, hissing and heckling forced some audience members to cluck like grass-fed free-range chickens. One woman mentioned that Human Rights was her college major, and we wanted to strangle her. Another highlight included co-op founder Joe Holtz taking about the storied co-op past, and how this issue was ripping people apart. By this point, emotions were running high.

Just when we were feeling impressed with the relative calm, a speaker kvetching about massacres and ethnic cleansing prompted a man sitting two seats away from us to yell, “Don’t send missiles to Israel if you don’t want to get bombed.”

Vitriolic emotion erupted in the room. The moment lingered, anxiety set in, we longed to tweet, but still no reception. Thank goodness for the woman sitting in front of us peacefully threading orange and brown yarn around a sandwich-sized wooden frame. Her artsy manual movements were lulling and hypnotic.

The speeches wore on, until we came to the stand-up comedy portion of the evening. First a ponytailed man refused to get off stage, and the board cut off his mike with impeccable timing. A hipster/Chasid hybrid (curly pais, wearing a hoodie) joked that because he hated lima beans, the co-op should ban them. And our favorite opening line—“This doesn’t feel good right now. But neither does an enema”—got quite a few laughs. (We would’ve kindly directed him to  a gentle colon cleanse product in aisle six for a less invasive detox.)

Finally, ballots were collected and quickly tallied (two people on each side of the issue presided over the process.) The board screened a brief documentary about the co-op in which members talked about challenges and joys of membership. We hunted down a few of the more interesting people we’d heard speak, and were surprised to find that after the light pandemonium, they still had a very kumbaya attitude about the co-op.

“I have to say, as far as the co-op, I haven’t been a member for a very long time and I’m continuously impressed with how well it’s run," said Yoav Gal, who spoke against the referendum.

“I thought there were some pretty powerful testimonies, which just really touched me,” said Phan Ngyun, who was in favor for the referendum.

The announcement of the tally brought an uncertain reaction—in part because the crowd was dispersing and the board had yet to vote. They were against it 5-0, and that was that.

On the way out, we spoke with board member Bill Penner, who had been a voice of calm throughout the evening. “I was trying to remain as neutral as possible,” he told us. “I think that at the end of the meeting, a lot of people were relieved to know that the co-op could work it out.”

editorial@observer.com

All quiet on the organic front. (reallyboring/Flickr)

Forget the presidential elections. In the most closely watched vote of the year—they were tuning in on the other side of the globe—the Park Slope Food Co-op, that bastion of democracy, voted almost 3-2 not to hold a co-op-wide vote on whether to ban organic goods from the organic grocer's shelves.

The vote was 1,005 to 653 according to a source inside the meeting and a tweet from the co-op. (The Jerusalem Post and The Times had the same vote count, with the former beating the latter to the story by a good 15 minutes.) Another source said she had to leave the proceedings an hour before the votes, recorded on paper at a packed auditorium inside Brooklyn Tech, were counted because of the pandemonium. "In a word, INSANE," she wrote The Observer in a text message.

Whether the furor will finally die down—it has been simmering in the pages of the widely read Linewaiters Gazette—remains to be seen, though this fight will certainly go down in the annals of history alongside the Yom Kippur War and that time Moses smashed the tablets at the base of Mt. Sinai.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

The boycott's a schmear campaign!

Probably the last person anyone would ever expect to shop at the Park Slope Food Co-op has decided to weigh in on the heated controversy roiling the organic aisles of the brownstone bastion. At the ribbon-cutting for Steiner Studios this morning, Mayor Bloomberg was asked for his position on the proposed Israel boycott. Were he to actually don an apron and sort bulk natural supplements for two hours a month, the mayor's vote would be a resounding "no."

For those who know the mayor and his non-New York politics, the reasoning is simple. Like fellow pol Chuck Schumer, he is a staunch defender of Israel. (You don't have to be Jewish to boycott the boycott, either, as Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio did earlier today.) In fact, the mayor encouraged stronger ties with the Land of Milk and Honey."Israel is one of the few friends that America has, that's dependable and represents everything America stands for," the mayor said sternly. "It's the only real democracy in the region, and it has been supportive of America's products and people."

He took a moment to note that "It was created in Queens," referring to President Truman's recognition of the State of Israel in 1945 during a tour of the borough.

Tomorrow night, the co-op is set to vote on whether or not it will hold a referendum on a boycott—a vote of votes, part of the parliamentary procedure governing the co-op to enable a boycott. Ah, direct democracy. Believe it or not, the mayor doesn't buy it.

"Why any of this has anything to do with selling food, I don't know," he said at the press conference. "We should be pushing for more business with Israel, not less. But this has to do with people wanting Israel to be torn apart and people to be massacred, and America is not going to let that happen."

Heaven forfend Barney Greengrass should ever pull a stunt like this.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Is this packaging biodegradable?

If you thought the looming debate on an Israel boycottwas a real crisis of conscience for the Park Slope Food Co-op, that has nothing on the pending decision to abolish plastic bags. Not grocery bags, which were done away with years ago, but plastic produce bags, something that actually costs the glorious grocer $22,000 a year.

The ban was hotly debated at a meeting last night, and while no action was taken, Reuters editor and organic omnivore Chadwick Matlin was there, gracing the world with live tweets of the proceedings. Our favorites are definitely:

• Anti plastic bag PSA being played. Called "The Shopper". Spoof of "The Artist"
• "but my collards won't fit!" — one of the actresses in the silent film PSA.
• Proponent saying one reason to ban plastic bags because they go into trash that goes through low income community in South Bronx.
• Mandatory shopping cart usage far more controversial than plastic bag ban. Only at the coop.

The whole account is a worthy opus, which you can read in full on the Awl.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Is that a Bark hot dog, or Hebrew National?

We already know how Andrea Peyser feels about the Park Slope Food Co-op's proposed boycott of Israeli goods, but now an even bigger inorganic bloviator has weighed in: Glenn Beck.

The gonzo radio host was in Crown Heights for a fundraiser for a a Jerusalem museum where he took a moment to attack the co-op as anti-Semitic, according to The Brooklyn Paper.

“What is happening with the food co-op where they are seriously considering a boycott of Israel?” he said, likening the suggested ban to a subtle version of drawing swastikas. “When you use words like ‘I’m just anti-Israel’ or ‘I’m just anti-Zionist’ — that’s anti-Semitic.”

We imagine he then wheeled out his chalkboard and sketched out the web of deceit radiating out from the co-op. As Brooklyn has long know, the seemingly harmless grocery store is really the seat of the worldwide Illuminati.

This is not the first time Mr. Beck has set his sights on Brownstone Brooklyn. Two years ago, he actually admitted to enjoying some of the Slope's culinary delights, specifically those at the cherished Chip Shop.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Senator Schumer prefers his vegetables canned. (Epoch Times)

While desperately lacking in commentary from Alan Dershowitz, The Journal has a nice update on the Park Slope Food Co-op's Israel boycott. The paper reveals that an Escherish vote-on-whehter-or-not-to-vote will take place at the end of March, and more than 1,000 cooperators are expected to turn out, about one-tenth of the glorified grocer's proletarian membership.

Meanwhile, the Daily News gets a hold of the one brownstone sage The Observer could not to get his opinion on this burning Brooklyn issue: Park Slope resident and the Senate's resident Maccabi, Chuck Schumer.“A boycott of Israel, which protects women's and human rights far more than any of its neighbors, is one-sided and unfair and I urge co-op members to reject this misguided and counter-productive proposal,” Senator Schumer, who is not a co-op member, told the tab.

Looks like he won't be crossing the organic aisle any time soon.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Stay outta Cobble Hill! (NYMag)

The Observer's favorite newspaper columnist weighed in on our favorite grocer today. "Here’s Reason No. 501 never to set foot in the People’s Republic of Park Slope," Andrea Peyser declares in The Post, referring to the brewing Israel boycott at the Park Slope Food Co-op. Her screed is as loud and droning as a Phish concert.

Earlier this week, we gave space for a BDS defense, so it only seems fair to let Ms. Peyser air her grievances, as well.

The issue isn’t plastic bags, banned from the co-op in 2008 to save the planet. Nor is it plastic water bottles (banned), or Coca-Cola (banned in protest of labor abuses in Colombia). And it’s not about meat, which arrived on the free-range shelves in 2002 -- to the horror of militant vegans -- along with microbrewed beer but, tragically, no Budweiser.

[...]

The issue isn’t plastic bags, banned from the co-op in 2008 to save the planet. Nor is it plastic water bottles (banned), or Coca-Cola (banned in protest of labor abuses in Colombia). And it’s not about meat, which arrived on the free-range shelves in 2002 -- to the horror of militant vegans -- along with microbrewed beer but, tragically, no Budweiser.

[...]

Mazor just wants this to blow over, so she can go back to bagging her all-natural greens. “If I have anything to do with it, it won’t come up for a vote.”

Being reduced to shopping at Pathmark would be a major letdown. In Park Slope, it might come to that.

Ms. Peyser, herself a BroBo, even gives The Observer a shout-out, quoting from our interview with Alan Dershowitz. This reporter can now die a happy man.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Just your average BroBo.

That's what a co-op member who works in Manhattan P.R. reminded The Observer in an email yesterday.

The flack did hedged in a follow-up email, though: "Please note that the percentage is admittedly too high!" Expect a full-investigation of the matter very soon. In the meantime, catch up on The Observer's continued hard-hitting coverage of the Park Slope Food Co-op.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Organic democracy. (BKLYN GUY

On the progressive blog Waging Nonviolence, Kiera Feldman mounts a vociferous defense of the Park Slope Co-op's right to boycott Israeli goods, should its members feel so inclined. It is in large part a 1,600-word critique of The Observer's recent series on the BDS debate that has swept the brownstone bastion in recent months. We considered grabbing a few paragraphs for a "smug" blockquote commentary of our own, but instead, we're giving the subject a full airing here, republished with permission. And, for more, there is a lighthearted shopping trip to the co-op to see exactly what products might be boycotted, which kind of reminds The Observer of the time we went comparison shopping at the co-op. Now, to Ms. Feldman:

Once, in the bulk goods aisle of the Park Slope Food Coop, a wild-haired woman stood next to me and scrutinized the coffee-grinder settings. “I’m using it for an enema,” she explained. “It needs to be very fine.” I suggested the espresso grind.

This is exactly the kind of shopping experience I hoped for when I joined the Park Slope Food Coop in the fall of 2009: a realization of the eternal promise of New York, home of the strange. (That and crazycheap organic food.) Founded in 1973, the Coop is a Brooklyn institution with enough character to have spawned its own genre of trend piece. Some examples: the Coop has Byzantine rules and work requirements (debatable); the Coop has nannies covering their employers’ shifts (dubious); and, most recently, the Coop is becoming a hotbed of anti-Semitism (downright wrong).

The New York Observer has contributed the latest addition to the genre, with a smug piece earlier this month devoted to Coop members’ efforts to initiate a boycott of Israeli products and divest from whatever Israeli holdings the Coop might have. At the historically progressive Coop, the Observer procured a chorus of sources declaring the campaign anti- Semitic and intolerable in “the heart of Chaimtown,” as one man put it, referring to Park Slope’s high Jewish population. For the full sensationalist effect, Alan Dershowitz—the de facto representative of the hawkish Israel-right-or-wrong Jewish establishment—denounced the campaign’s “bigotry” and threatened to shut the joint down, an ambitious goal for a Cambridge, Massachusetts, resident who is not a member of the democratically-governed Coop.

The Coop campaign is part of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), a global movement launched with a 2005 call by 170 Palestinian civil-society groups. Shorthand demands: end the occupation of the Palestinian Territories; end the legal discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel; and allow the 700,000 Palestinians expelled in the 1948 creation of the state to return—along with their descendants—to what is now Israel. Until the country complies with international law, the movement vows economic and cultural boycotts, institutional divestments, and governmental sanctions of Israel. Perhaps the strongest indicator of BDS’s power is the Boycott Law passed in the Knesset in July, making it illegal for groups like Boycott from Within to advocate BDS in Israel, a state that bills itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Leading the charge against BDS at the Coop is Barbara Mazor, who told the Observer, “I think [BDS supporters are] latching onto it like slogans. Like true believers, it’s the cool thing to do. You know, ‘I’m a progressive, and it’s a progressive cause,’ so I think that’s how it’s coming through, very thoughtlessly.” (Mazor also alluded to her otherwise liberal politics with a dig at “a certain president [who] spent eight years in office.”) The political alignment of the Coop’s BDS opponents is made clear on their website, which links to the reactionary pro-Israel group Stand With Us, known for having once pepper sprayed anti-occupation activists from the group Jewish Voice for Peace, along with having published an anti-BDS comic book that depicted Palestinians as vermin, in a throwback to Nazi propaganda.

“People here are always thinking about the implications of everything,” Mazor was quoted as saying in a 2001 academic article about the Coop. “That’s really nifty. I find that stam people [Yiddish for “ordinary people”] think about less and less.”

Those who argue that the Coop boycott campaign is anti-Semitic believe that BDS “singles out” Israel among all the other nations of the world that commit grave human rights violations; the only reason anyone would focus on Israel, the logic goes, is because they harbor prejudice against Jews. “Israel has a lot of problems, but so does China, so does America, so does a lot of the world,” Coop member Andrew Sepulveda told the Observer, voicing a common BDS counterargument. But must we rank wrongdoing nations before taking a stand? And is it not logical to single out Israel, given that U.S. foreign policy has already singled out Israel with over $3 billion in annual military aid? “Whenever we take a political action, we open ourselves up to accusations of hypocrisy and double standards,” BDS supporter Naomi Klein reminds us, “since the truth is that we can never do enough in the face of pervasive global injustice.”

“The reason we’re boycotting Israel and not Atilla the Hun is because there is an international call for boycott on Israel, and we should be honoring boycotts,” according to one Coop boycott supporter, who asked not to be named. “We shouldn’t be crossing picket lines. End of story. The reason we aren’t boycotting Atilla the Hun is because there is no international campaign to boycott Atilla the Hun. If the victims of Atilla the Hun ask for a boycott, then we should take that seriously.”

In a letter published in the Coop’s house organ, the Linewaiters’ Gazette, boycott organizers noted that the Coop has a long tradition of boycotts—of both individual companies and entire nations. A 20-year boycott of South African products began in 1973, the year of the Coop’s founding. There have been eleven Coop boycotts since 1989, including Coca-Cola, Domino Sugar, non-United Farm Worker grapes, and tuna.

Until recently, the matter of boycotting and divesting from Israel had only been raised in letters in the Linewaiters’ Gazette, where the debate has ebbed and flowed for over two years. But at a July 26th general meeting—a monthly gathering held at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim—the grinding wheels of Coop democratic process began turning with the first face-to-face discussion of BDS. The question at hand was not whether or not the Coop should join BDS, but rather whether they should even hold a membership-wide vote. “Why not boycott Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Bahrain?” said Susan Tauber, one of the members advocating against the referendum, according to the Linewaiters’ Gazette’s recap of the general meeting.

Coop BDS organizers told me that almost all of the supporters who spoke at the meeting were Jewish and identified themselves as such. Still, Jewish opponents of BDS at the Coop show that the “progressive except Palestine” phenomenon in the American Jewish community has not gone away. While open to hosting the debate in his synagogue, Congregation Beth Elohim’s Rabbi Andy Bachman—generally considered a progressive rabbi—condemned the boycott efforts in a statement, writing, “BDS rhetoric reveals that the ultimate goal of the majority of its supporters is a dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state. This is simply untenable and unjust.” (Bachman was referring to BDS’ demand that Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to what is now the state of Israel in accordance with UN Resolution 194.) In the Linewaiters’ Gazette, BDS opponent Ruth Bollettino made the same argument, but in starker language. “The ‘right’ of Palestinian refugees to return means dismantling the Jewish state demographically, flooding it with Palestinian Arabs,” Bollettino wrote, revealing the racial fears underpinning the drive to maintain Israel as a Jewish-majority state. Her letter joined seven others against BDS, one in support of BDS, and an unrelated letter thanking a stranger for having returned $90 that had fallen out of the writer’s pocket at the Coop entrance.

Boycott supporters at the Coop would seem to be in the minority, if one were to judge by the letters in the Linewaiters’ Gazette or the Observer, which admitted its nonscientific methods while noting, “Finding pro-boycott members outside the co-op Monday night was no easy task.” But Melissa, a Brooklynite Coop member of eight years, had a different impression of the membership’s stand. “The silent majority of Coop members are probably uncertain about the issue of BDS,” she said, adding, “The challenge that we have is not to change the minds of people like Barbara Mazor.” Rather, it is to educate their fellow Coop members as to the need to honor the Palestinian BDS call.

Retired lawyer Dennis James, a Coop BDS organizer, noted the generational divide he sees in conversations about BDS—who shuts off, and who’s willing to engage. “Some of the older people, you can’t raise the subject. It’s verboten,” James said. “Whereas younger people might argue with you but they will talk about it.”

The other day, I met up with my friend Jesse Bacon at Tealounge, a coffeeshop across the street from the Coop. Despite having once seen a mouse scamper through the glass dessert case there, I ate part of Jesse’s cookie as we talked BDS shop. He’s an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace, working on their campaign to get the pension fund TIAA-CREF to divest from Motorola and other companies profiting from the occupation of the West Bank. Many TIAA-CREF holders are teachers and other professionals who tend to skew liberal in their politics. Working on the campaign has helped Jesse see how important it is to have a sympathetic population when advocating BDS in an institution. Jesse weighed in:

In a certain sense, the Coop campaign is dealing with liberal people who just want to get their crunchy, hippie food and be left alone. But the best things that movements critical of Israel can do is to push people to be consistent. Consistency is a great thing to offer people. It requires some explanation and education as to why this is part of your other values–why boycotting or divesting from Israel is an extension of them.

The cringe factor was high for both of us while reading the Observer’s anonymous source decry the Coop BDS campaign reaching into the heavily Jewish populated Park Slope, “the heart of Chaimtown.” At the same time, Jesse pointed out, “The fact that a BDS campaign is even going on in ‘Chaimtown’—the heart of the Jewish crunchy liberal establishment—whether or not this wins, it shows that this issue is everywhere now.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Is that a bomb-sniffing dog? (wonderyyort/Flickr)

With world leaders taking sides in the debate over a boycott of Israeli products at the Park Slope Food Co-op, what do the members, those who are not leading the fight, think? Outside 782 Union  Street on Monday night, the signature green-and-red neon sign buzzing overhead, The Observer encountered the kind of zealous ambivalence and shoulder-shrugging apathy so often associated with Brownstone Brooklyn.

"Why are they boycotting Israel? What about China? It's stupid," said Andrew Sepulveda. "You know, we've got these water bottles that say 'Designed in America,' but they're made in China. And sometimes you open them up and there are little notes inside and it says, 'Help me. They've got a gun to my head.' What are we doing about that?"

Mr. Sepulveda, scraggly curls down to his chin, seemed to be joking, but the sentiment is real. He cares deeply about the co-op. Only moments before, while The Observer was on the phone with a pro-boycott organizer, Mr. Sepulveda had spirited our briefcase from under a bench where we had tucked it away, the better to do our reporting, and took it inside. He feared it was a bomb.

When Mr. Sepulveda brought it back outside, to the anxious arms of its rightful owner, he explained the situation, still slightly exasperated, then ventured back into the florescent-lit entryway. He could be heard declaring, "Don't worry. False alarm. It was just some asshole."

The Observer was surprised to hear that bomb threats are a legitimate problem on this busy brownstone stretch across from the Tea Lounge and Brooklyn Industries. "Oh yeah, all the time," Mr. Sepulveda said. "A lot of people hate this place."

Seated on the bench outside, which serves as a way station for walkers, those co-op members who return carts from members' homes, as well as a hangout for wayward members, Mr. Sepulveda began explaining to Geoff Hockert, who was seated next to him, that the threat had only grown since the co-op had boycotted Israeli products. Overhearing this, The Observer interjected: No such boycott had taken place—yet. That is when Mr. Sepulveda told The Observer about the water bottles.

"And it's not like I care about Israel," he continued. "I'm not Jewish. I'm circumcised and I'm Catholic, but that's it. Israel has a lot of problems, but so does China, so does America, so does a lot of the world. I don't see why we're singling out Israel."

Mr. Hacket was also up on his Noam Chomsky, it appeared. "Europeans have been raping and pillaging forever, and it's a big part of the history of this country," he chimed in, rectangular glasses glinting from beneath a beige baseball cap. "Just look at what we did to the Native Americans. And to pick on Israel? It's anti-Semitic."

Mr. Sepulveda pointed out that the co-op carried Palestinian pickles, which had caused no problems. "Really, both sides are to blame," Mr. Hacket said. Mr. Sepulveda agreed: "I'm sympathetic.  Look, let's find companies that are socially responsible. Let's publicize that and let people decided for themselves.

Brooklyn's own Abbott and Costello continued to speak over each other, and The Observer had a hard time keeping up. Seeing a woman with blonde hair still dressed in her yoga tights, a mat hanging from one shoulder, a reusable grocery bag from the other, we excused ourselves to go find out her opinion on the matter.

Claire Kelley was well-reversed in the debate, having followed it closely in the letters section of The Linewaiters' Gazette, the co-op's biweekly newsletter. "The co-op had such a large debate about whether to even have bottled water," she said. "This is such a sensitive issue, I can understand why people are so passionate about it." And yet this passion is part of what makes the co-op so appealing. "Just today, I came in and someone gave me a handout about GMO—you know, genetically modified food, which I didn't know very much about. It's good to get engaged. I'm interested in knowing both sides, I don't mind the debate."

Still, there are those who are just there for the cheap produce—sometimes half as much as at Whole Foods! "I try and stay as far away from the co-op's politics as possible," said a woman named Shanti who had not heard about the boycott. "I realize it's a community with lots of competing view points, and that's fine for the people who want to get involved, but I'm mostly just there as a shopper." Just then a gypsy cab pulled up, and Shanti excused herself to go load her groceries and leave.

Pat Murray, who said she had lived in Iran and knew a thing or two about oppressive regimes, said there was no place for such a boycott at the co-op. This was after she almost refused to answer The Observer's questions. "Ohhhhh! Not another co-op-bashing story," she moaned. Assured that it was not, she said, "No matter how you feel about politics in the Middle East, there is no reason to involve the co-op in it."

Finding pro-boycott members outside the co-op Monday night was no easy task, nor was it at all authoritative or scientific. The closest The Observer came was Keisha Haines, who also had not heard about the boycott but thought it could be a good idea. "I'd suppose they're doing it for all the right reasons," she said. "It's a member-owned store, so we should all have input.

This is what the anti-boycott group is worried about. Depending on how the referendum is phrased and what information—or disinformation—is disseminated, it could be Prop 8 all over again. At last week's meeting on the referendum, 13 people spoke against the boycott, while nine were for it. One of the anti-boycott organizers, Barbara Mazor, noted in an email: "This is an interesting result, but not really surprising, because the approximate 60:40 split, more or less, mirrors public opinion polls on Israel." Not much margin of error there. The group believes that regardless the outcome, the very consideration of a referendum could tear the co-op asunder.

And it might even hurt the people it is meant to help. After overhearing the banter between Messrs. Sepulveda and Hacket, Jordan Reed, sidled up to The Observer. He was one of the walkers stationed on the bench, and though he had his white iPod ear buds in the entire night, even as he walked people home, he had apparently heard the discussion at hand.

"It's not as simple as banning something from Israel," he said, preparing an argument The Observer had yet to hear. "It could be Palestinians who are harvesting or preparing the food. So just to say you're boycotting Israeli products, you might be hurting Palestinians, too."

Mr. Reed, for his part, isn't taking sides. "I've never been to a co-op meeting, and it's been my experience in the years of coming here that there are all kinds of cooky people here with their own agendas," he said. "I just shop here because it's a block and a half from my house."

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Claire Kelley's knowledge of the boycott. She was not unaware of it but had instead been following it closely and welcomes the debate.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC