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What I learned at the Whole Foods protest
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Tranquil is a word that probably best describes the protest that took place at the Westwood area Whole Foods, Friday.
By my rough approximation, all of four protesters, two of them in their UCLA medical school lab coats, came out on behalf of universal health care in front of the store. Contrary to what has transpired at many of the town hall meetings in recent weeks, this protest was hopelessly placid and uneventful. John Cho, of Harold and Kumar fame, was even there doing a little shopping.
Whole Foods certainly prepared for mayhem to ensue. According to the Boycott Whole Foods website and facebook page, the protest was scheduled to take place from 12:30 to 1:30 post meridian, and by noon Whole Foods’ employees, PR representatives, beefed up security force (now totaling four) and the LAPD (one squadron car sitting across the street) were all in full effect.
However, not much action really materialized, and a number of factors may have been responsible for the protest’s low turnout – although, even the much more publicized West Hollywood protest only brought out about four legitimate protesters, according to some eye witnesses. Both store representatives and protesters suspected that the heat may have kept people away.
In addition to the heat, the Westwood Whole Foods location is built in such a way that the sidewalk outside – where protesters must operate because of private property laws – is extremely thin. That slim sidewalk is also used by canvassers, today from Amnesty International, who are also looking to spread a message (and bring in some cash) from Whole Foods customers. To compound that misgiving, a majority of the store’s customers enter through the attached parking structure that is on the North side of the building and is also private property. This kept many customers from even realizing that a protest was taking place. John Cho certainly had no idea.
In the end, it turned out that the protesters weren’t necessarily protesting Whole Foods, but demonstrating their support for single payer health care. Adam Saby, one of the aforementioned medical students demonstrating outside, summed it up best.
“Our mission is really to educate the customers of Whole Foods about where their money is flowing, [and] into whose pockets,” he said. “Whole foods tends to get a lot of liberal leaning folks – progressive types – so we just felt that it’s kind of our duty to let them know who they’re supporting. We don’t feel like the CEO’s views are in line with the customer base and we’re just here to educate the customers about that.”
Given that stance and the fact that this protest turned out to be more about disseminating information, allowing both sides to present their views (Whole Foods put together their own little fact sheet to hand out to customers) and encouraging public debate on an important issue, I can’t really take issue with it. I may have jumped to conclusions in my previous post and while I don’t and will never agree with boycotting a business because of differing political ideologies, I like that the people involved in the demonstration at Whole Foods used the opportunity to educate rather than incite. Given all the attention paid to the trivial these days – let us not forget the one they call Miley Cyrus – it’s rather refreshing to see insightful public debate on an important political issue and a political opinion (single payer) that hasn’t gotten a lot of love from the media.
There was even a self-described “proud socialist” outside. How many of those do you see in the news these days?
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