An Inside View To Coca Cola's Share Holders Meeting

Last year, with the help of the Killer Coke Campaign, I purchased a small amount of Coca Cola stock in an effort to attend their annual share holders meeting. Last year around 30 of us decided to crash the meeting and  disrupt the CEO every time he spoke half truth or straight up lied; there we lots of disruptions.

This year organizing for the share holders meeting had to unfortunately take a back seat to a lot of the housing justice work AFSC is engaged in. The day before this year's share holders meeting a small group of us decided to attend the meeting and try to focus on getting to the mic to ask questions.

From the very beginning of this years share holders meeting it was very clear that this years meeting was to be extremely controlled and scripted. When I attempted to enter the meeting I was told that I wasn't on the list, despite that fact that I'm a share holder. I could in fact easily overhear one of the Coca Cola staff people pull the person who was working the registration table aside and say something like, "That's one of those Occupy people." Share holders meetings have traditionally been a space where criticisms and concerns about policy and direction are discussed.

After I called the company that holds my shares of Coca Cola and had them fax over proof of ownership I was finally allowed in.

The meeting began with a well rehearsed "impromptu" interview with Warren Buffet who owns an enormous amount of Coca Cola stock. Buffet claimed that Coca Cola's best years are ahead of them, that Coca Cola's happiness in a bottle, and that children being born today will be the luckiest in global history.

Of course Coca Cola isn't happiness in a bottle, it's high fructose corn syrup water that happened to be contained inside of very well branded container. Coca Cola's sales have not gone up, their profit has. What does that mean? It means they have been creative about how to cut from the bottom line, destroy competition, and stop their workforce from organizing. Whether that's firing staff in Atlanta for communicating to union organizers, attempting to force employees to watch anti-union propaganda, turning a blind eye to child labor in their sugar cane supply chain, ignoring the murder of bottling plant staff in Columbia who were trying to organize the workforce, intimidating college campus organizers and faculty for trying to ban all plastic bottles, I could go on and on.

We were then treated to a 30 minute feel good session about this new water filtration system that will bring thousands of gallons of water to struggling pockets of the earth. They brought out the inventor to the stage, who apparently also invented the beloved segway. What they failed to explain clearly is that Coca Cola has no plans to give away all this water to struggling people, they plan to sell it. Selling water in third world nations could actually represent Coca Cola's future, as more and more of the worlds water supply in now contaminated.

When the we transitioned into the business part of the meeting, which should have been the main part of the meeting but was instead rushed through, they allowed for only six questions from the audience, just six. Out of six, four of the questions were critical of Coca Cola.

Coca Cola bluntly denied criticism about their human rights violations, they also denied that there's anything unhealthy in their beverages. After refusing to address shareholder concerns the CEO launched into a 30 minute feel good session about how great Coca Cola is for sponsoring the special Olympics. Don't get me wrong, I think the special Olympics has great merit, but there was something very unsettling about the photo op they created at the share holders meeting by bringing up special Olympics athletes, putting coke bottles in their hands and having them do a toast on stage to Coca Cola. I, like everyone else gave these brave athletes a standing ovation, I also teared up at the thought that these athletes were being used as a coke PR stunt.

Undercover Cops Exposed By Rebel Diaz at SOAW 2012

In one of the most dramatic moments at this year's School of the Americas Watch rally/vigil in Columbus Georgia, political hip hop group Rebel Diaz called out a group of eight undercover law enforcement officers at the Columbus Convention Center Saturday night while workshops, info shares, and other SOAW related activities where going down.

Members of the group recognized several of the officers from pictures taken over the last few years.

The officers where checking out the Killer Coke campaign table when Rebel Diaz tapped one of them on the shoulder and asked what organization they were with. The group had no response. The Rebel Diaz crew then called out the group as being undercover cops, and snooping on human rights activists. At first they stood there looking confused as a large crowd began to surround them. It was clear that the officers had attempted, poorly attempted, to blend in with the crowd. One of them was even wearing a pro-marijuana shirt.

Finally the officer who appeared to be in charge admitted that they were in fact undercover cops who where assigned to run surveillance on the movement. Clearly the officers had been collecting information about all the various groups giving workshops and tabling at this years action.

Things got heated for a moment and nobody knew for sure what was going to happen next. The officers stood together, projecting a fairly cavalier attitude. What happened next was just pure joy.

From around the corner, almost out of nowhere this beautiful group of young mariachi performers surrounded the cops and stared playing and dancing ensued, they were joined moments later by a puppet who danced around the cops. The tough cavalier attitude of the officers quickly transformed into confusion at first, and then what appeared to be shame. One officer actually seemed to be on the verge of tears.

What started out as a potentially scary situation was transformed into a beautiful moment. SOAW dominated the situation, while officers where forced out of the shadows. The officers where then corralled into the Killer Coke campaign's workshop where they were treated to a film screening about Coca Cola's human rights violations in Columbia, after which they left the convention center.


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee

The Two Faces Of Coca Cola

Today I joined about 30 others at the annual Coca Cola shareholders meeting at the Cobb Galleria. It was part of an effort organized by the Killer Coke campaign and Occupy Atlanta to shine a light on the gross injustices.

The 30 of us all came with Coca Cola with stocks in our names, which gave us the right to enter the meeting. It was my first experience on the inside of a shareholder meeting, and I must say it was truly a disturbing experience. Coca Cola's CEO, Muhtar Kent, proceeded over the meeting, which was full of gross false claims.

The face of Coke that Kent painted was one that placed people over profit, strives to be a Steward of the environment, provides children with healthy lifestyle choices, and provides good jobs around the globe. This is public face pushed with a strong PR campaign is a facade.

The face we know is quite different.

Although Coke spends millions of dollars every year on advertising to market their products with a positive and happy spin, a quick look inside their business practices shows that that like so many corporations, profits take precedence over ethics, morality, and justice.

Coca Cola’s crimes reach all the way across the globe. In Latin America, they have been accused of hiring paramilitary forces to torture, intimidate, and even murder union organizers in countries like Columbia and Guatemala. They profit off of child labor used in the sugar cane fields of El Salvador. In Mexico, they use their bought off pals in the government to control the market, making competition against Coke virtually non-existent. In a country where almost every citizen has access to Coca Cola products, over 12 million people in Mexico don’t have access to clean water. In India, their plants contaminate and dry up the water sources, devastating farmers, towns, and the people that live in them. In China they’ve been known to have deplorable working conditions in their factories, and benefit off of prison labor. The list goes on and on.

Their crimes are not just international though. Coca Cola Company and its executives are a classic case of the 1% here at home. Coca-Cola sits on the board of ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) that produces legislation designed to limit workers rights, deny climate change, keep private prisons full, restrict access to voting, and many other pro-business, anti-people agendas. They spend millions of dollars lobbying our representatives and agencies to ensure that their products can be sold without regulation. They aggressively market sugary beverages to children that have no nutritional value, and are directly tied to record high rates of obesity and diabetes. They avoid warning consumers of known carcinogens in their products, such as aspartame, BPA, and 4-methylimidazole. Their executives, like CEO Muhtar Kent, receive millions of dollars in compensation each year, while average workers around the world are barely paid a living wage, and any attempts to collectively bargain for rights are quickly abolished. And of course they avoid paying their fair share of taxes with billions of dollars held in off-shore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands.

Coca-Cola also has a long history of racial discrimination, from their support of the apartheid government in South Africa, to countless instances of discrimination here at home. Case after case, workers have complained about the rampant racism that occurs in Coca Cola’s factories, as well as the lack of opportunity for minorities to advance within the company. And although they lack respect for minorities in the workplace, they still aggressively market their harmful products to African Americans and Latinos at higher rates than other groups leading to higher rates of obesity and diabetes. Most recently, through their relationship with ALEC, they have shown their support for the “Stand Your Ground Law” in Florida that is being used as a defense in the murder of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17 year old African American boy. Many credit this ALEC legislation as the reason Trayvon’s killer remained free for weeks.

So it's painfully clear, after sitting through the two hour shareholder meeting that there are two very different faces of Coca Cola. While Coca Cola may spend billions on a friendly public face, there actual behavior make it quite clear the Coca Cola cares much more about profit than they do people, the environment, it's workers, or children.

During the meeting there were several moments that when the 30 of us decided to disrupt the proceedings by calling out blatant lies made from Coke's CEO. After feeling like our concerns weren't addressed we all decided to take our questions straight to  Coca Cola's headquarters on North Avenue where we held a picket at the entrance of the building.


Tim Franzen


American Friends Service Committee

Sugar Water, Murder, and Water Contamination

Next week (4/25) at 9:30am, Atlanta's biggest corporation, Coca Cola, is hosting their annual share holders meeting at the Cobb County Galleria.

Though you may not enjoy drinking Coke, Sprite, or Mello Yella, you most likely drink Coke products whether you know it or not, they own more drinks stocked on the shelves then any other corporation. Coke is the Earth's most recognizable brand.

In Atlanta, Coke's international headquarters, Coke is mostly loved by folks.

There's a very dark side to the world of coke, one that includes destroying other countries natural resources, and straight up murdering thousands of Latin American union organizers fighting for a living wage.

A few days ago AFSC played host to a film screening of "The Coca Cola Case". The film screening was organized by Occupy Atlanta and was part of their education campaign leading up to Coke's share holder meeting.


Watching the film had a profound effect on everyone who attended. The sentiments in the room drove folks to not only committ to never drinking coke products again, but to also show the film to their networks, and show up at next weeks share holder meeting.

Occupy Atlanta plans to be attend the annual share holders meeting.


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee


Tim Franzen
American Friends Service Committee