I returned from a holiday with my family to read the news of the proposed boycott of Israeli products. It ruined my return home. I have shopped at the co-op regularly since my arrival in Port Townsend eight years ago. I am in once a week for my major marketing, then again and again to pick up what I forgot the first time!
The co-op is one of the jewels of Port Townsend. It is the place one comes to confidently get food that is wholesome, healthful, nourishing and, where possible, local. It is the place where one meets friends and neighbors. Where one buys flowers and plants. It is not a place one comes to to exercise one’s personal and particular political ideology. There are many other forums for that exercise.
The co-op is a community. Most of us are people who have deep humanitarian concerns, but we have differing beliefs and ideas. To impose the politics of one group of people on the whole risks tearing this precious community apart.
To repeat, the co-op is not and should not be made into a political forum. Further, to single out one country for human rights abuse when we live in a world where country after country, not excepting our own, commits human rights abuses is, in itself, an abuse.
ROSALIND RUSSELL
Port Townsend
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