AIDS Group Targets Coca-Cola

Members of the Harvard AIDS Coalition (HAC) staged a protest yesterday outside Mass. Hall, demanding that Harvard put pressure on the Coca-Cola Corporation to provide AIDS treatment for its workers in Africa.

The 25 protesters called for Coca-Cola to provide anti-retroviral drugs to all of the 100,000 Africans employed in subsidiary companies either wholly or partially owned by the corporation.

The rally was part of a Global Day of Action against Coca-Cola, with events taking place on campuses in six U.S. cities and 10 different countries.

HAC members said they chose Harvard as a target for their cause both because it has large contracts with Coca-Cola and because it is heavily invested in the company.

“We’re asking [University] President [Lawrence H.] Summers to publicly condemn Coke’s practices in Africa,” said Amanda S. Alexander ’04, co-founder of the Student Global AIDS Campaign, of which the HAC is one chapter.

The protesters say that a demand from an institution as prestigious as Harvard would force Coke to change. They also noted Harvard could use its vending machine contracts as leverage.

The protesters displayed a banner addressed to Summers, which read “Harvard University is heavily invested in Coca-Cola, making us complicit in hundreds of deaths from lack of treatment.”

University spokesperson Joe Wrinn declined to comment on Harvard’s investment in Coca-Cola. “We don’t talk about specific holdings and specific investments,” he said.

HAC leaders said the organization had previously sent an e-mail to Summers’ secretary to arrange a meeting with the president. They said they were told to address their concerns to the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, which protest organizer Florence T. Twu ’05 said does not meet until next year.

Coca-cola currently provides health care, including anti-retroviral drugs, to the 1,300 employees it directly employs in Africa, but not to the majority of the employees of its subsidiary companies, mostly bottlers.

“The white folks—the management—they get the treatment,” HAC Treasurer Robert T. Elliott ’04 said.

“If they can deliver Coca-Cola to every corner of the world, they can deliver AIDS drugs to every corner of the world,” he added.

Coca-Cola has published an official statement online, outlining and defending its current health care policies.

“Last month, The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation launched a program to assist the bottlers in expanding their existing health care programs to include anti-retroviral for their 60,000 employees,” it stated.

But information from Health GAP, the group that organized the Global Day of Action, said that the foundation’s new program is too slow-moving. They claim Coke has enrolled only eight of its 40 African subsidiary companies in the program.

“Coke’s shamefully slow pace contradicts the company’s rhetoric of compassion and action and makes us deeply skeptical about the rollout of the announced treatment program,” Alexander said.