The institution discovered it could not remain insulated from the world's deepest wounds.
In a Brooklyn institution built on the belief that commerce can carry conscience, seven thousand members of the Park Slope Food Coop voted by a two-thirds majority to stop selling Israeli goods — a decision decades in the making and months in the unraveling. The co-op, which has long treated its purchasing power as a moral instrument, found that extending that tradition to the Israel-Palestine conflict did not produce the solidarity it once had with South Africa or Pinochet's Chile, but instead exposed the fault lines running through progressive community life itself. What was decided in a single evening had cost the institution something harder to restore than a product line.
- A 67% supermajority brought the boycott to pass, but the margin concealed a membership that had spent months in open, sometimes violent conflict with itself.
- Advocacy tables were overturned in the street, threatening letters arrived at the co-op's offices, and suspicious substances were mailed to staff — a level of hostility this 50-year-old institution had never before required security measures to contain.
- Politicians running in a heated congressional primary entered the fray, antisemitic and anti-Arab remarks surfaced at general assemblies, and the co-op's own leadership was forced to publicly condemn language from both sides.
- Pro-boycott members framed the vote as a seamless continuation of the co-op's history of conscience-driven purchasing; opponents saw it as a politicization that threatened the community's cohesion and crossed into discriminatory territory.
- The boycott will take effect, removing roughly a dozen products from shelves, but the co-op now faces the harder question of whether the community that voted can still hold together.
On a Tuesday night in late May, some seven thousand members of the Park Slope Food Coop gathered virtually to decide whether their Brooklyn institution would pull roughly a dozen Israeli products — tahini, peppers, persimmons — from its shelves. After three hours and a final tally of sixty-seven percent in favor, the boycott passed. It was the end of a long argument, and the beginning of an uncertain aftermath.
Founded in 1973, the co-op had built its identity around the idea that a grocery store could be a moral actor. It had boycotted apartheid South Africa, Pinochet's Chile, and companies with poor labor records. The pro-boycott faction, organized as Park Slope Food Coop Members in Solidarity with Palestine and backed by more than two dozen groups including several Jewish organizations, argued this was simply the next chapter in that tradition. Longtime member Alyce Barr, a sponsor of the proposal, noted the co-op had conducted more than twenty boycotts before — this would continue until Israel complied with international law.
But the road to the vote had been corrosive. Two competing ballot measures split the membership into warring camps. Congressional candidates Dan Goldman and Brad Lander both spoke against the boycott. Palestinian advocate Mahmoud Khalil, a Brooklyn resident, defended it as the minimum response to what he described as ongoing civilian deaths and human rights violations. Somewhere between those positions, the conversation broke down: pro-boycott members reported homophobic and misogynist abuse from opponents; one member overturned an advocacy table; antisemitic and anti-Arab remarks surfaced at a general assembly; comparisons to Nazi atrocities were made.
The co-op's leadership condemned the hostility from all directions, and general manager Joe Szladek reminded members that difficult conversations had always been welcome — but not at the cost of basic civility. Staff received threatening letters, suspicious mail, and aggressive calls. Security measures were put in place that the institution had never before required. The boycott passed, and the products will come off the shelves. But the co-op that emerged from the vote is one that has learned it cannot remain a refuge from the world's deepest divisions — only a place where they arrive, eventually, like everything else.
On a Tuesday night in late May, about seven thousand members of the Park Slope Food Coop logged into a three-hour virtual meeting to decide whether their Brooklyn institution would stop selling roughly a dozen Israeli products—tahini, peppers, persimmons, and others sourced from Israel and occupied Palestinian settlements. When the votes were tallied, sixty-seven percent had chosen to proceed with the boycott, a decision that capped years of increasingly bitter argument over a distant conflict that had begun to threaten the very fabric of a place many members had belonged to for decades.
The Park Slope Food Coop, founded in 1973, has long occupied a particular niche in the American imagination: a monument to progressive values, stringent membership requirements, and the kind of self-seriousness that has made it the subject of countless jokes about Brooklyn life. For more than fifty years, it had maintained a tradition of socially conscious purchasing, boycotting products from apartheid South Africa, from Chile under Pinochet, and from companies with poor labor or environmental records. The pro-boycott faction, organized under the banner of Park Slope Food Coop Members in Solidarity with Palestine and backed by more than two dozen advocacy groups including several Jewish organizations, framed the Israeli boycott as a natural extension of this history. Alyce Barr, a member for nearly five decades and one of the proposal's sponsors, put it plainly: the co-op had conducted more than twenty boycotts before, and this one would simply continue that tradition until Israel complied with international law.
But the campaign to reach that vote had been anything but orderly. For weeks, two separate ballot measures—one calling for the boycott itself, the other eliminating a seventy-five percent supermajority requirement for future boycotts to pass—had divided the membership into warring camps. The debate drew attention from politicians with their own stakes in the matter. Dan Goldman and Brad Lander, two Democrats competing in a congressional primary where Israel had become a central issue, both spoke against the vote, though Lander took pains to say he was not instructing people how to cast their ballots. Palestinian advocate Mahmoud Khalil, a Brooklyn resident, defended the boycott as the bare minimum response to what he characterized as Israel's daily slaughter of civilians and human rights violations.
What had begun as a policy question had curdled into something uglier. Pro-boycott members reported being verbally abused by opponents, including with homophobic and misogynist slurs. One co-op member flipped over a boycott advocacy table and scattered materials into the street. The co-op's leadership, in an email shared with the press, condemned what it called both antisemitic and anti-Arab comments that had surfaced during the previous month's general assembly. One member had drawn a comparison between Israeli actions and Nazi atrocities. Another had invoked the phrase "Arab supremacy" in connection with October 7, 2023, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The co-op's general manager, Joe Szladek, reminded members that while the organization had always welcomed difficult conversations across deep divides, those conversations had to remain civil.
The deterioration had forced the co-op to take security measures it had never needed before. Staff reported receiving threatening letters, suspicious substances in the mail, aggressive phone calls and emails, repeated disruptions, and hostile social media campaigns. Szladek was careful to note that these precautions were not a response to any single viewpoint or group, but the need for them at all spoke to how thoroughly the conflict had fractured what had been, for many members, a refuge from the world's divisions. The vote had passed, the boycott would take effect, but the institution itself bore the marks of a community that had discovered it could not remain insulated from the world's deepest wounds.
Citas Notables
Our co-op has a long and proud tradition of more than 20 boycotts. We want to build on this tradition by boycotting Israeli products until Israel complies with international law.— Alyce Barr, 49-year member and boycott proposal sponsor
The co-op has always been a place for open discussion, including difficult and strongly held views across deep divides, but that discussion must remain grounded in civil discourse.— Joe Szladek, co-op general manager
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why did this particular vote matter so much to people? It's a food co-op, not a government.
Because for fifty years it had been a place where members' values and their shopping aligned. The boycott tradition was part of the co-op's identity. When you vote on something like this, you're not just deciding what to sell—you're deciding who the co-op is.
But the campaign got ugly fast. What changed?
The Gaza war made it impossible to treat this as an abstract principle. For some members, boycotting Israeli products was a moral imperative. For others, it felt like singling out one country, or like antisemitism wearing a different mask. Both sides stopped seeing the other as reasonable people with different values.
The co-op had to hire security. That's extraordinary.
Yes. Threatening letters, suspicious mail, coordinated online harassment. The institution that prided itself on civil discourse became a place where members were afraid. That's what happens when a conflict that feels distant suddenly becomes personal.
Did the vote actually settle anything?
It settled the formal question. But the rifts it exposed—between Jewish and Palestinian members, between different visions of what solidarity means—those didn't disappear when the votes were counted. If anything, they're deeper now.
What does this say about progressive communities more broadly?
That Gaza fractured something that felt solid. Places that thought they had worked through their politics discovered they hadn't worked through this one. And there's no obvious way to repair it from here.