BERKELEY, Calif. — The great Berkeley coffee war has turned into a conscience-bruising roast.
Measure O, the internationally watched ballot initiative, would require all cups of coffee sold in the city to be “fair trade,” organic or shade-grown. Ground coffee and whole beans are not affected.
In the hothouse of campaign images, a vote for O would put a Starbucks barrista behind bars; a vote against would starve the child of a peasant coffee farmer.
Voters are told the measure would put handcuffs on the Statue of Liberty by depriving consumers of freedom of choice. Not supporting it is equated to destroying the rain forests.
Never has such a coffee law been on a ballot, which is one reason why it has touched a nerve far beyond the city’s borders. The fear and the hope is that as Berkeley goes, so goes the geopolitical neighborhood.
Remember the grape boycott and the anti-apartheid divestment campaign, say the measure’s supporters. Berkeley was the first city to endorse those movements, which, respectively, strengthened the United Farm Workers and doomed apartheid in South Africa.
So alarmed are Starbucks, Peet’s and the National Coffee Association that they each had spent at least $10,000 as of the latest filing period to defeat the measure.
Their biggest thrust so far is a glossy mailer sent to Berkeley households this week showing a man being led away in handcuffs by police.
“The crime: serving the wrong kind of coffee,” the ad says. “The punishment: six months in jail.”
“That’s so misleading,” responded the measure’s author, Rick Young, a recent graduate of the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law, who now works for a San Francisco law office. “Nobody’s going to spend six months in jail unless they beg the judge.”
Violations of the proposed ordinance would be a misdemeanor, punishable by fines up to $100 and up to six months in jail. Enforcement would be up to the city manager’s office and could range from complaint-driven monitoring with existing inspectors to hiring a special inspector.