Sandeep spent two days in Atlanta, speaking with local communities and presenting two separate talks on the impact of Coke on local communities and on the India-Pakistan Peace process. Some notes about these are included.
1. Oct 4th: Coca Cola Stories: Unethical Practices?
a. We left Nandlal’s name/ bio in the flyer even after finding out he couldn’t make it to make sure people would hear his name and about his work.
b. This was an AID event and we had an interesting experience organizing it since Atlanta is a Coke town. We were worried about the turn-out because Oct 4th was the start of Ramadan, Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) and Navaratri/Dushehra. There was also a very large event around Katrina and race relations with some well-known speakers on the panel. We did loose some attendees and many local activists to the last event but we still had close to 70 people attending. At least 3 of them were from Coke.
c. We started with the documentary film (which gives a good visual of what things look like in India and what happened during demonstrations in India but the feedback we got was that it could be worked on a bit – especially as a stand alone tool)
d. Sandeep’s spoke v. briefly after the film and went into Q&A which was the most engaging part of the talk as we had people there with many varying views. Coke folks also started raising issues which Sandeep handled very calmly and categorically which really won over the people attending the event. I’ll add specifics in the write-up.
e. FYI – Oct/November – Some worker rights groups are planning a series of talks about Coca-Cola’s practices around the world: including Turkey, India, Africa, Columbia etc… They called me yesterday. Their solidarity action is on Oct 24th and the speakers will be touring in Oct –November. I’ll forward info as I get specifics if you don’t have it already.
f. FYI 2 - Several people who couldn’t attend this talk have called me since thanking AID for organizing this talk.

2. Oct 5th: People to People: Indo-Pak Peace Initiatives
a. This was primarily organized by SA4U (South Asians for Unity) with AID and Emory University’s Asian Studies Department.
b. There was a delegation of students from S. Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan) that the State Department’s education department of hosting that also attended the event. There was food for people fasting but most of the Muslim members of SA4U didn’t show up to the event due to Ramadan. The attendance wasn’t as good for this event. There were 25-30 people but they were very attentive & participatory.
c. Videos from the peace march were shown and then Sandeep was introduced. He spoke about the march, peace movement in the region and then moved to Q&A.
d. Again, the Q&A got a bit heated up with a passionate student from India and one from Pakistan expressing strong views. Some one shouted Pakistan hai, hai from the outside and I and an SA4U organizer went outside but the student had taken off right after shouting the slogan. The general tone was of trying to build a model and figuring out how to involve people in talks of peace and mutual benefit. Some good questions were raised about how much impact the march has had, the affect of economic imbalance and involvement of US in the region etc.