I’m currently organising a petition together with Finnish Kurdish organisations to HOK Elanto, a cooperative that is also the largest retailer in Finland.
Could CoTech organise a similar petition in the UK for the Co-op group and other coop retailers?
Here’s a potential to do list based on what I’m doing in Finland:
Build a website for the campaign or start a petition using some of the petition website. The petition is for the retailer to look into whether they could buy goods from Rojava.
Contact a list of organisations sympathetic to Kurdish cause
Contact all the member elected representatives in the coop
Start collecting signatures outside coop stores and in potentially sympathetic events (such as demonstrations and gatherings)
Hand the petition to the co-op membership council and ask them to do a motion on it
On a similar subject, here is an email i received earlier today. If anyone wants to get involved, i will forward you further info
-------- Forwarded Message --------
You will all by now be aware what is happening, and that Turkey is bombarding and attacking Rojava. There are some big resistance coordinations being formed now, and we would like to start mobilising from the perspective of cooperative and solidarity economy movements and networks.
We were thinking it would be good to start with an initial chat between people who are interested in making a plan for this together, to share ideas and resources and coordinate our efforts.
We have made a poll of dates for an initial online chat, for example using Zoom [ask Cath for link]
i’m sure, just email them directly to ask for the doodle link. sorry, i realise my edit of Jo’s original email (to contact me for the link) is somewhat daft. Their email addresses are in my original post @calummackervoy
Hi @LeoSammallahti here’s a response to the petition idea from Jo at SEA:
Also about the subject title, I don’t see any way that it would currently be possible for UK coops to buy anything from Rojava, unfortunately, due to both embargo and war