"protest" news and stories

Though the South Beach, Florida store in question was closed for renovations this past Sunday, some mothers gathered at a Starbucks and held a "nurse-in" to protest the expulsion of a woman named Nicole Coombs from the store. Coombs claims that she was asked to leave for breast-feeding her 4-month old son. The Starbucks manager, however, maintains that Coombs was asked to leave for changing her baby's diaper on one of the tables in the cafe.

Coombs states that the store manager asked her to leave while she was breastfeeding. She said she would leave as soon as she was done, because she was so outraged that she did not want to remain in the store. Then, according to Coombs, she proceeded to change her baby's diaper. She does not deny that she changed the baby on the table where people ordinarily eat. Now, the store manager says that he did not say anything to Coombs about breast feeding, which is perfectly acceptable in the store. He contends that he approached her as she changed her baby on the table and asked her to stop. When she refused, she was asked to leave.

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Greenpeace is targeting European McDonald's as a catalyst for the destruction of the rain forest half a world away.  According to a report entitled "Eating up the Amazon," the eco-watchdog organization says that the soybeans that European fast food restaurants use to feed their chickens are grown in illegally deforested areas of the rain forest.

In Brazil, soybean farming has become so profitable that ranchers are selling off their now-valuable pasture land to farmers. The reason that this is illegal, says the group, is that there are regulations in Brazil that require landowners to keep 80 percent of their land forested. Once the ranchers have sold their cleared pasture land, they simply clear new land. Selling of chunks of their property means that they are keeping themselves under the 80 percent margin set by the government, but it does mean that the rain forest is getting smaller. There is also talk of ranchers and farmers using near-slave labor to harvest and tend the crops and an insinuation that the fast food companies might be simply turning away from the problem, if not outright promoting it.

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