The campaign to boycott ‘Killer Coke’ is spreading fast. The Coca-Cola boycott was launched July 22 by the Colombian food and beverage workers’ union, SINALTRAINAL, to shine a light on the murders of nine Coca-Cola trade unionists.

Nine trade unionists at Coca-Cola in Colombia are dead – murdered by paramilitaries with ties to Coca-Cola management. In response, the Colombia Action Network (CAN) is calling on student, community, religious and anti-war groups, as well as unions, to join protests against the Coca-Cola Company beginning July 22.

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following letter from Liliany (Lily) Obando who is a Colombian trade union organizer with FENSUAGRO, the largest peasant and agricultural workers federation in Colombia. She writes academic papers and makes documentary films about the struggles of Colombian campesinos. On Aug. 8, Lily was arrested and imprisoned by the ‘anti-terrorism unit’ of the Colombian National Police. She has been charged with “rebellion” and “managing resources related to terrorist activities.” Her story is tragically familiar in a country where thousands of trade unionists have been threatened, arrested or killed by the U.S.-backed Colombian government. The following letter will be read from the stage and at the Fight Back! forum on Colombia at the School of the Americas demonstration in Fort Benning, Georgia Nov 21-23 by speakers for the Colombia Action Network.

In Colombia, the people are winning. The U.S. war machine is losing plane after plane to a growing popular insurgency. On April 7, a U.S. pilot died when his plane crashed while spraying deadly chemicals on fields in rural Colombia. The U.S. State Department refused comment on assumptions that the plane was shot down by rebels.

Chicago, IL – More than one hundred people marched here, May 3, to protest the killing of Colombian trade unionists by Coca-Cola's death squads. Marching through the mostly Mexican neighborhood of Pilsen, many people on the streets chanted with the protesters or stood and applauded in solidarity with Colombian trade unionists.

Barrancabermeja, Colombia – It is 6:00 a.m. and one thousand oil workers surround the leaders of their union, USO (Union Sindical Obrero de la Industria del Petrolero). At the entrance to Ecopetrol, the national oil company, Jose Fernando Ramirez, the human rights director for USO, starts chanting, “Long live the oil workers union!” and then “Down with Plan Colombia!” Workers thunder their response.

Tom Burke of Fight Back! interviewed Luis Adolfo, a leader of Colombian Coca-Cola workers. The heroism of Coca-Cola workers who are standing up to company-hired death squads has inspired support from workers across Colombia, and around the world.

More U.S. Special Forces are arriving in Colombia. Supposedly on a mission to train members of the Colombian military, they will be assisting efforts to guard a major oil pipeline owned by the U.S.-based multinational corporation, Occidental Petroleum. Insurgents who are fighting to free Colombia from foreign control often target the pipeline.

Tom Burke and Zeno Wood of the Colombia Action Network conducted the following interview with Colombian trade union leader Hector E. Castro. Castro is a leader of the Central Workers' Federation (CUT) and the Death Squad Coca-Cola Campaign in the U.S.

With the election of Alvaro Uribe Velez as president, the U.S. media says that Colombia is entering a new phase in “the war against terrorism.” President-elect Velez's platform calls for an end to negotiations with the armed insurgency and for a military solution to the conflict. The big story that's not being told is that more than 50% of registered voters abstained in the election. Community organizations in Colombia suggest that close to 80% of the electorate in the countryside opted out. With right-wing paramilitaries monitoring voting in many areas in the countryside, and Army tanks rumbling through poor neighborhoods in the cities, the election results are anything but a popular mandate to expand Colombia's civil war.