Read Online Belching Out the Devil by Mark Thomas - Free Book Online

he says in a kindly manner, ‘I’ll vote for yew. Who yew want me t’vote for?’
    â€˜No, I’m all right, thank you.’
    â€˜I voted twice already today, I did it for my friend here,’ he says, gesturing to a man beside him in a black pleated leather jacket and a bobble hat. ‘They didn’t recognise me,’ he continues.
    â€˜They didn’t?’
    â€˜Nah, one time I went in backwards.’

    New York City Councilman Hiram Monserrate represents District 21 in Queens. Queens is across the East river from Manhattan Island, but on his side of the river the houses and salaries are much, much smaller. Queens is dirty and quirky. It is essentially a working-class area, you can tell this by the significant increase in ‘Beware of the Dog’ signs. Households tend to sit on the side streets off the main road, expressways tend to sit over the main roads and the traffic from LaGuardia airport sits on top of it all.
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    Just off East Elmhurst, on one of those side streets, sits Councilman Monserrate’s office, opposite a parking bay for school buses. It has a sign in the glass front window, ‘ Por favor registrese para votar hoy ’, a polite reminder to his Latino electorate: don’t forget to vote, folks. Inside, some plastic chairs and a sofa provide a waiting area for his constituents. The rest of the office is small and open plan by necessity.
    Six staff members sit at desks, handling casework, phoning housing departments, debt agencies or whoever needs to be called off or brought in. Councilman Monserrate’s office is tucked away at the back.
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    The councilman does not appear to be a typical corporate critic, if indeed such a thing exists. Monserrate served in the US Marine Corps for four years, spent twelve years in the NYPD and to be honest he looks like his CV. He is stocky and strong-jawed, with a neck you could moor tugboats to; and I’d bet if you were able to snap him in half you’d find the word COP running all the way through his body, like a stick of Brighton rock. His politics is that of a Queens Democrat, a combination of liberalism on issues like immigration mixed with a strong populist streak. He appeared on breakfast TV pitching a notion that New York should be nicknamed Gotham City, as he was inspired to fight crime by his boyhood hero Batman. The idea has all the
political rigour of renaming London Beanotown, but in terms of political PR it underlines his police credentials and ‘record of public service’. So in the context of American politics he is not yet part of the establishment but boy, does he want to be.
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    Despite this, the councilman has been a persistent critic of The Coca-Cola Company since 2004. He worked with New York City’s pension fund about how they might use their stockholding in Coke to influence the company, tabling critical resolutions at shareholders’ meetings. He has spoken out against the company on US campuses, with students subsequently boycotting Coke.
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    â€˜So you want to talk about Coca-Cola…’ he says as he drops his black overcoat across one chair, scrapes another across the floor and leans back in it.
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    The councilman was introduced to Sinaltrainal’s officials in New York in 2003 and found their tale compelling enough to help organise a delegation to Colombia in 2004. ‘My initial impulse: I wanted to know more. At the very least it seemed to me there had to be some truth in what the workers were telling me. That labour reps and workers were being killed.’
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    While planning for the delegation, Councilman Monserrate decided he ought to invite The Coca-Cola Company along too. ‘We have to have some fairness,’ he explains, ‘they were invited to participate. They were invited to visit the plants with us. They were invited to join the meetings and join in the discussions. They could have been a partner in this delegation: they