Ashland Food Co-Op and White Silence

I worked for the Ashland Food CO-OP from late August 2019 to June 29th 2020. I quit because the CO-OP in it’s chosen actions, and through its inaction, is racist. It is racist in action because it allows racist rhetoric to be freely spoken in it’s workplace under it’s protection and, simultaneously, it provides no protection to the employees that oppose that racism. Those that use their speech to oppose racism are retaliated against and the Ashland Food Co-Op chooses to dedicate it’s efforts towards maintaining a comfortable silence. I stood up to a coworker that was a white supremacist. That individual retaliated with the support of my racist supervisors. When I officially reported this: the Human Relations Manager Sharon van Duker and the General Manager of AFC Emile Amarotico made no true effort to investigate.

[Recordings on the Recordings page and other documents on the Documentation page]

The CO-OP keeps people in its employ that actively spread white supremacist rhetoric in the workplace. What’s more, AFC protects these people. This is easy to do because the most of the white CO-OP employees are ignorant to the problem, sympathetic to these ideas, or are unwilling to say or do anything about them, for fear of harassment or loss of employment.  

There is a discrimination policy in the employee agreement that they claim is there to protect the non-majority from harassment but it has no practical actions or protections to offer, other than going to the HR Manager to report incidents. This is useless because the Human Relations Dept, specifically its Manager Sharon Van Duker; is completely unwilling to do anything other than dissuade or dismiss complaints.

My coworker in the Prepared Foods Dept, Pete Schwartz, would on multiple occasions, circulate white supremacist rhetoric in the workplace. This rhetoric included: the idea that the USA is devoid of racial issues, advocation of concentration camps because we had to “take care of our own kind”, and (in February 2020) attempting to circulate the claim that an unnamed study existed that indicated that East Asian people were more susceptible to COVID.

On the first incident, I contested and debated his statements. Nothing under the Co-Op’s guidelines prohibits this. Political discussions and debates are not prohibited. Schwartz argued that there was a necessity to lock migrant Guatemalan children in Ice Detention camps without trial, so if anything, Schwartz was in violation of Co-Op Guidelines regarding Hate Speech. The Diversity Guidelines are useless though. They’re not enforced. Schwartz was more confrontational in his demeanor as the interaction progressed. As I left work he made a point of getting in my personal space, following me out the building before breaking off. I went to HR Manager Sharon van Duker the day afterward and told her everything that happened in that incident. All that she told me in regards to the incident was that we would see how well Schwartz did in Diversity Courses. I would see no action on the part of HR. Schwartz would continue to circulate racist and xenophobic rhetoric in the workplace.

The AFC Diversity Courses that Van Duker referred to, are a joke. They are out of date and out of touch to an extreme degree. The co-op chose to open its first class with a white spiritualist leading a silent prayer to “The Native Americans”, as though they were all gone now. Like they were elves. Ceremonial chimes were rung. The courses skim over the idea of systematic racism or the need for anti-racist action to counter racist actions. Instead, they focus on the vague idea that people just need to care more and feel more. This is vague and provides no concrete resources to people at-risk of discrimination in the workplace. The co-op tosses some token courses toward it’s white guilt, pats itself on the back and then sends it’s employees back to their jobs with no serious effort put into evaluating if its workforce actually gives a damn. After the diversity courses nothing changed. The courses did nothing to reach racist participants and the racist participants new they could sit through them and then continue to say and do whatever they wanted in the workplace in the knowledge that nothing would be done about it and that their coworkers of color would be too afraid of retaliation to say anything. If anything, the Diversity Courses of AFC encouraged the bigots. The courses demonstrated the Co-Op’s unwillingness to enforce its claimed commitment to diversity or it’s anti-discrimination policies. The diversity courses also misrepresented the idea of a pro-diversity workplace as obnoxious white liberal fantasy as opposed to what it is: the bare minimum of being decent.

I waited for HR to follow up with Pete Schwartz. Nothing changed. I now had a good idea as to what Schwartz was. I also knew that HR would not take any actions. I could not in good conscience leave my co-workers ignorant of Schwartz’ ideology and I was under no obligation to remain silent about what he had publicly said in the workplace. I warned the coworkers that I knew were of higher risk to white supremacists than my, white male, self. I went to coworkers of color and coworkers that I knew to be of Semitic heritage I told them what happened to me and I warned them to be careful around Schwartz. I advocated no hostile action toward Schwartz but I made sure that my peers could make safe and informed decisions regarding him. That was truly the bare minimum of what should have been done. The Ashland Food Co-Op was perfectly alright with allowing a man, that advocated locking children in concentration camps, to continue to work beside Latin-American and Jewish employees without even warning said employees of his hostile ideology. Ideology that was anathema to their existence. The Co-Op was fully aware and had no discernable concerns.

In February 2020, when COVID infections were being initially identified in the US and Europe, Schwartz was in the Prepared Foods Dept kitchen trying to get coworkers to ask him about a fictional study on COVID that supposedly indicated that East Asian people were more susceptible to the virus. Schwartz was spreading xenophobic misinformation at the height of COVID paranoia. The idea that a study could have enough data to be remotely complete so early into the pandemic was blatant lies. Schwartz was trying to legitimize xenophobia against a minority during a crisis. I called him a xenophobe for this, because that was the truth, and he stopped circulating this misinformation when I was in the room.

What would happen next requires context about the reality of the Language policy within AFC. There is a policy where-in employees are not supposed to swear in the workplace. Some people follow it, but in reality everybody else ignores it and employs whatever language they please, up to and including racial slurs. The policy was only ever enforced in the Prepared Foods Dept when such language was used in earshot of customers OR when a supervisor wanted personal leverage against an employee. I played by the workplace rules most of the time and didn’t use adult language. This is relevant because a white supremacist tried to threaten me in the workplace and I told him to fuck himself. My direct supervisors: Reagan Roach and Jinelle Wendling, HR Manager Sharon van Duker, and General Manager Emile Amarotico would each for their own reasons decide to focus their moral concern on the fact that I said fuck rather than the fact that a white supremacist employee was threatening people.

A white supremacist threatened me in the workplace BUT when I responded I said fuck.

My supervisors threatened to fire me under false pretenses and told me white supremacists and black people suffer the same and deserve the same protections, BUT I said fuck.

My one use of the word fuck would be one of the Co-Op’s main excuses to do nothing. Because apparently at Ashland Food Co-Op you can compare a black person to a Nazi but you can’t say fuck because that’s obscene.

I wrote what happened next in the Incident Report that I directly submitted to HR Manager Sharon Van Duker, (The full version is included in Documentation)

                …It was a few weeks ago, clocking in to work, that I witnessed Schwartz engaged in an aggressive argument with Justin Stahl. Schwartz was in a similar threatening posture to my experience in the breakroom and Stahl was clearly uncomfortable. I walked into work with Stahl and asked if he was alright. He confirmed that he was and that he had been arguing with Schwartz over something he had said that was incredibly ignorant. I expressed sympathy and related my own experiences.

It was later that day while I was working that I would see Schwartz get into Stahl’s personal space and speak to him in a body language and tone that made me concerned that Stahl was being harassed. I would find out later from Stahl that in fact they were having a tense but work related conversation and that I was, in that instance, mistaken. I acknowledge that error, as I acknowledge that I should have gone straight to a supervisor. Instead I asked Schwartz directly if he was, “Harassing people again.” In reference to his behavior months ago in the breakroom. Schwartz then growled at me to “Stay out of it.” I took that to be threatening and responded from my gut with an expletive directed at Schwartz. I want to make it explicitly clear that this event was an example of my failure to act within guidelines but I would argue that it is relatively minor and not nearly grounds for outright termination. I state this because Roach insists that it potentially is and that this instance be conflated with my previous actions regarding Schwartz that this occurrence is in quality no way distinct from my exercise of within-guideline free speech refuting Schwartz’ racist statements or my exercise related to informing my coworkers of Schwartz’ statements. I am perfectly willing to accept disciplinary action in regards to crude language in the workplace but due to the events within Roach’s office which I am about to relate, I can no longer trust that such disciplinary action is not disproportionate reprisal.  

A few days later I was called into the office of Chef Reagan Roach. Jinelle Wendling was present in the room and would sit in the corner watching and listening to the events in silence. Roach did not tell me the reason for my being in the office he instead asked me why I thought I was there. He listed a few names including that of Schwartz and asked me if I could recall having recent issues with any of them. I was disoriented by this but was expecting to hear about my recent incident with Schwartz so I volunteered it and acknowledged that my reaction to events was not the best and that I was all for correcting my work procedure in response to potential harassment or threats. It was then that Roach informed me that I could be fired for this incident. He then leapt into explaining to me that Schwartz had complained about harassment on my part towards him. He cited my previously listed actions as constituting harassment. I explained to him that these were merely measured reactions to Schwartz’ hate speech in the workplace. Roach claimed to be unaware so I informed him of my past interactions with Schwartz and his attempts to disseminate white supremacist ideology in the workplace. Roach insisted that white supremacy was protected under the COOP’s Diversity guidelines and that the matter was entirely political and had to be kept out of the workplace. I told him no, it was a matter of my coworkers safety. Roach then destroyed any trust I might have had in this matter by telling me that not only did white supremacy deserve the same protection as minority employees, but in fact proponents of white supremacy, suffered discrimination on par with black people.

Quote: “We could turn back the clock one-hundred years ago and it would be people in the workplace going up to other employees and saying, ‘Hey, this employee is black.’”

Ignoring the obvious fact that Black People still suffer far worse discrimination and challenges TODAY than a white supremacist (often BECAUSE of white supremacists); I have another quote that relates directly to the state of discrimination against Black People 100 years ago:

Zachariah Walker screamed before the mob threw him into the fire. Walker, a black iron worker from the South, was already bloodied from a recent surgery that removed a bullet from his jaw, and was agonized by the experience of being dragged hundreds of feet from his hospital bed to a field where a fire had been built by a white mob. “For God’s sake, give a man a chance!” Walker yelled. It did not matter. They threw him in.

The lynching of Zachariah Walker happened in the bustling steel town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, on the night of August 13th, 1911.

Source: https://timeline.com/the-forgotten-lynching-of-zachariah-walker-was-one-of-our-most-shameful-and-it-was-in-the-north-678871b13f2d

You might understand my shock and anger at Roach’s statement and the complete breakdown in my trust that he was capable of being an impartial or fair judge in this matter either from ignorance or prejudice. I pressed him on why he would say such a thing to me and if he understood how wrong it was or how dangerous it was. He insisted on it. I took him through how that lays a false equivalency between a Nazi and an oppressed minority. A group that wants the chance to wipe the other off the face of the earth and another group that was merely born into their life and trying to live with dignity. Roach insisted that what he was saying to me was true and there was no difference between the two. Insisting that it was all trivial political difference that had no place in the workplace. He made multiple implications that if I did not stop telling people what Schwartz was that my employment would be terminated. I put him on the spot and asked him to confirm if this was the case. He said yes. Wendling at no point raised any objections. Given my disorienting circumstances I merely wanted to end the interaction to decide what I was going to do. Roach and Wendling inquired if I understood. I said I did. They asked me if I had any questions. I said no. I exited the office and then decided that I needed to leave work. I spoke with [name redacted] and I agreed to take the point and just go home.

                Upon reviewing the COOP Guidelines and Employees Agreement I know now that the actions taken by Roach, Wendling, and Schwartz are not only unethical but in violation of company guidelines. I hope that the Ashland Food COOP will live up to it’s promised commitment to diversity and ethical business practices. Because action and follow-through will be required.

-Reece Bredl *Prepared Foods Department*

I went home. I reviewed the Employee’s Agreement with Ashland Food Co-Op; Specifically it’s Discrimination and Harassment Prevention Policy and Complaint Procedures. (Full version in Documentation).

The policy was explicitly clear that complaints of harassment and retaliation against an employee should be directly reported to the HR Manager ASAP and that a prompt, thorough, impartial and confidential investigation would follow.

It also stipulates that such investigations should and would be handled by qualified and impartial personnel and that external investigators could be called upon if internal personnel lacked the qualification or impartiality to conduct the investigation. Duker would prove herself to be unqualified and lacking impartiality investigating my complaint. That the Co-Op considered her performance acceptable, speaks to the entrenched racial ignorance within the company. 

I left a detailed and explicit statement of everything that had happened to me and my official complaint in the voicemail of HR Manager Sharon van Duker on June 1st 2020 (Recording can be found in Documentation).

I received a call from HR Manager Duker in response. She did not inform me that there was going to be an investigation. She told me there was going to be a meeting between Chef Roach and myself in her office. I had to make it known that I had read the Employee’s Agreement and insist that it be followed before Duker agreed to meet me in person to receive my complaint. (Mentioned in recording of 2nd HR Meeting in Documentation).

An in-person meeting was arranged for a complete incident report to the HR Manager and HR General Manager. I had the right to bring an Employee’s Alliance Representative and I choose to do so. I requested consent to record the meeting and this was granted and the recording is possessed by myself and the Co-Op.

I sent a written request for counsel from the AFCEA and received support, counsel, and three volunteers interested in coming to the meeting with me. I was made aware that this had not been the first issue raised about Schwartz’ behavior. I was advised to contact coworkers to see if they had similar experiences regarding Schwartz, Roach or Wendling and ask if they were willing and able to write truthful incident reports or testimonials to submit to HR. I sent out that request for help with a copy of my incident report to any coworkers that I believed might do the right thing. The majority of the response I received was silence. Some moral support was sent my way from good people. From Stahl I received a suspicious response. I was sent a panicked statement, categorically refusing involvement of any kind in any investigation. I would receive similar texts from a couple other employees. (See Documentation for Stahl’s text).

1st meeting (Recording in Documentation)

Individuals present: Sharon Van Duker, Emile Amarotico and three AFCEA Representatives with me

You may notice:

Van Duker dedicates time and questions toward what kind of swear word an employee used in response to a white supremacist threatening them in the workplace. No questions or time dedicated to the threatening behavior in the workplace but the language of the threatened party. The single swear word will be used later as a comically flimsy excuse.

Van Duker referenced knowledge of my talking to HR in the workplace multiple times as a potential detriment to her investigation but, at our next meeting, she admits that she did nothing, in one month, other than ask the accused parties if they did what was in my complaint and then took them completely at their word when they said “No”. Functionally she did nothing, and in this first meeting she is making excuses ahead of time about how difficult her work will be when she will not go on to do that work.

The meeting ends. I get my unpaid personal leave. Employee Alliance is honest with me about what can be done with an investigation with the evidence that I have and I acknowledge that. At that point I was hoping that the AFC would at least put in a serious effort to investigate as promised in it’s Bargaining Agreement with it’s employees. I wait for a month with no significant updates. I have to reach out and email Van Duker to get short emails in response which simply say that the investigation’s still going. People that were still working at the co-op, and still talking to me, tell me about getting interviewed by Van Duker about my case. About how she asked them if they heard Pete Schwartz making racist comments but how she followed up by asking them if they had heard me making “anti-racist” comments, as though “anti-racism” was as horrifying as racism. This is the head of AFC’s HR Dept. This person.

2nd meeting

Individuals present are the same as Meeting 1.

I sit down to a PowerPoint presentation that is a barebones word document, of which, I am given copies (See Documentation). The presentation relates how over the course of a month, the HR Dept under the direction of Sharon Van Duker did nothing but superficial interviews with primarily Roach, Wendling and Schwartz and from that concluded that I was wrong on all counts and that I was at fault for harassment and for saying a bad word that one time. An entire segment of the very thin findings document is dedicated to the bad word. The Ashland Food Co-Op let me wait for a month to tell me that they had done nothing. At this point I knew that multiple coworkers had given her testimony on Schwartz’ behavior and the racist environment in the Prepared Foods Dept. She had ignored it. I find it hard to believe that Emile Amarotico, as General Manager, was ignorant of her actions. I did not sit through the presentation. I took what answers I could get, then I took my documentation and I left. If the Ashland Food Co-Op had shown me in anyway that it could uphold it’s agreements to it’s employees I would have stayed, but the it does not.

AFC does not protect it’s employees. Through flaws in it’s company structure and the complicity of it’s leadership Ashland Food Co-Op is a work environment where racism is protected and the decency to oppose it is persecuted with disregard to principle or agreements made. AFC has no effective policy in place to defend employees from the retribution of racists. The management of the company, General and HR, have demonstrated a disregard for any policy as long as they can maintain silence.  

Ashland Food Co-Op is not your woke store option. They may have a reduced carbon footprint but all of us deserve the complete truth of their actions. No business gets to claim that they stand for “Social Responsibility” while protecting white supremacists and dodging accountability.

Black Lives Matter

Fuck White Supremacy

Fuck White Silence

Fuck Ashland Food Co-Op

If you live in the Rogue Valley but live at greater risk:

Pete Schwartz is a little over 6 ft, heavyset and bald with a thistle plant tattoo on his head. He has demonstrated a willingness to use intimidation and manipulation to harass and retaliate against individuals that oppose his racist ideology. He is usually carrying what appears to be a knife at the hip and has mentioned his ownership of a firearm. If you encounter this man, be safe and use appropriate caution.