Whose voices are missing from news coverage of soda taxes?
by: Heather Gehlert
posted on Friday, May 20, 2016
Low-income families and communities of color — the same groups who suffer disproportionately from diabetes and are targeted most aggressively by the sugary drink industry — tend to support efforts to tax soda as much as or more than their wealthier, white counterparts. For example, in Philadelphia, 56 percent of both white and black voters support a tax. And in California, 55 percent of low-income voters strongly favor a tax, as do 70 percent of African Americans and 57 percent of Latinos, according to a 2016 Field Poll. By contrast, 42 percent of white voters and 45 percent of higher-income voters show strong support.
However, you wouldn’t know this from most news coverage of soda taxes. That’s because the voices of those who have been the most harmed by soda industry products and marketing are seldom featured in the media. This is a problem for public health advocates because it makes them vulnerable to anti-tax arguments, especially the industry claim — recently echoed by Senator Bernie Sanders — that soda taxes are regressive for low-income and communities of color.
These communities can and should speak for themselves. When the public hears directly from the people sitting in Big Soda’s crosshairs, it becomes easier for them to see that what’s really regressive is the health toll of soda. Exposing this truth and elevating the voices of those who know firsthand what it’s like to see their families and communities ravaged by sugar-related diseases was central to Berkeley, California’s successful passage of a soda tax in 2014.
“The most powerful moments of the Berkeley versus Big Soda campaign,” explained Berkeley resident Anna Lappé, “were hearing community members describe their direct experience with the costs of diabetes: from forfeited wages because of days spent caring for parents or kids to lifelong health problems including heart disease, comas, infertility, vision loss, insulin replacement, even amputations.”
To learn more about the role of community voices in public health battles, I spoke with Dr. Vicki Alexander, a retired Maternal, Child & Adolescent Health Director for Berkeley, who was instrumental in the city’s soda tax victory. In this Q&A, Alexander explains how the soda industry has affected her family, how the Berkeley soda tax campaign highlighted authentic voices to push back against industry rhetoric, and what lessons public health advocates in other cities can learn from Berkeley. Below is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Dr. Vicki Alexander speaks out against the harms of the soda industry. Photo courtesy of Berkeley vs. Big Soda.
Your career as a physician and public health professional has covered a lot of ground, from lead poisoning to violence prevention. Why did you decide to get involved in Berkeley’s campaign to pass a tax on sugary drinks?
My motivating force in terms of what I get involved in usually is related to social justice — issues where there is very blatant disparity, statistically and historically. In this particular case, that was true. In addition, we had just formed an organization called Healthy Black Families, and the Healthy Black Families board approved that the organization join on to this endeavor and that I be a representative.
Has the soda industry and its aggressive marketing of sugary drinks negatively affected your own family or community? What have you seen or experienced firsthand that’s made you feel passionate about this as a social justice issue?
A couple of things, I think. In terms of family, I do have diabetes in my family. My uncle had his leg amputated. And, currently, the father of my grandchildren is a soda drinker. He just won’t stop, and so I was really torn apart by that, not knowing how to individually and personally address it. Getting involved in this movement really fortified my strength to be able to handle the personal level; my personal circumstances totally overlapped with the endeavor.
Also, the particular expertise I have in terms of being a doctor helps — I can understand this data, and I can also understand it, having seen patients that have been affected by these illnesses that are caused [by sugar]. And so the combination of my expertise and my passion about social justice has really been [a major part of] my life.
How did the voices and personal stories of Berkeley residents make a difference in the city’s soda tax fight?
It helped us mold the language and how to respond. The personal story is so much more powerful than me as a doctor talking about statistics. Those personal little vignettes that were coming up — that stuff really is powerful. Not only do personal stories strengthen what the impact is, but it also forces you to go back and be able to talk about your own personal story.
What values did Berkeley residents evoke as they argued in favor of a tax?
The first thing that comes to my mind is family — they valued the quality of life for their family. Also, I think the values of fairness, equality, and that this is something that really affects everybody.
And the most important value is power to the people. It’s such a powerful issue, and people had so much other personal stuff going on that this just bound us together. There was this camaraderie of those of us working on it. You know, we’re in this fight together. We’re going to do this. It became a stronger and stronger message that we can make a policy change, despite industry pressure and all their dollars. I mean, the industry’s saturation campaign [to cover BART in anti-tax ads] really backfired. We gained five more points in the voter polls after they did that. Big Soda couldn’t buy people off in Berkeley.
One of the soda industry’s main arguments against soda tax proposals is to call them regressive. How did the campaign counter that frame?
I was very confused at first [about the regressive argument], as were many of us. I just listened a lot, and I knew it was an important issue for our community, so I focused on outreach and getting people to come and be part of this larger group for their voices to be heard. I’ve done a lot of outreach to the African American community and the Latino community, and I really tried to get individuals and organizations to come to the larger meetings.
In one discussion, we were talking about what does regressive mean with taxes, and what do these diseases do to us? It was in that discussion that we framed diabetes as a regressive disease; all of these kinds of regressive things that affect certain communities of color the worst or poor communities the worst — that is regressive. So, when we reframed it into a health and social justice kind of an issue, as opposed to a tax issue, it really made a lot of sense — it opened up doors for discussion with people.
[Regressivity] was one of the questions that we hammered away at in a lot of sessions — how do you answer that? We had to really talk through it, and somebody would act out certain scenarios and somebody would act as a soda representative and we would be on the other side. So, it was very, very good.
How did the campaign counter other industry opposition arguments, like the industry claim that a tax would cause economic harm?
In a lot of different ways. There was no one single way. So, for example, the argument for the Teamsters is, hey, that’s going to mess up our revenue. People aren’t going to buy [our products], and business is going to go down. So you try and switch it. Whatever they’re looking at, you look at the illnesses attached — the cost of the illnesses attached. And some people just aren’t going to change [their minds], and with that, you just go to the next person.
The other thing for us, as organizers in this thing, was that we waited too late to go to the unions because in an election year, unions are all having their meetings and doing their endorsements way ahead of the game. So, though we got some unions, we could have had much more union [support] if we had approached them earlier.
The campaign was successful at making industry spending part of the debate. How did you all do that?
We found out by looking at their tax reports how much they were spending. Their first report revealed $600,000 had been spent, and we still had six months to go. So, they had already spent $600,000 on starting to hire people of color who would stand on the streets and pass out flyers and put up all these leaflets on telephone poles and everything. At first, we were shocked, and our response was to go right behind them and take it down. Then it escalated — they were taking our lawn signs, and so people took pictures of them removing lawn signs from a person’s home. Then, we started removing lawn signs when they were illegally placed.
This is typical behavior in a campaign, but we had to decide we’re not going to do that. We’re not going to stoop low and do that — our message is too strong. We stuck with our message and used social media to post pictures of them taking this stuff down. [We highlighted that] they use of a lot of money, paying people to do a lot of stuff. At a certain point, we kept talking about it when we talked to people — you know, they’re outspending us so much. This is the people’s voice you’re hearing here; that’s a money voice that you’re hearing over there.
What was done to make sure that community voices were included in media coverage of the issue?
We did a lot of on-the-ground organizing. We had long lists of organizations that we were going to and that were endorsing us and, towards the last couple of months, had weekly Saturday morning educationals that we invited all kinds of people to. Along the way, we met a lot of people we didn’t even know. As the momentum grew with people finding out that people in their own families had diabetes, more and more people started to speak out. We had a pastor — a couple of pastors, actually — one whose son died at the age of 29 and another one who he, himself, during the campaign developed diabetes and was hospitalized. That is like, wow — it grabs people. So all of those stories helped other people tell their stories, and that just kind of steamrolled. And we did a lot of one-on-one discussions. You can’t underestimate the number of discussions that people had. And then we did a little video, “Yes We Can.” Social media was really good. We would blast things out — we had a committee that dealt with that, so there was ongoing messaging.
What lessons do you have for other cities looking to pass a tax on soda?
I think there’s two big lessons. I think the biggest lesson is that when you mobilize the people with the truth and keep hammering away at it, people catch on. Don’t underestimate the power of the people — that’s No. 1. But, No. 2, don’t underestimate the opposition. The whole role of corporate power in this thing is really strong — how they subvert the message — so you don’t want to underestimate what they’re going to do and, of course, the money they’re going to put in. You’re never going to match the dollars that they’ve got to devote to this. So, your message has to be strong, has to be consistent, and it has to involve all the people — in particular, people affected by the disease or whatever you’re dealing with. And then, the other thing I think that’s important is how this is impacting our children. That really hits home. Keep the message simple: We’re doing this for our kids, all of our kids — in particular kids of color because they are affected more.
Anything else advocates should know?
Organizing makes you feel good. You know you’re doing the right thing, and so people start getting very excited and very emotional behind it, and then they start giving their all, and that’s really exciting. The eye-opener to me is this isn’t just Berkeley. This isn’t just California. And it’s not just the United States. This is a worldwide thing and whether or not taxes are the way we do it, or we do it another way, corporations that create harmful things for people’s health have got to be stopped.
A lot of people get nervous and they say, you can’t do this — it’s just too much. And you may remember there was a poster of a woman during World War II — Rosie the Riveter — and she’s lifting up her fist, and she says, “We can do this.” That’s what I think. Yes, we can. It takes a lot, but, yes, we can.
Fernando Quintero contributed to this blog.