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By Jodie Evans
As I walked past the Ahava stand I noticed there were
two burly security guards framing both sides of the
small booth and seriously scanning the crowd. It was
the only booth with security, and these guys were not
welcoming so not a lot of people stopped at it during
the ten minutes I watched.
I came back a few hours later and handed out our boycott
stickers at the beginning of the Ahava aisle, until
eventually the Ahava gal came and started freaking out
that I had no right to hand things out and tried to
grab my badge. But I was out and down the escalator
before she could get me and went to the back of our
booth for a while.
I then approached from another direction and stood
in front of the Ahava stand between the two guards and
pulled out the banner. The woman who had come at me
before started freaking out again. Everyone in the booth
got very excited and the two guards asked me to leave,
and when I asked why the Ahava woman started grabbing
me and my banner, and barking at the guards that they
needed to remove me. In the meantime the security guards
went after people in the aisle who had a cameras, pulling
off their badges, and grabbing their arms and putting
hands in front of their cameras. They were very rough
with my friend Ariel who had a video camera and with
Matthew who was taking stills. The guards seemed
more concerned with preventing any documentation of
my banner than with the banner itself. Because of all
this commotion a crowd started gathering.
The Ahava rep insisted that I was breaking the law
and was trespassing. I said I actually have a badge
and I have as much a right to be here as you do. She
asked where my badge was and I said I had put it in
my purse so she couldn't grab it from me the way she
had tried to do earlier. I then said she should be arrested
for violating international law and the human rights
of the people in the Occupied Territories. She kept
coming back to the fact that I was breaking a law, and
I kept telling her that she was the one who was breaking
the law.
The Ahava security guards and the rep escorted me out
of the hall but not out of the convention center; they
couldn’t kick me out of the building so the Ahava
rep instructed her security detail to call convention
security, saying they had been promised I would be removed
from the premises. She stayed on me while we were
waiting for the building security, and in the meantime
I held up our boycott banner the whole time.
Out in the lobby my conversation with the Ahava rep
continued. I asked her how it felt to work for a company
that was so disrespectful of the Palestinian people.
She said she was proud to work for Ahava. When I
asked why, she said she was proud of the product, and
I said you care more about a product than the rights
of people. At this point, a building security guard
arrived and dragged me out. I asked him to help the
people who had been roughed up by Ahava’s thugs,
but he ignored me. I stood outside the convention hall,
passing out stickers and holding up the sign. Ariel
joined me after she was kicked out, along with Matthew
and another friend who had been taking pictures. Then
the convention security guy came back, he was nice and
promised to get us our badges back and walked with me
with my banner across the street over the center’s
property line. He thanked me for cooperating. I told
him again that my rights, and those of my friends, had
not been respected. He apologized and said he would
report the aggressive response by Ahava that he felt
was extreme.
I was able to stand outside for another twenty minutes.
The photographers were able to get their badges back
as the head of security apologized for that and said
he would make sure everyone was taken care of.
The Natural Products Expo is supposed to be about
healthy choices, and respect for people and the environment.
Ahava’s bullying response showed how out of place
they were at this convention. The next day when
Ariel was visiting a friend at a booth across the way,
the Ahava rep and her guards recognized her and had
her ejected from the hall again.
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