Ginseng lovers are no doubt rejoicing. Puget Consumers Co-op’s “member-owners” have opted against reinstating a boycott of goods from China. Those who voted, just 8.5 percent of PCC’s members, were torn on the subject. In the end the measure was defeated 1636 to 1507.

The boycott was proposed by a small band of pro-democracy activists who call for an end to China’s occupation of Tibet and a cessation of the use of prison labor inside China itself.

PCC did pass a boycott of Chinese goods back in 1996, but the board of directors lifted that ban two years later. Tension between Tibetan activists and the PCC administration has been building ever since. Though it is company policy to “review” boycotts after two years and lift them if the board sees fit, some members believe the board was knowingly going against their wishes by reinstating Chinese products.

But PCC’s administrator Kathy Blackman points out very few of the co-op’s products come from the People’s Republic, and most of those that do are “health and beauty aids.” Moreover, she isn’t convinced the boycott would have helped Tibet or ended unfair labor practices in China.

Blackman even questions whether such a boycott is valid under company policy. “There’s nothing in the mission and values statement about human rights issues,” she argues.

David Gordon, who has been a member since the cooperative was founded in the ’70s, believes management has betrayed PCC’s original mission. “The roots of PCC are very much in progressive activism,” he says.

And he’s angry about PCC’s management actions during the campaign. He accuses PCC of trying to stifle the pro-boycott message by throwing away fliers and offering to pay staff extra to campaign against the boycott.

Blackman confirms Gordon’s claims—with her own caveats. She points out only two workers took extra pay to fight the boycott. And she says the leaflets were thrown out because they lacked the required contact information.

But Heather Woods, another pro-boycott organizer, says that some of her fliers, complete with all the required information, also disappeared.

Woods, who acted as a liaison between the pro-boycott forces and management, also says PCC management violated its own policy of giving equal space to each side by posting signs near medicinal herbs warning that they would disappear if the ban went into effect. She does credit management for removing the signs when she complained.

Boycott proponents also criticize the company for using co-op printing funds to discredit the ban in newsletters. Gordon says the next time the initiative comes up, pro-boycott members should have equal access to co-op funds to use for their campaign. He adds that equal access to PCC resources may mean no access for either side. “If management wants to campaign, they can do it after work just like every other member,” he says.

Whatever PCC management may have done, Woods says, the boycott failed this time in part because the pro-boycott camp was disorganized.

Woods says her campaign, which ran during the entire month of May, didn’t pick up momentum until the end. Ban proponents mostly recruited friends and family members to campaign, though a few pro-Tibet organizations helped out. Boycott advocates spread their message by standing outside of stores for a couple of hours a week and talking to customers.

But the movement failed to take care of the basics: they missed the deadline to get their statement in the voters’ pamphlet. Woods says that may be why it seemed people voting at home might not have been familiar with the pro-boycott position. She says, and Blackman confirms, that it seemed that most of the “no” votes were mailed in, rather than dropped in ballot boxes at the store.

While Woods is hinting at a rematch— “Were we to do this again, it would pass overwhelmingly,” she predicts—Gordon wants some of PCC’s management to quit.

But if they did, would the next wave of management be any different? Blackman says keeping Chinese products off PCC’s shelves is a problem for management because they have to answer when customers who want those products complain. Boycotting Chinese goods “is not a good way to stock a grocery store,” she says. “Management is unapologetic.”