Westlake Word

Amazon, a popular company specializing in delivering products to consumers has begun to receive backlash two decades after starting up. In the New York Times article, “Activists Build a Grass-Roots Alliance Against Amazon,” by David Streitfield, a resistance group, called Athena, is beginning to form and take control of the media.

 

The main goal of Athena, Streitfield writes, is to get involved in issues regarding digital surveillance, antitrust and working conditions in the Amazon warehouses. They aim to unify the resistance that is beginning to form against Amazon.

 

A report from the Economic Roundtable, mentioned in the NY Times article, has determined that in the areas surrounding Amazon’s warehouses has cost the communities greatly. Despite these claims surfacing, the internet conglomerate hired a total of 97,000 new employees over the summer, leaving the population feeling like Amazon is “Too Big to Govern,” also the title of the report. Many people are asking the question: When does a tech platform become too big and powerful, ultimately hurting the society it once dazzled?

 

Among the report’s suggestions was that Amazon: raises its minimum wage to $20 an hour; requires its logistics subcontractors to do the same; provides child care at its warehouses and build affordable housing in its logistics communities. By doing all of these things, they will be vastly improving the lives of many of their employees.

 

Because of the backlash Amazon is receiving for monopolizing the online ordering business, they were forced to raise their hourly wage to $15 last fall, yet in February, they abandoned plans to build a new headquarters in New York, while also trying to stack the city council in Seattle, Washington, Streitfield reports. As shown in the photo above, the plays for Seattle made by Amazon did not settle well with the population.

 

Athena director, Dania Rajendra, said that Athena is “learning from what makes Amazon back down, and looking to replicate that as much as possible with as many people as possible” in order to not only stop the monopolization of the online market, but to get their point across, helping their cause. The headquarters of this resistance movement will be in New York, however, the real work will be done out in the field in its many locations, such as Minneapolis, Chicago, and Massachusetts. 

 

Streitfield reports that Amazon is reported to have $238 billion in sales this year with 750,000 employees working for them. This makes Athena’s $15 million budget look modest for the amount of influence they want to have. Updating protest movements for the digital era is an interesting challenge, says Mr Perriello of the Open Society Foundation. They chose the name Athena not only because it is associated with democracy, freedom and wisdom, but also because they wanted to offer a better version of how the economy could work, so they chose to omit Amazon from their name.

 

Athena, not trying to boycott Amazon, is more out to try and sway some of their employees and customers says Sheheryar Kaoosji of another coalition member, the Warehouse Worker Resource Center in Ontario.

 

According to the report, every day, ships, trucks, trains and airplanes bring an estimated 21,500 diesel truckloads of merchandise to 21 Amazon warehouses in the four-county region. The report also calculated that Amazon trucks last year created $642 million in “uncompensated public costs” for noise, road wear, accidents and harmful emissions. Not only is Amazon bad for consumers, but it is also bad for the environment. Nobody at Amazon is working on more eco-friendly ways to transport goods.       

 

Along with a stock market value of $900 billion, Amazon is also getting funding from California and local communities, including $25 million from the California Film Commission to subsidize six productions and $1.2 million from the California Office of Business and Economic Development trying to jump start building an office in Irvine for programmers.

 

Daniel Flaming, co-author of the report, says that “Our conclusion is that it’s time for Amazon to come of age and pay its own way. This means paying its full costs to the communities that host it and the workers who create its profits.”

 

Works Cited

Streitfield, David. "Activists Build a Grass-Roots Alliance Against Amazon." New York Times [New York City], 26 Nov. 2019. New York Times, www.nytimes.com/2019/11/26/technology/amazon-grass-roots-activists.html. Accessed 25 Feb. 2020.