The time has come to unionize Amazon workers everywhere

Radical Municipalism: The Only Solution to Amazon’s Extortion of Cities

Last week saw a flurry of humiliating pitches by North American cities for Amazon to pick them as the location of the corporation’s second headquarters.

New Jersey committed a phenomenal $7 billion in tax breaks if picked. Stonecrest, Georgia, pledged to annex 345 acres to create an entire city called Amazon and make CEO Jeff Bezos unelected mayor. Tucson sent a 21-foot cactus to Amazon, which the company rejected.

Meanwhile in Canada, Calgary released a deeply cringey video, bought a massive billboard in Seattle claiming that it would “fight a bear” for Amazon and paid for sidewalk graffiti that joked about how it would also change its name for it. NHL teams in Calgary and Ottawa led arena-wide chants pleading for the company to pick them. Winnipeg bragged in its application that it was the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh’s name.

In total, more 100 cities submitted applications, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal, Sault Ste. Marie, Halifax, Hamilton and Toronto.

quote:

There’s only one way out of this hellscape: a fierce re-commitment to the “right to the city.”

Democracy Without Elections

This does not mean dedicating enormous time and resources to get leftist candidates elected to municipal councils.

There’s perhaps a place for that in some contexts: Seattle’s socialist city council member Kshama Sawant has been a fervent critic of Amazon’s impacts, and veteran anti-poverty organizer Jean Swanson would have been an invaluable addition to Vancouver’s city council if she’d won.

But the promise of truly leftist and democratic city-building that can challenge the powers of Amazon and other multi-nationals is much more than electoral politicking, which is almost always poisoned with money and influence from sectors like finance and real estate.

In the words of journalist Debbie Bookchin, daughter of the late Murray Bookchin:

Municipalism demands that we return power to ordinary citizens, that we reinvent what it means to do politics and what it means to be a citizen. True politics is the opposite of parliamentary politics. It begins at the base, in local assemblies.

That largely parallels the concept of the “right to the city,” originally coined by Henri Lefebvre and explained by Marxist geographer David Harvey:

Greater democratic control over the production and utilization of the surplus. Since the urban process is a major channel of surplus use, establishing democratic management over its urban deployment constitutes the right to the city.

I'm not a fan of the "like button" culture of Facebook and other social media/communications, but I truly appreciate comment #12 by epaulo. I too have been scratching my head over so many municipalities bending over backwards to lure Amazon to their city. The giant perks are such a reminder of the same sh*t cities do to lure a professional sports franchise. The benefits are not that freaking great given how much public money is sacrificed.

It sounds like "pickers" at Amazon have a pretty crappy job.  But if anyone could replace them with drones, it's Amazon.  If that happens, will we mourn the loss of these crappy jobs, or will it be like when washing machines were invented and nobody got nostalgic for the washboard?