AMAZON BACKS OUT OF NYC

It’s official: Amazon has cancelled their plans to build their HQ2 in NYC

Today New York’s working class showed that big business and billionaires can’t buy our city. New York belongs to the many, not the few.

NYC-DSA Tech Action is proud to have played a part in that fight, and wish to commend all tech workers who stood in solidarity with our neighbors to stop Amazon’s plan to subvert democracy, and take billions in public money, as they crack down on unions and workers’ rights, increase deportations of our immigrant neighbors, and fuel gentrification, housing speculation, and skyrocketing rents.

While this is a big win, there is still work to do. Amazon still maintains a physical presence in NYC in the form of warehouses, Whole Foods, their corporate office in Midtown, and more, where they actively oppose unionization of their workers. They still dominate online retail, ad sales, and the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet. We know Amazon will continue to make incursions into our public schools, our healthcare, our local government, and our daily lives.

The impending Amazon deal was far from the only way capitalism oppresses working-class Queens residents and New Yorkers. Millions of New Yorkers still lack any basic tenants’ rights and live with the threat of rent hikes, displacement, and evictions every day. Still only a quarter of our workers have union jobs. Our transit system is still broken; our public housing is still owed billions. Residents of color face systematic targeting by the police and ICE. These crises persist.

And our local government is still under the sway of neoliberal economic thinking that claims the only way to help the people of New York is by handing out money to giant corporations. The bulk of the billions of dollars in subsidies offered to Amazon were already on the books and can still be offered, through secret deals, to the next massive corporation. That must end.

NYC-DSA, Tech Action, and tech workers on the left will continue to fight Amazon—and any plan to turn New York into an unlivable Silicon Valley East—from both within and without, to push for the economic and social changes we all need to live with dignity.

But today was a victory for sure, and it should send a message to communities around the world: When we organize together we can beat back centi-billionaires and their trillion-dollar corporations and change the world.