Activists painted a mural that said “Protect Amazon Workers” in large letters outside the Kalorama home of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on Wednesday.
The team of painters included activists with ShutDownDC and La ColectiVA, groups that have organized a series of actions related to housing, incarceration, and environmental justice this week. Organizers said the painting process, which was streamed on Facebook Live, took about an hour.
The mural stretched across the width of the entire street in front of Bezos’s house, a former textile museum that he purchased in 2016. Hope Neyer, a volunteer with ShutDownDC, said the activists wore masks, took care to maintain physical distance, and planned the action for the outdoors to lessen the risk of spreading COVID-19 through their activism.
The mural-painting also coincided with an online town hall the groups organized for Wednesday afternoon. Their demands of Amazon include increased paid time off for sick employees, stepped up warehouse cleaning, and an end to retaliation for worker organizing. Local organizers are also asking for Amazon to forego the more than $770 million in tax incentives that Virginia state and local governments have promised the company in exchange for bringing nearly 40,000 high-paying jobs in the region. Danny Cendejas, an organizer with LaColectiVA and For Us Not Amazon, thinks those funds would be better spent supporting those in need as a result of the pandemic.
“They claim to be good neighbors,” said Cendejas. “Now they can really, truly show it by making sure that publicly-generated funds are being used by the public.”
The coronavirus pandemic has been a boon for Amazon, which has reaped the profits of increased demand for home deliveries and goods purchased online. Reuters reported that Amazon’s stock climbed 9% since February 19, while the S&P 500 fell 13% during that same time period as a result of the economic collapse caused by the pandemic. Analysts have increased their estimates for Amazon’s quarterly revenue by over $1 billion dollars because of the way business has changed during the pandemic.
Amazon employs over 400,000 part-time and full-time workers — and has announced plans to hire 175,000 more because of increased demand for its products and services. And the company said it is protecting those employees by enhancing cleaning, instituting temperature screenings at warehouses, distributing personal protective equipment, and increasing social distancing measures. The company’s website says it is giving workers pay bumps and providing two additional weeks of paid leave to employees who are diagnosed with COVID-19.
But Amazon has been criticized in recent weeks for firing several activist employees who criticized the company’s coronavirus response and protested conditions at company warehouses. Amazon employees have organized several protests in recent weeks — and are included in a larger nationwide strike on International Workers’ Day later this week.
At least one Amazon worker has died from COVID-19 and confirmed cases of the virus have been reported at dozens of Amazon facilities.
It was not immediately clear whether Bezos, who lives in Seattle, was at his D.C. residence on Wednesday. Neyer from ShutDownDC said the curtains of the residents were closed for the duration of the painting. In 2017, the Washington Post reported that the home was “expected to be an East Coast pied-a-terre for the family” that allowed Bezos to limit spending on hotels.
Neyer from ShutDownDC said the event was meant to promote broader awareness of conditions for Amazon workers and was not dependent on the CEO’s presence in the city.
“We definitely think it’s something you cannot miss,” said Neyer. “Whether he’s home or not, he was definitely aware of it.”
