On Saturday, May 16, as part of the PowerUp Coalition, The People’s Lobby blocked both exits of the Amazon warehouse at 36th and Ashland in the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago. For five hours, about 100 delivery vans, as well as dozens of workers, were unable to generate profits for Amazon and billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos until the police ultimately came and arrested 12 members of our civil disobedience team.
“Don’t think I’m stupid, Jeffrey,” said Ebony Echevarria, a former Amazon worker who spoke with us on Saturday. She was fired from her job as a delivery driver for trying to organize her workplace. “We’re here demanding that Amazon pay taxes on the money they make, just like every single person standing here has to do. We are demanding that Amazon put resources back into the homes of its workers,” she said.
We targeted Amazon because they’re one of several giant global corporations that have enriched themselves at the expense of Illinoisans but fail to pay state taxes on those profits. Amazon scoops up hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to build polluting warehouses in Black and brown neighborhoods, then refuses to pay what it owes our state. For instance, Amazon currently pays no taxes at all on the billions it makes selling our data for digital ads each year.
We acted now because the Illinois Revenue Alliance, of which The People’s Lobby is a member, is currently pushing legislators to pass four progressive revenue bills before the end of the legislative session on May 31st. We’ll be heading to Springfield this Wednesday to urge our elected officials to follow our plan to tax digital ad revenue, big multinational corporations, billionaire wealth, and big tech companies. That way, we can raise the revenue we need to protect essential programs, like Medicaid, from the devastating federal cuts that will hit Illinois in the months to come.
Cate Lujan Readling, our board chair, was one of 12 folks arrested on Saturday. She called out corporate billionaires for getting richer off Trump gutting our social safety nets.
“Jeff Bezos and the rest of the Epstein class have built obscene wealth by exploiting workers and cozying up to Donald Trump, donating millions for his ballroom and dodging taxes while hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans are about to lose their health care,” she said. “Taxing corporations and the rich is the most effective thing Illinois legislators can do to stand up to Trump and protect our people from the devastating cuts that are coming.”
Sometimes it can feel like massive, powerful organizations like Amazon, led by a man with enough money to rent the city of Venice for his wedding, are invincible. But we learned on Saturday that disrupting Amazon’s profits was easier than we thought: with 100 people, plenty of water and sunscreen, and emergency pizza and popsicles, we stopped operations at one of Chicago’s largest Amazon warehouses for five hours.
If we were able to do all of that, we know the legislators who are eager to show us how hard they’re fighting the Trump agenda can pass our progressive revenue legislation.