Content Co-Op Episode 5: Which Side Are You On?
Welcome to this week’s co-op: Which Side Are You On?
As we previously discussed, union election ballots will be mailed out to nearly 6,000 workers at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama fulfillment center on Monday. In solidarity with these workers, we bring you a few choice tidbits from the struggle against Amazon.
Here’s a feel-good mini doc in which we hear from Christian Smalls, who has been organizing essential workers since he was illegally fired for speaking out about unsafe conditions at the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island last spring.
Here’s a brief video in which Amazon workers and RWDSU organizers in Bessemer discuss the tactics Amazon is using to try to thwart the union push. These include posting anti-union messages in bathroom stalls, telling workers (falsely) that the union will take away their health insurance, and even changing traffic light patterns to prevent organizers from greeting workers at an intersection.
Here’s an article in which Luis Feliz Leon at the American Prospect interviews those knowledgeable about the battle in Bessemer, situating RWDSU’s fight within the context of the labor movement in Alabama:
“Alabama has a rich history of labor organizing,” says Resha Swanson, policy and communications coordinator at the Adelante Alabama Worker Center in Birmingham. “For generations, Black workers have risked their lives to spearhead worker rights efforts—fighting for their lives in the face of lynching, death threats, job loss, and most of all, white supremacy. Amazon’s workers’ partnership and unionizing with RWDSU is just an extension of the legacy of worker militancy.”
In honor of Super Bowl Sunday, here’s a short Vice article relating how the NFLPA (the NFL players’ union) has endorsed the RWDSU campaign.
Lastly, here is a form you can use to send a message of love and solidarity to the workers in Bessemer, who are risking their livelihoods amid widespread hunger in order to force the everything store to recognize that they are human beings whose lives matter. Let them know which side you’re on. ❤