How many New York City activists does it take to unscrew a multi-billion dollar commercial lightbulb? Not as many as one might expect, certainly not a majority of people in the state of New York.
Amazon has announced that it will no longer be blessing the City of New York with a new ‘corporate campus.’ In doing so, it will forego the three billion dollars in tax concessions that NYC had eagerly agreed to pour into Amazon’s corporate coffers in exchange for something in the neighbourhood of 25,000 new jobs.
A vocal minority of New Yorkers were less than pleased about the tax giveaway to one of the world’s richest companies. Nor were those activists impressed when Amazon recently raised a middle finger to the little people of Seattle.
A few months ago, Amazon played a decisive role to crush Seattle’s bid to institute a business tax to help finance the construction of affordable housing (a crisis to which Amazon has been a significant contributor). For more on this saga, try: Amazon’s Boot On Seattle’s Neck Tells All You Need To Know About Public/Private Partnerships
The activists had another vision for Long Island City in New York’s Borough of Queens. It was not that of a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood housing wealthy Amazon managers. Protesters included tenant representatives from Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in New York City and close by the proposed site of the Amazon campus.
Read more on the Amazon pullout, at The BBC: Amazon cancels New York City campus plan
For a background article on how the Amazon protest evolved, read more in The Guardian: New York City to Amazon: drop dead
. . .from Axios.com: What New Yorkers have to say about Amazon’s huge reversal
