What has “truth to power” won? It’s not as though Amazon was preventing the rise of sustainable, green, unionized, and well-paying manufacturing jobs in Long Island City, or stopping the construction of affordable low-income housing, along with schools and parkland. The area where the company planned to build its secondary headquarters has been the focus of economic development plans for decades. It is presently the site of parking lots, storage units, and empty, city-owned land. Now it will stay that way. Amazon was planning to rent 1 million square feet in the Citigroup Tower in Long Island City, which is largely vacant of tenants, and will now remain so.
Reax, AOC:
Can everyday people come together and effectively organize against creeping overreach of one of the world’s biggest corporations?
Yes, they can.
There were reasons to oppose the Amazon power play, many of them valid. That said, for a congress critter to openly gloat over the loss of twenty-five thousand local jobs is unseemly. As of now Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is gainfully employed. Will she be singing the same tune in less than two years when she is again unemployed?
