Checking the Power of Corona-Profiteers: Amazon
Added 2020-04-16 15:34:28 +0000 UTCWe love you, our Patreon community! Your generous support enables us to keep producing forward-thinking content week after week. Best of all, your contributions make it possible for us to keep The LF Show free for the general public. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
While much of the US economy is in trouble, the Amazon corporation is not. Orders are surging and workers are coping with increased demands and dangerous conditions in the workplace. As the Covid-19 pandemic continues, Amazon’s stepped up its use of third-party suppliers to ship non-essential products and has fired employees calling out public health threats while Jeff Bezos has earned $24 billion in wealth since the start of this pandemic.
Dania Rajendra, Executive Director of Athena Coalition, describes how an alliance of grassroots organizations, workers and consumers are collaborating with workers to call the billionaire corporation to account. Amazon’s supply chains may be helping consumers and their communities under lock down right now, but their business model is a direct threat. Could Amazon be brought under public check — even be seized as a utility? Rajendra joins Laura to explain why now is a time to think bigger and bolder about the institutions that shape our economy.
“It’s going to take all of us to figure out how to restore public oversight over private power.”
For more information about the Athena Coalition, please visit https://athenaforall.org/
