Amazon broke off its engagement with New York City on Valentine’s Day. After hoopla and a highly publicized search for a second headquarters that had cities, states and whole regions competing to offer the best package of publicly funded subsidies to the biggest online retail company in existence, Amazon chose the two biggest power centers in America: New York City and Washington D.C.
But Amazon did not have the last say in NYC — New Yorkers did. Citizens organized and mounted political pressure on elected officials to negotiate on behalf of those who could be priced out with Amazon’s arrival. Elected officials, in turn, didn’t meekly accept the secretly negotiated deal between the governor, mayor and the company, which would have given Amazon more than $3 billion in taxpayer subsidies.
“We have 63,000 people who are sleeping in homeless shelters,” New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson told the company’s representatives at a town hall. “Don’t you think there’s a better way for us to spend $3 billion?”
The way New York City's leaders dealt with Amazon is an object lesson for Seattle.
They understood from the jump that a massive influx of Amazon employees — at the promised order of magnitude — would drive up rents and put great pressure on transit and other public infrastructure.
As for Seattle, well, we may have been caught flat-footed by Amazon’s growth. The good news is with City Council elections this year, we have another opportunity to demand accountability.
The company just finished its most profitable year ever. That means token acts of charity are not enough. Amazon must accept shared responsibility for our city’s challenges, and every candidate who wants to represent voters should be offering a bold suite of policies to make sure that happens.
There are reasons to hope. Seattle City Council Members Teresa Mosqueda and Lisa Herbold went to New York earlier this year to tell a cautionary tale about the human cost of unmitigated corporate growth. Council Member Kshama Sawant has long been a vocal critic of Amazon, saying in recent interview, “The race I‘m running will be a referendum on one fundamental question. Who gets to own Seattle and run City Hall? Is it going to be Amazon and big businesses and corporate developers, or is it going to be ordinary working people?”
The way Amazon threw its weight around during last year’s head tax debate should scare everyone. With just a few public statements and a storehouse of campaign cash, the company warped policy-making in real time.
This year, Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy (CASE) — better known as the Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s Political Action Committee and the way Amazon can funnel over $350,000 to Mayor Jenny Durkan’s campaign — will be coming for us. And by us, I mean the shrinking number of single parents, immigrants, working people, people of color — people like me — who can still afford to call Seattle home. In CASE’s vision of our town, I don’t see room for me, for us.
Council Member Mosqueda spoke for me when she praised Amazon’s retreat from New York City.
“New York City officials, labor, and community came together to set their terms for partnership with one of the biggest and fast-growing companies in the world,” Mosqueda said. “We can’t allow companies to build booming profits on our infrastructure, labor and tax breaks without protections in place for the workers and infrastructure that fuels their growth.”
The takeaway from NYC playing hardball is that you can be tougher with Amazon.
In fact, it’s a moral imperative that you be tougher. We didn’t elect Amazon, we elected you.
Dujie Tahat is an immigrant writer and political communicator. He lives in Seattle with his three kids, and looks forward to the day he can vote.
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