12/09/2022
The widely reported spat between Professor Uju Anya and Jeff Bezos is one more reason why we should read widely and not just go with trends.
Turns out that viral tweet is not the first time the two are ‘meeting’…
… So, once upon a time, on April 20, 2021, lowly paid, overstressed workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, a borough in New York City, became the first private sector, non-tenured workers in a global corporation, in modern history, to form a labor union.
Amazon is the worlds largest internet company, online retailer and marketplace, smart speaker provider, and cloud computing service.
It’s owner Jeff Bezos is the worlds second-richest person.
This unprecedented labor action created the Amazon Labor Union (ALU).
It was the equivalent of a large asteroid smashing through your bedroom window in the middle of the night.
The New York Times described the unionization as "one of the biggest victories for organized labor in a generation"
and Jacobin magazine wrote that the ALU's achievement was "the most important labor victory in the United States since the 1930s".
The power to control the poor workers of the world’s largest company was now out of its billionaire owner’s hands.
Naturally, Mr. Bezos took it hard.
Court case after court case, the new movement is still battling it out with its now embittered employer.
Because of this new union, Bezos’ Amazon spent $4.3 million in anti-union consulting last year alone.
Already, the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) has sparked a wildfire among poor workers not just in America, but all over the world:
just last month, 209 Starbucks stores officially voted to unionize according to the National Labor Relations Board.
First-ever unions have also formed at an Apple
store, something CEOs of all big companies are horrified by.
Worse still, Google workers have bit the bug: last January, the Alphabet Workers Union, also informally referred to as the Google Union, joined the wave begun by Bezos’ underpaid, overworked Amazon staff.
Since then, over 50 Amazon warehouses worldwide have contacted the ALU in attempts to organize their own workplaces, with some facilities from Canada, India, South Africa and the United Kingdom asking the ALU for guidance.
Now to the sweet part.
Interestingly, this globally disruptive movement is led by a 34 year old black man.
His name is Chris Smalls.
Not only is Mr Smalls young and black, he is a very ordinary guy with an unconventional dress style - never wears a suit, or tie, always in brightly colored street wear.
Invited to meet the US President & Senators, this labor leader’s choice of clothing was a bright red, yellow, and black bomber jacket embroidered with the words “Eat the Rich”.
President Biden Biden jokingly called Smalls, “my kind of trouble.”
At a closed door meeting with Smalls & the ALU organizing team, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) declared: “what you have done is to take on one of the most powerful corporations in America owned by the second wealthiest guy in this country.”
Enter the Professor.
Coincidentally, in August, a random tweet supporting the Chris Smalls led labor movement went viral.
The tweet was by a university professor from California, herself a black woman, an American immigrant whose parents are Igbo from Nigeria.
The Professor even attached a photo of herself standing proudly by the renegade Amazon worker whom Jeff Bezos had sacked, saying, “Extraordinary brilliant and powerful young man who unionized Amazon!! ✊🏾✊🏾✊🏾”
That was the moment Mr Bezos became aware of the existence of Professor Uju Anya,
Fast forward one month later, fellow member of Bezos’ billionaire club, and owner of equally unearned wealth, her majesty Queen Elizabeth II has suddenly died.
And aforesaid Professor has expressed a strongly worded reaction.
And Jeff Bezos, who has never had particular interest in anything that concerns people like Uju Anya or Chris Smalls, tweets a vociferous reply.
Subsequently, Bezos’ interaction amplifies the professor’s tweet, leading to calls for her to be sacked from the university where she works.
If this goes through, the obviously pained billionaire will have had his pound of flesh without wasting any sweat.
But, on September 9, a U.S. group, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), issued a warning to Carnegie Mellon University not to take disciplinary actions against Uju Anya, a professor in the school’s department of modern languages, for her description of the late Queen Elizabeth II as a “wretched woman” and a “genocidal colonizer.”
FIRE warned CMU not to cower to external pressure to terminate Ms Anya’s teaching contract, reminding the institution of its “free expression promises”, and instead urged CMU to resist public pressure and live up to its commitments “by refusing to investigate or punish Anya for her protected extramural expression.”
Defending Ms Anya against persons who found the timing of her tweets insensitive, the U.S. rights group asserted that “freedom of expression does not observe a mourning period.”
In a statement by Alex Morey, the group’s director of campus rights advocacy, “Free expression includes the right to say you’re happy someone died, or even wish them harm or suffering.”
FIRE further advised the university to uphold its “solid” free expression policies and “simply allow the conversation to continue.”
It also urged Twitter to toe the same path and stop censoring tweets as was done to Ms Anya, whose thread was taken down for violating the microblogging platform’s guidelines.
That’s the story of why Bezos is interested in Anya.
See now?
The moral of the story is fight your own fight, and don’t fight for people who are fighting against you.
Understand how power works in this world, and how seemingly genuine trends are often just powerplays.
The End.
References:
FIRE Statement https://www.thefire.org/fire-letter-to-carnegie-mellon-university-september-8-2022/
Chris Smalls https://www.vox.com/recode/23145265/amazon-fired-chris-smalls-union-leader-alu-jeff-bezos-bernie-sanders-aoc-labor-movement-biden
FIRE Letter to Carnegie Mellon University, September 8, 2022 by FIRE September 8, 2022 PDF FIRE-Letter-to-Carnegie-Mellon-University-September-8-2022 Schools: Carnegie Mellon University Cases: Carnegie Mellon University: Professor’s tweet wishing Queen Elizabeth ‘excruciating’ death results in...