From coast to coast and globally, Amazon workers are organizing to build workers’ power at one of the world’s largest and most oppressive corporations. Amazon workers in Staten Island recently filed to hold union elections at two warehouses. The majority Black Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama are engaged in their second union campaign, after the results of the first were tossed out by the National Labor Relations Board based on Amazon’s egregious union busting campaign – which the company still continues in earnest in Bessemer, Staten Island, and elsewhere.

This recent explosion of union organizing efforts and strikes across the U.S. follows the massive global anti-racist mobilizations in response to the execution of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020. People hit the streets and the movement for Black Lives galvanized many young working class and oppressed people demonstrating against police brutality and systemic racism.

Both the revival of the labor movement and the movement against white supremacy are intrinsically connected as working class issues. It is no coincidence that Starbucks reacted to their workers’ growing union drive by firing organizers in Memphis, Tennessee where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr was assassinated in 1968 while supporting the union struggle of predominantly Black sanitation workers. That historic Memphis strike began on Feb. 12, 1968.

Feb. 26 marks the 10 year anniversary of the heinous murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. Police and racist vigilantes continue to murder and terrorize Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, LGBTQ+ people, and immigrants, while bosses use racism at our jobs to divide us and extract more profit from our labor.

Workers Power Day, called for Feb. 26, will uplift the life of Trayvon Martin and countless stolen lives to say clearly: Black Lives Matter! 

Historically, police have served as strike-breakers when companies fail to successfully break union mobilizations by other means. Corporations engaged in vicious racist union busting operations – Amazon, Starbucks and many others – exercise their influence over the state to utilize police to repress workers and maintain white supremacy.

After nearly three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, workers are increasingly stepping out and fighting back. While corporations rake in record profits and a narrowing number of centi-billionaires, including Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, watch their wealth skyrocket, nearly one million U.S. workers have been left to die by a government and healthcare system that cares more for profits than people.

Millions more workers have had to work in unsafe conditions, risked exposure to themselves or their families, lost their jobs, been evicted from their homes, or have had their communities terrorized by the police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This crisis has hit Black and other workers of color, im/migrants, women, gender oppressed, disabled and trans workers particularly hard.

New fighting spirit taking hold 

At companies big and small, workers are organizing, going on strike, and exercising their power as workers. From gig workers to domestic workers, tech workers to factory workers, im/migrant workers to sex workers, a new fighting spirit is taking hold.

From Oakland, California to New York City, education workers are fighting against the closure and privatization of public schools. There is growing recognition that every issue is a worker’s issue, whether it’s a struggle on the job, the fight against white supremacy, struggles for reproductive justice, the fight against gentrification, demands for immigrant justice, mass incarceration or opposition to more U.S. wars.

This growing workers’ movement has the potential to be transformative and global.

We encourage you to hold actions on February 26 – Workers Power Day – to unite and show solidarity with these many struggles, and connect with local struggles in your area. Actions could be organized at Whole Foods or other Amazon locations, a Starbucks, or another location of significance.

Fight racism and union busting!

Solidarity with Starbucks, Amazon, and all workers organizing!

Black Lives Matter!