Within the first two years of the Cheech Marin Middle for Chicano Artwork and Tradition’s existence, e-commerce big Amazon.com was comfortable to contribute funds to the much-lauded Riverside facility.
However this yr, the Cheech hosted an exhibit that included a chunk depicting an Amazon warehouse on hearth. In an interview, the artist stated the piece, titled “Burn Them All Down,” was not a name to arson, however as a substitute a commentary on how public officers weren’t listening to neighborhood issues concerning the rising variety of warehouses of their Inland Empire neighborhoods.
Amazon noticed the feedback as being hostile towards the corporate. The e-commerce agency known as it quits on future donations.
“We won’t donate to the Cheech,” Amazon officers wrote in a leaked doc that outlines the corporate’s plans for neighborhood engagement subsequent yr within the Inland Empire. “We won’t proceed to assist organizations that didn’t end in measurable constructive affect in our model and popularity. Moreover we won’t fund organizations which have positioned themselves antagonistically towards our pursuits.”
The leaked doc reveals an in depth public relations technique by Amazon to donate to neighborhood teams, college districts, establishments and charities within the Inland Empire and assist sympathetic politicians to burnish the corporate’s popularity and guarantee it’s seen as “essentially the most trusted neighborhood and enterprise accomplice within the Southern California space,” based on the plan. The Occasions independently confirmed the authenticity of the doc.
The technique comes as Amazon faces rising opposition to extra warehouse-building within the area and unionization efforts at present warehouses.
“It’s not shocking, however it’s a little shocking to see all of it written out in a single memo,” stated Sheheryar Kaoosji, govt director of the Warehouse Employee Useful resource Middle, which has been organizing warehouse staff and communities within the Inland Empire for years to advocate for staff’ rights and environmental justice points.
Regardless of years of neighborhood protest and employee activism over well being and issues of safety, he stated, “Amazon doesn’t take it critically, calls them perceived points, and comes up with a plan to divert consideration, relatively than deal with any of these issues head-on.”
In an announcement, Amazon spokesperson Jennifer Flagg didn’t dispute the provenance of the doc, saying Amazon is “proud to be engaged philanthropically in communities throughout the nation.”
The doc first publicly surfaced in a put up on X from Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, chief officer of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. Within the put up, she known as it an “attention-grabbing learn” about how Amazon plans to make use of charitable donations in communities of coloration “to combat laws” on environmental results of warehouses and labor organizing.
“This put up is a blatant mischaracterization of Amazon’s work,” Flagg stated within the assertion. “By worker volunteerism or our charitable donations, it’s at all times Amazon’s intention to assist assist the communities the place we work in a approach that’s most attentive to the wants of that neighborhood.”
The plan particulars efforts to extend neighborhood engagement, constructive media consideration and lawmaker mentions of the corporate via charitable contributions, alignment with neighborhood occasions and talking at conferences hosted by Amazon-supported organizations.
One part outlines plans to accomplice with affinity teams throughout the firm that target workers who’re veterans, Latino, Black or LGBTQ+ to focus on Amazon’s range via participation in native parades and different gatherings.
The doc additionally highlights efforts to determine and assist “influential neighborhood voices” resembling nonprofits, giant charities and area people faculties to “positively affect policymakers and generate third occasion validators and advocates within the Southern California area.”
It identifies by title a neighborhood politician who backed laws deemed detrimental to the corporate’s plans: Assemblymember Eloise Gómez Reyes, who helps environmental legal guidelines resembling Meeting Invoice 1000, which might make it more durable to construct warehouses close to colleges, properties, day-care facilities, hospitals and different delicate services.
In an announcement, Reyes stated the point out was a “badge of honor.”
“It’s disheartening to see Amazon bypassing direct neighborhood engagement and the requested neighborhood protections” and as a substitute “prioritizing monetary incentives to advance their enterprise goal,” she stated within the assertion.
The doc additionally lists state and native politicians seen as allies or potential allies. Perris Mayor Marty Vargas is described as “an influential elected chief that we now have cultivated via PPE donations to assist the area, touring him and his workforce, and ongoing engagement.” The doc additionally provides that Vargas is influential on the governing physique of KSBD, the air freight facility that Amazon operates at San Bernardino Worldwide Airport and that has been a web site of labor battle in recent times.
It says there may be “alternative right here to work with Assemblymember David Alvarez,” who represents the San Diego district that Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher left to go the California Labor Federation, and who has “been on excursions.”
In an announcement, Vargas denied that he had a comfortable relationship with Amazon. “I vehemently oppose claims that I’ve been ‘cultivated’ by Amazon via PPE donations and have been courted as an influential governing member of KSBD, which isn’t in my jurisdiction,” Vargas stated. “My relationship with Amazon isn’t any totally different than some other enterprise throughout the Metropolis of Perris, and on no account am I getting used to affect laws or present preferential therapy to giant scale companies.”
Alvarez didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Kaoosji of the Warehouse Employee Useful resource Middle stated he noticed the point out of the Cheech funding as a transparent instance of how firms like Amazon view charitable donations: quid professional quos for producing constructive sentiment in the neighborhood and media.
“There’s a motive they’re doing this, and so they’re investing their cash in locations the place they wish to see a return,” he stated. “They’re businesspeople, that’s what they do, however this can be a actual mask-off second for the way it works.”
The Riverside Artwork Museum, the bigger establishment by which the Cheech resides, stated the leaked doc was the primary time it had heard of Amazon’s response to the exhibition. Drew Oberjuerge, the museum’s govt director, stated Amazon donated $5,000 to assist the Cheech’s inaugural gala in 2022, after which despatched one other $5,000, unsolicited, this yr.
“Neither fee was designated for an exhibition, and the corporate has not communicated any questions or issues about an paintings or requested the return of its donations,” she stated in an announcement.
“We imagine in supporting artists and curators who problem, shock, delight, annoy and anger,” Oberjuerge stated. “It’s via this dialogue we higher perceive our shared expertise.”