Amazon prime day action

Back in late March 2024, Troublemakers pulled off one of its first actions in protest of Amazon’s plans to use fracked gas from the GTN Xpress pipeline to power its data centers in OR. By blocking doors and the parking garage entrance, we successfully shut down Amazon’s downtown headquarters. In early June Amazon dropped its plans to use GTN gas.

While Troublemakers can’t claim full credit for Amazon's decision, we know we helped put significant public pressure on the company and its executives.

On the heels of this action, Troublemakers teamed up with Stand.earth to organize an NVDA on Amazon’s Prime Day to call out Amazon’s egregious use of fossil fuels for its shipping. As lead organizer Jim Ace would say, from “ships, to planes, to trucks, to vans Amazon pollutes!” While the company attempts to delude us with claims of reaching net-zero carbon emissions, Stand.earth’s reports show that Amazon’s shipping related emissions are increasing. Especially disturbing is the increased reliance on shipping by air, which went up during the pandemic and has continued to rise. Prime day is the largest shopping event of the year and Amazon gets tons of media attention over the bonanza. It’s an ideal time therefore to shine a spotlight on Amazon’s emissions, highlighting the slogan, “Amazon a Prime Polluter”.

Early on July 19, Prime Day 2024 activists gathered in a parking lot. We were prepared to completely shut down 6th Ave alongside the headquarters and then to use stencils to paint a huge message to CEO Andy Jassy, “Wrong Way on Climate”. Our safety teamed rolled out first with trucks loaded with barricade equipment, art and props. Amazon’s security employees were crawling all over the plaza and sidewalk, SPD was also present.

Despite this, as the light at Lenora and 6th changed to red, our deployment began, including a flashing arrow to direct traffic from 6th. Within minutes barrels, barricades and flaggers were in place and 6th Ave was ours. The stencil team then sprang into action and spread a 20’ x 60’ banner onto the street, depicting a ship, plan, truck, and van images and a demand to “Decarbonize Deliveries”. Then like clockwork, we began laying down 5’ stencils and our painters rolled down the paint.

At this point an individual SPD officer named Steven Strand attempted to singlehandedly remove us from the street. Captured on numerous cameras he can be seen kicking over stacks of our “Deliver Change” boxes and then driving his car onto 6th, not stopping when obstructed by activists. He slowly drove into some people and onto our stencils while blaring over his loudspeaker that the street was open and were subject to arrest. We continued to lay down stencil letters and paint until he arrested out police liaison. At which point it was decided to remove our blockade and move to the sidewalk. Our protest continued with chanting, leafleting (`500 distributed), an activist delivery line of our demands, and a press conference. Coverage went out on Socials as well as KUOW, Kiro, Seattle Times and Geek Wire.

Rest assured our police liasion, Mathew, was released after a couple of hours on dubious charges and complaints have been filed against officer Strand with OPA (Office of Police Accountability). True to our name we made good trouble for Amazon and brought a measure of reality to the image of a climate destroying and worker abusing corporation.