Dozens Are Arrested In Amazon Store for Protesting Company’s Ties to ICE

This past past weekend, members of the Jewish community occupied an Amazon bookstore to protest the company working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On Ice The protests were led by a group calling themselves Jews Against Ice, and took place on Tisha B’Av, the annual day of mourning where Jewish people typically fast and remember injustices against the community. The protest was meant to underline what activists see as unsettling similarities between the historical persecution of the Jewish community and migrants targeted by ICE; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and many historians have likened ICE detainment centers to modern-day concentration camps. “We are demanding an end to this unfolding modern-day catastrophe,” said a spokesperson for the organization T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, one of the groups that helped organize the protest. Many of the protesters carried signs saying “Never Again.” More than a 40 protesters were detained by the New York Police Department. Book It There were similar demonstrations across the United States in cities such as Washington, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston. In New York, protesters picked the Amazon bookstore to draw attention to the company’s partnership with ICE, and to pressure the company to end its cloud computing contract with the agency. Amazon Web Services currently hosts databases that the Department of Homeland Security and its agencies, including ICE, use to track and detain immigrants. Not Just Employees Only The Jews Against ICE protesters are far from alone in feeling uneasy about Amazon’s close ties to ICE, as many Amazon employees and shareholders have also voiced their distress about ICE using their work. They have been particularly outspoken about Amazon’s facial recognition software, and have been pressuring the company to stop working with Palantir, the software company that has a $50 million contract to gather and store data on undocumented immigrants' employment information, phone records, and immigration history. -Michael Tedder Photo via @mollycrabapple Read More...