On Tuesday, protesters disrupted the keynote speech at Amazon Web Services’s (AWS) summit at the Javits Center in Manhattan to call attention to Amazon’s government contracts and surveillance tools.
Activists with the New York Communities for Change (NYCC), Make the Road NY, MediaJustice, MPower Change, Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), and the Immigrant Defense Project (IDP) have come together to form the #NoTechForApartheid campaign, along with Mijente’s #NoTechforICE campaign which focused on AWS contracts powering ICE’s surveillance, terrorizing, and deportation of migrants in the United States. Read the full article in VICE.
“Amazon is invested in securing as many as possible of these contracts because unfortunately surveillance and policing is still profitable. We’re in a moment of time where policing has really lost its legitimacy with communities of color around the country and the globe, right. We’re in a moment where they’re looking for technology to ‘keep our communities safe.’ But we know that these technologies actually put us in further danger by putting us in further contact with the police and military. They are definitely taking advantage of this moment where people are looking for ‘alternatives’ or more ‘informed’ or ‘accurate’ policing…These customers are coming to AWS summit to learn about all the magic and power of Amazon’s technology, but they’re not going to hear about how this technology is being used to deport people, to incarcerate people, to criminalize people. And so we’re here basically to disrupt business as usual, and really expose Amazon for the company it is,” Hayes added.
Myaisha Hayes, Campaign Strategies Director at MediaJustice in VICE
