Featured Image Credit: Pool / Pool via Getty
A 72-year-old Amazon worker had her message beamed directly onto Jeff Bezos's $120 million penthouse.
The protests surrounding Jeff Bezos's involvement in this year's Met Gala took many forms. A fired Amazon worker projected a personal message onto the billionaire's New York penthouse in the days before the event. The activist, Chris Smalls, accused the tech giant of funding surveillance technology targeting Palestine and claimed that a billionaire event goes on at the Gala while poverty still is on the streets right outside.
During the event, nearly 300 bottles of what was presumed to be urine were left outside the venue, a direct reference to the allegations that Amazon delivery drivers are routinely forced to relieve themselves in plastic bottles due to time constraints.
Advert
Jeff and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, attended the event as honorary co-chairs, having reportedly donated $10 million to the event. This year's event was nicknamed the 'Tech Gala' as several Silicon Valley figures attended including Mark Zuckerberg, Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
Now, another voice has been added to the protests and it may be the most heart-wrenching one yet.
On Sunday evening, a video was projected onto Bezos's penthouse featuring Mary Hill, a 72-year-old Amazon warehouse worker who says she is battling cancer while living paycheck to paycheck.
Hill has been a prominent voice in the campaign to improve conditions for older Amazon employees, and her message to the billionaire was direct and personal.
"Jeff Bezos. My name is Mary Hill. I am a 72-year-old warehouse worker at one of your facilities," she began.
"When we struggle from paycheck to paycheck, from week to week, it really angers me because if it weren't for every associate in every Amazon facility, he wouldn't have all those zeros behind his name."
She called on the Met Gala to recognise the people who actually built Bezos's fortune behind the scenes.
"The people that need to be celebrated at the Met Gala are the workers. People like me," she said. "We deserve that celebration. Shame on you, Jeff Bezos."
Similar to Smalls, Hill reminded the Amazon CEO that the workers who built his empire vastly outnumber those at the top.
"Remember Jeff, ordinary people like me that help make you [a] billionaire, if we built it, we can tear it down."
She closed by making clear that the protests are the beginning of something longer.
The marches, the fights, and the demonstrations against what she called a 'dystopian culture' within Amazon would continue.
