Last April, Christian Smalls, a supervisor at an Amazon facility in Staten Island, New York City known as JFK8, was fired for organizing fellow workers. Chris was a leader, someone who trained other workers; he’d been at Amazon for years when the pandemic hit. When he felt the company wasn’t taking the necessary precautions to keep his coworkers safe as COVID rampaged through New York City, he helped stage a rally outside of JFK8 to protest the unsafe conditions. The company responded by firing him, claiming it was for violating social-distancing rules. New York State Attorney Tish James has charged Amazon with unlawfully firing Chris.

After Amazon fired Chris, Vice obtained a memo from the S-Team (the highest-level Amazon executives) relating to a meeting the team held about the situation. In that meeting, at which Jeff Bezos was present, Amazon general counsel David Zapolsky said Chris was “not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position.” Chris has been focused on making Amazon regret that ever since.

In April of this year, Chris helped launch an independent union organizing effort. He is seeking nothing less than the organizing of Amazon’s thousands of warehouse workers at JFK8 and nearby warehouses. The New York Times recently published an investigation focused specifically on JFK8. It details the incredibly high rates of turnover at the warehouse, the firings-by-algorithm, the inability of workers who have been fired to even reach a human being who could explain their termination. It shows a company that is driving its workforce to despair and desperation.