The Rise and Fall of Chris Smalls

By
Annie Levin

Chris Smalls shot to prominence for playing a key role in the shock union win at a New York Amazon warehouse. He was charismatic and energetic at a time labor needed both. But in the years since, his own ego has overwhelmed his political contributions.

Labor leader Chris Smalls speaks at a rally outside of an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, on April 11, 2023.

Rarely in the American labor movement’s history has a star burned as brightly and as briefly as Amazon union leader Chris Smalls’s. (Paul Frangipane / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Christian Smalls’s memoir When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class, comes out at an odd time in the career of the former Amazon Labor Union president.

The book, ghostwritten by author Carvell Wallace, was sold to Pantheon in 2022 shortly after the historic National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election victory for the Amazon Labor Union (ALU). Today Smalls is unaffiliated with the union, which he exited in 2024 following a period of internal factionalism. Since leaving his post, Smalls has appeared on talk shows, given speeches, and heroically joined aid missions to Gaza and Cuba. Recently he’s been in the news again for breaking into the Met Gala to draw attention to Jeff Bezos’s role as the event’s sponsor.

Presidents of union locals are rarely celebrities, but as the charismatic leader of the first union to win an NLRB election at an Amazon warehouse, Smalls was boosted to left-wing pseudo-stardom. A former party promoter, Smalls was entirely in his element as the much sought-after spokesperson for the ALU. In the year that followed the election, Smalls was everywhere: on picket lines, speaking at the Labor Notes conference, here in Jacobin, on the Daily Show, and being photographed with Zendaya at the Time 100 Gala. For a brief period, Smalls helped bring the labor movement into the mainstream. As someone who came from the working class and made organizing seem glamorous and thrilling, he seemed like the type of leader the labor movement had needed for decades.

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