We demand billions of dollars for schools, housing, healthcare and jobs with living wages—not for Amazon! #NoAmazonHQ

As the city's elites escalate the income gap and try to make Chicago a city for the rich and white only, we will fight for a city for the many!
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Guess what? Chicago isn’t broke after all!

It seems Mayor Rahm Emanuel might have found the money the city elites keep saying they don’t have for people’s needs. In fact, the rulers of this city are gearing up to promote perhaps billions of dollars in public spending—not on healthcare, schools or housing of course. They’re hatching plans to have the city pay out to Amazon an extortionate amount of money in order to win a nationwide competition for a new downtown corporate mega-headquarters.

Is Amazon broke or something? Do they really need some cash from supposedly broke cities? Of course not! Amazon’s massive wealth and great power is well known.

The entire competition for a new Amazon headquarters in which cities will promise enormous handouts to the corporation in order to woo it is absolutely disgusting. It's criminal. As Black and Brown communities are abandoned all across this country and city hall’s from coast to coast continue to aid and abet racist police terror against these same communities, city elites in hundreds of cities and towns are going down on their knees to hand their city and its finances over to a ruthless capitalist company that in no way needs financial aid!

An Amazon headquarters in Chicago would be no victory for the vast majority of people living in Chicago. In fact, it represents a great threat to us.

An Amazon headquarters in Chicago, or anywhere, which would receive billions of dollars in corporate welfare and hire mostly high paid white managers, would send gentrification and ethnic cleansing of Chicago's neighborhoods into overdrive. Like in Seattle, it would send rents and home prices skyrocketing. It would give Amazon more power to keep wages low for its warehouse workers and drivers, thereby depressing wages across the board. An Amazon HQ would concretely increase Chicagoans suffering, especially for the most oppressed, in the form of lower pay and higher living expenses.

We will not allow the city's political and economic elites to hand over billions of dollars and the keys of the city to Amazon. We will fight to stop the rulers of this city from turning Chicago into a city for the rich and white only. We will fight for a city for the many: We demand billions of dollars for schools, housing, healthcare and jobs with living wages—not for Amazon!

As Mayor Emanuel, Governor Rauner and billionaires like Penny Pritzker and Miles D. White unite the entirety of Chicagoland's political and economic elites for a drive to win the nationwide competition for Amazon's massive 2nd headquarters, let's be real: These people who can't find the money for health care clinics, to rebuild the south side or to house the homeless, are a gang of privileged thugs who are waging an open war on workers and the poor. In fact, they really do represent a dictatorship of the wealthy.

The competition for Amazon offices should reveal the truth to all who have eyes to see. This is a racist and unequal country. As people on top of this society spar over what to do about the violence on the streets of Chicago, is it not the truth that the greatest form of violence is to keep giving handouts to the ruling class while systematically sacrificing entire Black and Brown communities to poverty, shorter life spans, mass incarceration and racist police terror?

An Amazon HQ in Chicago is Not the ANSWER to …

Gentrification and ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods. The current Amazon HQ in Seattle is a world leader in gentrification and displacement of the oppressed and the poor. We demand affordable, quality public housing for all, rent control and an end to the ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods through segregation, structural violence and systemic underdevelopment.

The economic problems working and oppressed people face. Amazon is anti-union and pays part-time poverty wages to warehouse and delivery workers. Amazon is a dangerous place to work for low-wage workers. We will stop the Amazon blue print of poverty and misery for the masses and fight for living wage jobs for everyone.

The war on public education. We need money for schools, not millions of dollars in handouts to Amazon. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's boss and one of the richest people in the world, is a big promoter of the war to destroy public education. We will fight for equality in education and the end to the apartheid school system here in Chicago.

The healthcare crisis. It is criminal that the city's elites are even contemplating handing over billions of dollars to Amazon, one of the wealthiest companies to ever exist, when so many go without the healthcare they need! Every public dollar that goes to Amazon is a dollar that does not go to provide essential aid and care to human beings. Healthcare, not corporate welfare now. Universal Healthcare Now!

Racist police brutality. The CPD is racist and corrupt and exists to serve and protect the political and economic elites of this city. The #NoAmazonHQ campaign demands and end to the systematic impoverishment and the mass incarceration of Black, Brown and all oppressed communities. We demand money for jobs, education, housing and healthcare and end to the racist police terror and military-style occupations that enforce poverty and mass incarceration. We stand in solidarity with #NoCopAcademy.

Homelessness. In Seattle, where Amazon controls 20 percent of the corporate office space in which its privileged predominantly white male managers work, rents, home prices and homelessness have skyrocketed. We fight for housing as a human right!

Inequality and the patriarchal oppression of women. Amazon's managers, the people who would be employed at the headquarters, are overwhelming white men. The tech sector is dominated by sexism and bigotry. Women's equality and liberation now!

The #NoAmazonHQ campaign stands with immigrants, Muslims, people of color, LGBTQ people, women and all those who are under attack by the Trump regime, the congress of millionaires, the fascists, the Emanuel regime and the billionaire class. Together, we will win!

An Amazon HQ in Chicago is not a solution to our common problems. It will make the crises we are facing worse! Decades of austerity—tax cuts for the rich, massive government handouts to corporations, the great defunding of public services and runaway spending on wars and prisons have not stopped any of the problems working and oppressed people face. In fact, they have created horrific economic and social crises for the majority of people in this country.

As the city's elites try to escalate the income gap and make Chicago a city for the rich and white only, we will fight for a city for the many!