Activists question city’s Amazon bid with fake Alexa
The $ 2.25 billion incentive package aimed at luring Amazon’s second North American headquarters to Chicago amounts to $ 450,000 per job that must be matched by investments in city neighborhoods, community activists demanded Tuesday.
The “Babies Before Bezos” crowd returned to City Hall, this time with a protester dressed as Alexa, the talking, interactive “virtual assistant” developed by Amazon.
That allowed Amisha Patel, executive director of the Grassroots Collaborative, to conduct a mock interview to underscore her demands that Amazon pay sales and property taxes, provide affordable housing, accessible transportation and “living wage” jobs to employees free to unionize and that residents have a seat at the negotiating table.
Under questioning by Patel, pretend Alexa said Amazon’s profits last year were “$ 3 billion U. S. dollars” and that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $ 116.8 billion.
When Patel asked how many people Amazon’s HQ2 would “push out of the city” or why the company demands “non- disclosure agreements,” Alexa replied: “I am not at liberty to say.”
But pretend Alexa did claim that Chicago’s incentive package amounts to $ 5,500 per student at Chicago Public Schools and that $ 2.25 billion could provide home care services for 701,380 senior citizens, MAP grants for 754,842 low- income colleges students or homeless services for 2.8 million people.
“We are not OK with Amazon playing Hunger Games with cities like Chicago,” Patel told a City Hall news conference.
Grant Klinzman, Emanuel’s spokesperson on the Amazon bid, sent an email saying he “politely declined” to comment on the group’s demands.