At least 100 Angels demonstrated against Amazon today in Los Angeles to demand that they stop making money with the pain of immigrants. (photo provided)
Photo:
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Union and religious leaders, families and allies of immigrants joined forces to protest and demand Amazon, the largest e-commerce company to stop making profits from the pain of immigrant families.
“Amazon had to close the store, but that was the goal, to interrupt their business day because they are making money by collaborating with government agencies such as the Migration and Customs Service (ICE) and the Department of National Security (DHS) that put our children in cages and detain immigrants in subhuman conditions, ”said Pastor Guillermo Torres of the Clérigos y Laicos Unidos for an Economic Justice (CLUE) organization.
“We want Amazon to stop serving as servants of hate and profit with pain. We will continue to press for them to stop benefiting from the suffering of our brothers, ”said the pastor.
The demonstration in which about 100 people participated was held at the Amazon store in the Westfield Century City Mall on Santa Monica Boulevard in western Los Angeless.
Amazon provides the server to Palantir, a company that provides the Migration and Customs Service (ICE) with a computer program to collect and store data on immigrants. It also provides a server to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and has tried to sell the controversial facial recognition software, called "Rekognition to ICE."
As a result of protest actions, Police arrested 11 siblings for disrupting business operations at the Amazon store in the Westfied mall.
According to protesters, Amazon is contributing to the atrocities that are committed against immigrants in detention centers and minors locked up in terrible conditions.
They demanded that Amazon stop offering infrastructure to Palantir and any Amazon partner that has a relationship with ICE, terminate any existing contract with government agencies that are separating families, and end projects that encourage racial discrimination and segregation such as Amazon's facial recognition product.
They also asked their representatives in Congress to oppose any increase to the budget of the ICE and the Office of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) this year. On the contrary, they demanded a reduction of the budget from ICE and the CBP.
According to the report “Who is behind ICE? The technology and data companies fan the deportation ”of the Mijente Immigrant Defense Project, currently, 10% of the $ 44 billion budget of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is dedicated to data management. "A handful of large corporations such as Amazon Web Services and Palantir have built a revolving door to develop and entrench the role of the Silicon Valley in fueling the regime of imprisonment and deportation," the report said.
They establish that without any revision, these technology companies will continue to tender the government, the systems that focus and punish en masse those immigrants considered undesirable, minority people, the jailed and former incarcerated, activists and others.
The opinion He contacted the Amazon press office about the demands in the protest, but until the close of the edition, they had not given an answer.
Last August, dozens of members of the Jewish community were arrested at the Amazon book store in Manhattan for protesting against the cloud computing contracts of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and other technical support services for ICE.
That same month, employees of the Whole Foods store sued Amazon to end its ties with ICE through its business with the controversial contractor Palantir.
The lawsuits were published in a public letter from the Whole Foods union. Amazón bought Whole Foods in 2017 for 13.7 billion pesos.
In July, when ICE was preparing to conduct mass raids, Amazon employees asked their employer in an internal letter that was published by the press, to take a stand against ICE, of raids, deportations and camps of Immigrants at the border.
"The world is contemplating abuses in the ICE concentration camps. We know that our company should and can do it better”They said in the letter.
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