Amazon decided in 2019 not to construct a second headquarters in New York. Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, stated that Amazon would have brought 25,000 to 40,000 well-paying jobs and nearly $30 billion in new revenue to finance transit improvements, new housing, schools, and numerous other quality-of-life improvements.
Cuomo attributed this lost economic opportunity to “a small group of politicians who prioritized their own narrow political interests over the community.”
The political opposition to Amazon believed that the world’s wealthiest company did not deserve the enormous tax breaks that New York offered to entice the company away from other communities that offered their own incentives. Cuomo argued that Amazon would have brought sufficient investment to New York to justify the tax breaks and establish New York as a tech center to rival San Francisco.
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the most vocal opponents of tax breaks for Amazon. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez celebrated when New York lost the Amazon contract, telling her supporters, “Today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers and their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the richest man in the world.”
According to Ocasio-Cortez, their opposition to Amazon did not cost New York jobs; rather, it prevented “the richest man in the world” from exploiting workers in those positions. Ocasio-Cortez and her cohorts have demonstrated that their contempt for the rich exceeds their concern for the community.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s disdain is not solely directed at the wealthy. It also targets employees, whom the labor movement has recently deemed beneath contempt.
After the police killing of unarmed Black man George Floyd in 2020, Democratic politicians began to take activists’ demand to defund police departments seriously. Despite Democratic politicians’ claims that defunding the police was merely a matter of reallocating funds from police departments to community services, it was ultimately a punitive measure.
More punitive measures were taken behind the scenes.
Frida Garza reported in The Guardian, as protests against police brutality continue across the United States, a new strategy is emerging to combat the enormous influence of police unions: expelling them from organized labor if they cannot resolve racism within their ranks.
A labor historian, Christopher Hayes, stated that the Police Benevolent Association, which represents police officers in New York City and other communities, and the Fraternal Order of Police are not like traditional labor unions. They are almost exclusively self-interested and have no visible commitment to social justice.
In other words, police unions and their employees are an impediment to social justice and should be treated with contempt and no support.
For instance, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the city’s largest police union recently announced a new contract that will provide rank-and-file officers with their first pay raise in six years. The mayor happened to announce the city’s new contract with the police during the same week that city agencies received directives to reduce their budgets by 4 percent. A group of City Council members criticized the police for receiving funding at a time when other agencies were projected to lose money. Adams refuted the criticism and argued that increasing NYPD pay would help a department that has struggled to attract and retain employees over the years.
Adams added that the pay raise would improve the quality of life for these employees. Under normal conditions, the Left fights for higher wages to enhance the quality of life for workers, but not for those they consider on the wrong side of social justice.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez complained that increasing police funding while eliminating services makes the city less safe. She also stressed that New York is now at the point where most police officers are paid more than a teacher with a master’s degree.
That’s Ocasio-Cortez’s biggest problem.
It’s not the police raise per se; it’s the fact that police officers will earn more than school teachers, which, in Ocasio-Cortez’s worldview, is an injustice that must be stopped like the Amazon deal.
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