Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, will come to Venice with his fiancée, some former marines, and his unlimited credit card for a wedding that will block the entire city. Italian activists say that people like them, who believe they can buy anything, are too much.
Venice is „boiling” in anticipation of the American billionaire Jeff Bezos’s wedding, scheduled for this weekend. 90 aircraft are expected to bring 200 guests, with several events and strict security measures.
Activists protesting against this mega-event that will disrupt the life of the Italian city, already suffocated by tourism, continue their fight and announce some surprises for the end of the week. So far, their messages have not gone unnoticed and have been highlighted in the international press, with The Guardian explaining the goals of the resistance movement titled "No Space for Bezos."
Left the US Because of Bezos, Can't Escape Him Even in Venice
When Heather Jane Johnson heard that Jeff Bezos (61 years old) was marrying Lauren Sanchez (55 years old) in Venice in June, she felt worse than ever before in her life. Twenty-five years ago, she stopped working as a bookseller in Boston, Massachusetts. "I lost a lot because of Bezos and Americans' complicity in creating Amazon. One significant reason I moved to Italy is that I felt betrayed by my fellow countrymen," says the 53-year-old woman.
So when posters announcing a public meeting in the city she now calls home appeared, she went and attended every anti-Bezos activist meeting since, including one the day before her own wedding last week. "These young people truly restored my faith in humanity," she says.
Oliver, 43, works as a receptionist at a hotel in Venice – not one of the hyper-luxurious ones, but just "a small palace from the 14th century" – but he keeps an eye on the tourism sector. "Bezos can pay, he can stay," he says, "but thousands of shops in Italy have closed because of Amazon. So, I don't think he is welcome."
- Venice to expand tourist tax system. Has collected 2.2 million euros since April
- New restrictions for tourists in Venice
Marta Sottoriva, a 34-year-old high school teacher, says "No Space for Bezos" is not a group but a platform with unimaginably high ambitions. However, after just a few weeks, they have already achieved part of what they set out to do.
"If Bezos had announced his wedding here and we hadn't stood up, the global media narrative would have been about luxury hotels, VIPs, dresses, gossip," says Sottoriva. "We really wanted to address the issue of ridiculous and obscene wealth, which allows a person to rent a city for three days."
Venice Residents Feel Like Zoo Animals
City residents say they face the same disregard from local authorities. They have several grievances:
- The city council will effectively close the city center to appease a billionaire;
- The city council has the power to limit Airbnb rentals but refuses to do so;
- The 5 euro per day tourist tax introduced last year to address excessive tourism does not take into account that locals "truly feel like animals in a zoo or like cartoon characters in Disneyland."
Protesters have other grievances that intersect with those of environmental activists. It doesn't matter that Amazon "promotes a culture of extreme and excessive consumption," says 27-year-old university researcher Stella Faye, "(Amazon) represents a model of exploiting people and nature. It depends on huge amounts of electricity for servers and then huge amounts of water resources to cool the servers, which are often located in arid areas. So, they take water resources from regions where people desperately need them."
Moreover, they consider that politically, Bezos has shifted from what everyone always assumed to be moderate support for Democrats to active support for Trump. "We don't see a billionaire leaning towards Trump," says 34-year-old high school teacher Marta Sottoriva, "we see a new political discourse where the private interests of digital capitalism and technocapitalism merge with fascism. It's not just about Venice."
The Messages Everyone Saw
On June 12, the movement unfurled its simplest and largest banner – eight meters long, with only Bezos's name written in red – on the bell tower of the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, while the city's extremely unpopular mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, tried to hold a press conference.
Federica Toninello, 33, describes their social media spat with laughter: "He said: 'Shame!' and we said: 'You should be ashamed!'." In the same week, activists placed a similar banner on the Rialto Bridge.
And on Tuesday, activists from Greenpeace Italy and the British action group Everyone Hates Elon unfurled a gigantic 400-square-meter banner in Piazza San Marco with the message: "If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more taxes," reports La Stampa.
The protests have gained traction because activists have shifted their focus from "How much money does that man have?" to something more intriguing: "How much disturbance can No Space for Bezos cause? What kind of numbers will they achieve? What debates will start?"
Between Elon Musk handing out million-dollar checks to voters and Vladimir Putin ordering chaos and death like consumables, there is this terrible sense of unlimited purchasing power among the elites.
If it were to be proven that there is something a billionaire cannot buy and it would be something simple - a little goodwill, kindness, intimacy, and respect, then for him, his fiancée Lauren Sanchez, and their 200 friends, it would be very important, activists believe.
A Surprise Is Coming, and Bezos Reacted
Not all protest actions this week will be announced in advance, but one thing was not kept secret: this Saturday, a demonstration will be held to block access to Scuola Grande della Misericordia, where Bezos planned to host a grand party.
The Italian edition of Vanity Fair announced on Monday that the American businessman was forced to move the party to the Arsenale di Venezia, the city's former shipyard, for safety reasons and to avoid tensions and disturbing the locals.
Bezos will not solely rely on Italian law enforcement but is bringing former marines with him to handle security, making him even more unpopular, as reported by the British daily.
T.D.