In 2021, a handful of Amazon workers stop the corporate over its choice to promote books that recommend youngsters who establish as transgender are mentally unwell. Now, a bunch of workers is protesting its continued sale of these books by disrupting a Pride occasion at its headquarters in Seattle. According to The Washington Post, round 30 members of the group No Hate at Amazon laid on the bottom wrapped in trans flags to cease the corporate’s annual Pride flag-raising custom. An organizer stated: “Amazon does have standing insurance policies towards hate speech in its content material and technically they are saying we do not promote it.” But in reality, these contentious books are nonetheless listed on its web site.
I’m at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, the place about 30 Amazon workers are staging a die-in throughout Amazon’s Pride Flag elevating ceremony in protest of the corporate’s continued sale of what they are saying are transphobic books. pic.twitter.com/Pz0Pyy0Mzi
— Katherine Long (@_katya_long) June 1, 2022
In a petition the group beforehand circulated to get Amazon to cease promoting anti-trans books, it particularly named two titles: Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier and Johnny the Walrus by American conservative political commentator Matt Walsh. “By persevering with to promote and promote anti-trans books and repeating the rhetoric of the anti-trans hate motion, Amazon higher administration has allowed the shop that we construct and function to be complicit in [the anti-trans] hate motion,” the petition reads.
At least one worker who participated within the occasion stop the corporate this week. Senior software program engineer Lina Jodoin defined that it is extra than simply in regards to the sale of these books, but in addition in regards to the response they’ve gotten from administration after they tried to escalate their issues. And based mostly on the corporate’s response to the protest, it can carry on promoting these titles.
Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser advised The Post in an announcement:
“As an organization, we imagine strongly in range, fairness, and inclusion. As a bookseller, we’ve chosen to supply a really broad vary of viewpoints, together with books that battle with our firm values and company positions. We imagine that it’s attainable to do each – to supply a broad vary of viewpoints in our bookstore, and help range, fairness, and inclusion.”