February 17, 2019

Bill de Blasio Just Went on Meet the Press to Slam Amazon for All the Wrong Reasons

Has his message changed? Or have his constituents?

Activists protested Amazon's presence in NYC and won.Wang Ying/Xinhua/ZUMA Wire

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Bill de Blasio became New York City’s mayor in 2014 with a bold populist message about equaling the playing field for all New Yorkers. But when it comes to arguably the most contentious debate over wealth in the city’s recent history—Amazon’s announcement, and then reversal, on opening up a heavily subsidized headquarters in Queens—de Blasio is doing something of a bizarre about-face, arguing that private interests need to be stronger in order to withstand public scrutiny.

“The minute there were criticisms, they walked away,” de Blasio argued Sunday on Meet the Press. “Amazon just took their ball and went home.”

Amazon’s decision to back out of the deal to build a campus in Queens has become something of a litmus test of progressive idealism. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whose district includes the proposed site, celebrated the company’s reversal. “I think it’s incredible,” Ocasio-Cortez told NBC. “It shows that everyday Americans still have the power to organize and fight for their communities.”

Amazon withdrew from the deal after facing a severe backlash from communities over the millions of dollars in tax incentives politicians had brokered with the company. Opponents also worried that the project would deepen inequality in New York City, as big tech companies have been blamed for doing in places like San Francisco and Seattle.

De Blasio had championed the deal from the outset, and he’s now arguing that Amazon’s decision is “an abuse of corporate power.” In an op-ed for the New York Times published Saturday, de Blasio wrote that the deal provided a solid foundation for up to 25,000 jobs and that the company should have been able to withstand a little bit of public criticism about income inequality. “The lesson here is that corporations can’t ignore rising anger over economic inequality anymore,” de Blasio wrote. “We see that anger roiling Silicon Valley, in the rocks hurled at buses carrying tech workers from San Francisco and Oakland to office parks in the suburbs.”

Maybe the real lesson is that de Blasio’s message hasn’t changed. Instead, ordinary New Yorkers are far less willing to slowly chip away at inequality. They want to take it head on.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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