Ten Partnership affiliate organizations came together last year to launch #WeMakeThisCity — a campaign for infrastructure and public goods that increase community wealth, health and justice. With one year of campaigning behind us, we have a lot to celebrate!
This post is part two of a series about the vital work of #WeMakeThisCity organizers across the country. Their hard-fought wins prove that by building power locally, we can strengthen our cities and create a just future, together. Each part of the series highlights the work in different cities across the country.
Unmasking Big Tech’s Secret Expansion Plans in New York and the Bay Area
When it comes to shaping the future of our cities, big tech is wielding outsized power. Again and again, we see that companies like Amazon and Google go to great lengths to subvert our local democracies, bypassing community input and making back-room deals in their thirst for expansion.
Our movements to build vibrant, inclusive, equitable cities in the U.S. are confronting this dynamic head-on.
#WeMakeThisCity is about fighting for control of our land and our resources, and this year, two strong examples played out on both coasts.
In New York City, communities fought back and won when Amazon sought $3 billion of public money for a second headquarters that would steamroll the most racially diverse urban area in the world.
New Yorkers were clear: they would not allow a tech behemoth to rewrite the rules of living and working in Queens to suit only the rich.
Queens residents quickly sounded the alarm about the gentrification and displacement that Amazon would bring, and raised awareness about the corporation’s support of ICE’s deportation machine. Over fifteen community-based organizations banded together to fight for the future of their city. When Amazon hired corporate lobbyists in response, Partnership affiliate ALIGN joined forces with organizations like New York Communities for Change, Make the Road New York, and MPower Change to counter their power. They packed city council hearings and demanded answers from Amazon, they traveled to Albany to weigh in with the Public Authorities Control Board, and they held town halls and rallies in the community. The result of all their work? Amazon scrapped its plans to build a second headquarters in New York.
In San Jose, California, locals are fighting for transparency and real commitments to community priorities like affordable housing and good jobs as Google plans a 50-acre mega campus in the middle of downtown.
Residents, tech service workers, and even Google employees are organizing with Silicon Valley Rising to hold Google to account and make sure families have the freedom to stay and thrive in the communities they’ve built.
Their campaign is ensuring that the infrastructure investments required to support the new campus actually benefit the public and don’t displace longtime residents. They’re fighting to set a high bar for inclusive tech development by investing in truly affordable housing, includes protections against displacement, and sets jobs standards for both construction and operations jobs on campus — including janitors, cafeteria workers, security guards, and shuttle bus drivers.
Though these groundbreaking campaigns are on opposite coasts, their mission is the same: ensure that communities have a seat at the table and local government operates with full transparency when big tech comes to town.
In both New York and San Jose, Amazon and Google put pressure on local government officials to make back-room deals promising huge subsidies and infrastructure projects, paid for by the very residents who were being shut out of the process.
Amazon extracted promises for $3 billion in New Yorkers’ tax dollars through a secretive bidding process for the new headquarters that left the people of New York, and even their city council members, out of the loop. There was no guarantee that the jobs Amazon promised in return would actually go to the people whose neighborhoods would be transformed by the ensuing development and gentrification, or how many of those jobs would actually materialize.
Google demanded that the mayor of San Jose and multiple council members sign nondisclosure agreements while they negotiated the purchase of San Jose’s most valuable public land for its private campus. San Jose residents who showed up at a city council meeting to demand transparency and a plan to protect against gentrification were kicked out of the public meeting, while Google representatives were allowed to say.
Google’s pattern of wheeling and dealing behind closed doors reaches far beyond San Jose. Public records collected by the Partnership for Working Families and Working Partnerships USA recently revealed that Google has made strategic use of front companies and non-disclosure agreements in their development deals for years, swearing local elected officials to secrecy while they build campuses and data centers across the country. To add insult to injury, these development deals often involve massive tax breaks that are promised to Google without community input or oversight.
It is up to us to decide how to invest in the future of our cities. We’re demanding democratic cities that work for all of us.
In New York and San Jose, community members are refusing to accept that tired old myth of “trickle-down” benefits. Corporations would have us believe that any job is a good job, and that our cities need any and all development we can get.
The truth is, we have the power to create thriving communities without behemoth companies that violate our values and leave our people behind. Across the country, everyday people are banding together to send a clear message: If big tech wants to move to our cities, big tech needs to play by our rules.
The work coming out of New York and San Jose is a reminder of the power we have when #WeMakeThisCity. This campaign is about fighting for community-controlled, publicly owned institutions, structures, and services, while standing up against corporate giveaway and privatization plans. We’re working to ensure all people have access to the systems and structures needed to live full and healthy lives. This includes transportation systems that connect us to work, schools and services, the ability to afford housing in the communities we love, access to clean water and energy and so much more. Public infrastructure connects us all and should serve the needs of the people, not the pockets of corporations.
Could your friends and neighbors benefit from a #WeMakeThisCity initiative in your town? Reach out and join us!
ALIGN is a longstanding alliance of labor and community organizations united for a just and sustainable New York. ALIGN works at the intersection of economy, environment, and equity to make change and build movement. Our model addresses the root causes of economic injustice by forging strategic coalitions, shaping the public debate through strategic communications, and developing policy solutions that make an impact.
Silicon Valley Rising is a coordinated campaign driven by a powerful coalition of labor, faith leaders, community-based organizations and workers. We aspire to a new vision for Silicon Valley where all workers, their families and communities are valued. The campaign is led by Working Partnerships USA and the South Bay AFL-CIO Labor Council.
Partnership for Working Families is a national network of 20 affiliate organizations driving a progressive agenda to harness the power of cities for change in our regions, and leverage that up to the state and national level. Our powerful coalitions of community groups, labor unions, faith networks and environmental organizations are building governing tables with a grassroots base of power to advance a vision of just, sustainable, equitable and democratic communities.
