"Amazon’s power to brutalize workers and starve out local businesses is global,” said Yessenia Prodero, an immigrant rights organizer with Massachusetts Jobs With Justice, an Athena coalition member group. “We will only truly challenge that power if we build power globally. We have strategized with our international partners for years to tell a consistent story across continents, and we are seeing those efforts gain momentum. These actions are an important public escalation, and there will be a lot more to come.”
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“We’re missing about 500 boxes of food every week – that’s just the basic milk, cheese, fruit," said Nelly Medina, lead organizer for the Parents Union of Massachusetts, or PUMA. "We have a population of people who have not rebounded from COVID, and they’re hungry and we don’t know how to feed them.”
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“Some say the minimum wage is not high enough.
‘Sure it was a win, but it’s not enough,’ said Alicia Fleming, co-executive director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, said of the wage increase set to eventually reach $15 per hour. ‘People deserve and need so much more.’
Lily Huang, Fleming’s co-director at Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, echoed that sentiment in a recent statement from Raise Up Massachusetts, a coalition that gathered signatures to get a $15 minimum wage question on the ballot.
‘While many white-collar workers have spent the pandemic sheltering in their home offices and seeing their savings accounts grow, hundreds of thousands of low-wage workers have spent the past nine months struggling to afford protective equipment, food, and rent while working on the frontlines to keep others safe,’ Huang said.”
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