Amazon is complicit in police violence against Black people. Saying #BlackLivesMatter isn’t enough: The company needs to cut ties with police and ICE.

Friend,

People are rising up. They are taking to the streets to demand an end to police violence against Black people and calling for a commitment to dismantling the systemic racism that persists in the United States.

Alongside this popular uprising, companies are putting out statements of support. But we have good reason to be skeptical of corporate sponsors — especially Amazon.

For years, Amazon has been silently arming police with neighborhood-surveillance cameras and dangerous facial-recognition technology, powering the software behind ICE deportations, and squashing any attempts for basic humane reforms in its warehouses, even during a global pandemic.

Enough is enough. To truly address the violence and oppression Black people face from police, we need to confront Amazon and call for an end to its contracts with both police departments and ICE.

Sign the petition: Tell Amazon to cut all ties with police and ICE.

Make no mistake: Amazon is profiting off racial profiling of Black people by police. Using Amazon Ring cameras and its Neighbors app, the company has built an almost nationwide surveillance network of our homes and communities — and then handed its data over to police.

But that’s not all: Amazon aggressively sells its facial-recognition software, Rekognition, to both police departments and ICE. This enables police to identify protesters at a time when so-called “law enforcement” is wrongfully targeting, arresting, beating and killing people who are standing up for justice.

Amazon also has a special relationship with ICE. Its cloud-computing software is used to streamline detentions, deportations, family separations and the collection of immigrants’ biometric data — including their faces, fingerprints and iris scans.

Activists like you are building a nationwide movement to #DefundPolice. That can’t happen as long as Amazon continues to power technology for police departments and ICE.

Together we can build the public pressure needed to cut off the technology backbone that Amazon provides: Tell Amazon to cut all ties with police and ICE.

Thanks for all you do,

Lucia and the rest of the Free Press team
freepress.net

P.S. For years Amazon has enjoyed a profitable relationship with police departments all over the country. It put out a statement saying #BlackLivesMatter, but if the company really believes this, it must cut all ties with police and ICE.