New York’s resistance to Amazon’s HQ2 is a model for a new kind of politics for cities to follow
We are from New York City and Seattle respectively. What unites us – and other major cities across the country – is that we are forced to make hard choices about equity, taxes, and jobs in the age of mega-corporations.
Seattle is the birthplace of Amazon. The city government has catered to corporations by refusing to tax them in ways that could benefit working people. When the Seattle city council repealed the Employee Head Tax in June 2018, it said goodbye to $47.5m of revenue that could have gone toward deeply affordable housing. The people of New York City, on the other hand, chose a different path. Despite a full-court press from the mayor, the governor, and business interest groups, a grassroots movement of ordinary people defeated the richest man in the world. Amazon’s lauded HQ2, which would have allowed the company to usurp millions of dollars in public funds, was rejected by the people of Queens who correctly saw the deal as the blatant giveaway that it was.
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