Activist Jews blast Bezos on aiding ICE
BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Members of the progressive
Jewish community in New
York recently commemorated
the Jewish day of mourning Tisha
B’Av by taking to the streets to protest
the current administration’s policy toward
undocumented immigrants —
and the help that it is getting from
Amazon.
The fast day remembers the destruction
of the Jewish temples. Reportedly
well more than 200 Jewish
activists participated in the “Close the
Camps” demo on Aug. 11.
Personalized signs were made at
nearby gay-and-lesbian synagogue
Congregation Beit Simchat Torah.
Demonstrators walked to the Amazon
Books store at 34th St. near Fifth
Ave. to protest technology — including
facial-recognition software — by
Amazon that is being used by local
and federal law enforcement agencies,
including U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement, to track, identify
and hunt down immigrants.
In New York City, police recently
used facial-recognition technology to
quickly fi nd a homeless man who had
left empty rice cookers in Lower Manhattan
and Chelsea, creating a bomb
scare.
This was a nationwide coordinated
Jewish effort. On this day, protests
were held in more than 50 locations
around the country. Demonstrators
packed the E. 34th St. Amazon store,
sitting on the fl oor, and spilling onto
the sidewalk when there was no more
room, disrupting business. Forty were
arrested.
Among the participating groups
were T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for
Human Rights; Bend the Arc; Jews For
Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ);
and C.B.S.T.
As the signs indicated, this was a
very personal march. Many protesters
lost family members in the Holocaust,
and the issue of camps, family separation,
and the refusal to offer refuge for
those fl eeing persecution is but one or
two generations away from those who
took to the streets in the August protests.
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Demonstrators called on Amazon not to let ICE use its facial-recognition technology to track down undocumented
immigrants.
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Protesters associated the current treatment of undocumented
immigrants with the dehumanization of
the Holocaust.
PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Demonstrators decried Jeff Bezos — C.E.O. and
president of Amazon and owner of the Washington
Post — for allowing ICE to use Amazon’s facialrecognition
software to track down immigrants.
6 September 5, 2019 TVG Schneps Media