Building the movement to win at Amazon

My name is Reverend Ryan Brown and I am the president of CAUSE, the worker-led union organizing Amazon in the South. We founded our union four years ago. Since then, our movement has only grown, and right now we’re on the brink of a powerful new chapter.

Amazon workers are organizing across the country to hold Amazon accountable for its greed and the way it treats its workers. This June, 250 Amazon workers from around the world will be convening in Chicago to build the next phase of our organizing in person. Can you help us make this convening a reality by chipping in to cover lodging and travel for Amazon workers?

One thing I know for sure: when Amazon workers get together, it’s powerful. When CAUSE members have met with Amazon Labor Union-IBT 1 and other worker groups, it’s given us the energy to keep up the fight in a new way. We share our experiences, wins, challenges, and hope. We swap tactics and strategy. And most importantly, we build relationships and trust, the foundation of any winning organizing campaign.

Organizing, at its core, is about relationships. Union facts and talking points are not enough. You need to build real trust with your coworkers in order to take on the boss together. That trust is built over time, conversation by conversation. Together, we take action and build worker power from a base of deep trust in one another.

Amazon is scared of worker power, which is why the company will go to such great lengths to divide and silence the workers attempting to hold it accountable. Captive audience meetings, retaliation, misinformation, even having organizers arrested–at CAUSE, we’ve seen it all.

Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world. It’s bigger than any one warehouse, which is why we need nationwide and worldwide organizing. That’s what this meeting is about: Bringing all of the Amazon union movements together, so that we can fight together.

But because of the deep relationships and trust we’ve built over the years, Amazon isn’t slowing us down. Our work in the South is expanding as our union organizes at more and more warehouses in the South. And with hundreds of Amazon workers across the country ready to convene this June, the movement to organize Amazon is about to get exponentially stronger.

The fight to organize Amazon belongs to all of us, because where Amazon goes, industry follows. We must hold Amazon accountable, together. Can you chip in today to help Amazon workers build this movement? Thank you.

In Solidarity,

Reverend Ryan Brown
President, CAUSE