They call it Giving Tuesday, and we’ve just marked the seventh annual this week. It’s supposed to kick off a season of charitable giving, but the way some corporate robber barons use it for public relations is enough to turn your stomach.
So let’s rename it Stomach-Turning Tuesday. This year’s prime stomach-turner was Amazon, of course. The corporate megastore that would sell everything to everybody and put all competition out of business publicizes its December-long #DeliveringSmiles program that supposedly gives away toys to kids. This year, they announced they’ll give half a million dollars away in toys and throw in an additional $1 for every mile their #DeliveringSmiles trucks drive during their holiday giving tour.
Whom will Amazon give those extra dollars-on-the-mile to? The National Alliance to End Homelessness. That’s rich.
This is the same trillion dollar corporation that just extracted billions of taxpayer dollars in what amount to bribes from two cash-strapped states: Virginia and New York. Those public billions could have gone to public housing or transit or other public services. Instead, they’ll go to Amazon—one of the world’s richest companies—to defray their costs for doing business.
What’s in store for local residents? Well, Amazon’s first home, the city of Seattle, is now the third most expensive housing market in the country. When Amazon arrived, it wasn’t even close. According to the real estate site Zillow, home prices in Seattle rose 73% in the last five years and rents another 31%.
Call me cynical, but I’d bet those Giving Tuesday dollars that Amazon’s giving to fight homelessness will come as cold comfort to those in Long Island City and Crystal City who are about to be made homeless.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for giving. But this isn’t charity, it’s feudalism. Aristocratic Amazon is tossing crumbs to peasants. And don’t forget—for all those so-called charitable gifts, the company gets to claim a tax break. That picks yet more money out of public pockets and puts it back in the corporation’s. If only it happened just one day a year instead of every Robber Baron week.
Laura Flanders is the host of "RadioNation" heard on Air America Radio and syndicated to non-commercial affiliates nationwide. She is the author most recently, of Blue Grit: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians (The Penguin Press, 2007) and also BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species (Verso, 2004), an investigation into the women in George W. Bush's Cabinet. Publisher's Weekly called Flanders' New York Times best-seller, "fierce, funny and intelligent."The W Effect: Sexual Politics in the Age of Bush, an essay collection compiled by Flanders, appeared in June, 2004 from the Feminist Press.Before joining Air America when it launched in March 2004, Laura hosted the award-winning " Your Call," Monday-Friday, on public radio, KALW, 91.7 fm in San Francisco.Flanders' TV appearances include "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and "Paula Zahn Now" as well as "The O'Reilly Factor," and "Hannity and Colmes," "Washington Journal," "Donahue," "Good Morning America" and the CBC news discussion program, "CounterSpin."Her writing appears in The Nation, Alternet, Ms. Magazine, and elsewhere and her op-ed pieces have appeared in papers including The San Francisco Chronicle.Flanders was founding director of the Women's Desk at the media watch group, FAIR and for more than ten years she produced and hosted CounterSpin, FAIR's nationally-syndicated radio program. Shie is also the author of Real Majority, Media Minority; the Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting (Common Courage Press, 1997) about which Susan Faludi wrote, "If only there were a hundred of her." Katha Pollitt called it "Funny, angry, factfilled and brilliant."
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