On midnight on Saturday December 21st, members of Amazon Labor Union Local 1 began their strike at the JFK-8 warehouse in Staten Island. They joined eight other striking Amazon warehouses across the country in Georgia, Illinois, New York, and California. In 2022, ALU-1 made history as the first unionized Amazon warehouse in the country and their movement has not been deterred by Amazon’s years long court battles attempting to delegitimize their election. Sultana Hossein is one of the many leaders of this movement. Sultana is a socialist, something which had been increasingly rare in the labor movement, despite labor’s roots in radicalism.

In this interview with Emma Lucía Llano, Sultana discusses what it means to “meet people where they’re at”, how Amazon workers’ struggles are connected to anti-war movements, and the future of the labor movement under Donald Trump.

Emma Lucía Llano is a Peruvian-American writer and activist. She is currently completing her Master’s degree in Journalism at New York University. She earned her undergraduate degree in Anthropology from Wesleyan University, where she authored a thesis about the role of janitors at residential colleges. She is a former union organizer for SEIU and has worked as a paralegal assisting with immigration and civil rights matters.

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