Just Say No to HQ2

It's official. Amazon has announced they are opening a headquarters in Long Island City, Queens.

Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York State has handed the mega-corporation a sweetheart of a deal--not yet including, as Cuomo suggested, renaming Newtown Creek the Amazon River. Until now, that deal was a protected secret.

Here are the jaw-dropping details--from a PDF from the New York State Urban Development Corporation, d/b/a Empire State Development. (Thanks Robin Grearson for sharing on Twitter via Amazon's announcement):

If I'm reading this right, Amazon gets:
- a 99-year lease on a whole shit-ton of square footage (more than I can calculate)
- base rent of $850,000 per annum ($70,000 per month -- perspective: when Florent was kicked out of the Meatpacking District, its rent went to $50,000 a month. For a small space. Ten years ago.)
- a package of incentives valued at up to $1,705,000,000

Those tax-payer funded incentives include:
- A capital grant in the amount of $505,000,000
- Excelsior tax credits of up to $1,200,000,000

Oh, yeah, and Jeff Bezos gets a private helipad. Paid for by you and me.

Crain's is now calling this "the richest-ever incentive package offered to a corporation in state history."



Who of your elected officials urged Amazon to move to New York? Sethmpk shares on Twitter: "Here are the officials who signed a letter last October urging Amazon to expand in NYC. @TishJames signed. So did my House @RepYvetteClarke and my State Senator Montgomery. Candidates for Public Advocate @JumaaneWilliams, @MrMikeBlake, @ydanis, @MMViverito all signed too":





Anticipating this announcement all week, the backlash has been swift, with journalists explaining how Amazon HQ2 will create more hyper-gentrification (see Seattle), displacing and disrupting residents, small businesses, and artists. And the deal might even be illegal.

Even the Times admitted, "The process means the rich get richer, the biggest companies, bigger. And the gulf widens between the country’s haves and have-nots" and "the tech industry isn’t culturally urban." The Times also noted, "it’s how this city works." But it didn't always work this way.

As I outline in my book, Vanishing New York, until the late 1970s, the city was moving in the direction of social democracy. And then it shifted. City Hall and Albany turned away from the people and began to court big business and real estate developers, handing over billions of dollars in tax-payer money to seduce them into moving to and staying in the city. One could argue that this approach was needed in fiscal crisis New York. It is absolutely not needed now. In fact, it is killing this city.

It's time for another change. It's time for New York to re-orient away from giving corporate welfare to big business and developers, and give back to its people. You can exercise your right as a citizen of this democracy and push this shift.

Tomorrow, show up and say no to Amazon HQ2. Phone blast against HQ2. Protest. Resistance can work.



Phone blast info from the Queens Anti-Gentrification Project:

Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer: 718-383-9566 [press "0" for person]
Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 929-388-6141 [leave a message if no one picks up]
Congressmember Carolyn B. Maloney: 718-932-1804
State Senate Michael Ginaris: (718) 728-0960

Phone Blast Script:

It was recently announced that Amazon has chosen Long Island City, Queens as a location for its new Headquarters, a move that would lead to skyrocketing rents and record levels of displacement throughout the entire borough. We are outraged that there were no public hearings on this proposal and that none of us have had the opportunity to voice our opinions, despite the fact that every single Queens resident will be impacted by this decision. The situation is so bad that in July, Assemblymember Catherine Nolan called for a ‘Moratorium’ on new LIC developments¹, but her proposal was ignored by most politicians and newspapers. Today, I am calling [politician's name]'s office to demand that [politicians name] stand with Queens residents and reject the Amazon Headquarters proposal, as well as any other move to transform Western Queens into a so-called "tech hub". The Queens that so many of us know and love is under threat and we're going to fight back.