Pizza, DMs, and Solidarity: Filming the Amazon Labor Fight

Mars Verrone:

For a lot of people, they were reconsidering their relationship to their workplace. It was sort of like it became so clear, your boss does not care about you, this country does not care about you. Really all we have is each other.

Danny Caine:

Let me tell you about a documentary, it’s new, it’s political, it’s informative. It tells an important story with impeccable craft. It’s full of memorable characters and amazing footage. After premiering at Sundance it has been shown widely at film festivals, collecting accolades along the way. Now, let me tell you that nobody has stepped up to distribute this remarkable film leaving its creators to DIY their way to making sure you can see their important documentary. Why can’t this deserving movie find a distributor? It’s unclear. Perhaps the market for new documentaries is too competitive, or perhaps it’s because it’s persuasively critical of a monopolizing corporation that holds tremendous sway in Hollywood.

The movie is Union. It’s an intimate and striking portrait of the successful campaign to unionize Amazon’s JFK8 Warehouse in Staten Island. It’s an up-close look at Amazon Labor Union founder Chris Smalls and his team of friends and comrades as they do what many thought was impossible, unionize an Amazon warehouse. A major theme of Chris Small’s story, and by extension the story of the union film, is how monopolies exploit systemic racism to build and maintain their power.

That’s the subject of this season of Building Local Power and it’s the subject of today’s episode. I’m Danny Caine and this is Building Local Power from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

Our guest is Mars Verrone, a producer on Union and one of the creative forces that set in motion the creation of the film. Mars is a filmmaker, musician, and educator from Los Angeles, California. Union, which is their first feature as a producer, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and won a special jury prize. They are a Sundance Producers fellow, NBC Original Voices artist, mentor, and fellow, Producers Guild of America fellow, and Brown Girls Doc Mafia fellow.

Mars Verrone, welcome to Building Local Power, we’re so thrilled to have you. I think to start I’d love to learn about you as a filmmaker. So how did you come to documentary filmmaking and what drives you in this work?

Mars Verrone:

So Union is actually the first film I ever worked on, I’m one of the producers of the film. And so I started working on this when I was 22, I was basically right out of college. And I developed the project with our other producer, Samantha Curley. And so as you can imagine, it was quite a learning curve to go from only having student filmmaking experience to making this very intensive, ambitious vérité project. That was what brought me to this project was actually finding the story, connecting with Chris Smalls and his colleagues way back in the summer of 2020, and doing the initial work to build the team and get the project going.

And I guess what moves me as a filmmaker, I’m both really interested in creating political work and also care a lot about the craft and making sure that the film is beautifully made, and innovative, and interesting, and actually a meaningful work of cinema. And so I feel really proud because I feel like we were able to accomplish both of those things with Union where it’s a very unapologetically political film. And also, it’s just a brilliant team of artists. And was an incredible collaboration to bring it together and make it this really beautiful work of art as well. So just interested in political cinema and artfully made cinema.

Danny Caine:

Great. And I think it’s reflected in Union. It is a really beautiful documentary. I love the score, I love the collage-like elements to it. It’s a compelling story but it’s also really compellingly made. So you mentioned connecting with Chris Smalls and some other folks in the summer of 2020, is that right?

Mars Verrone:

Yeah, that’s right.

Danny Caine:

So tell us where that was in the ALU, Chris Smalls story, and then how it turned into a feature-length documentary.

Mars Verrone:

Definitely. Some people remember when this happened because it was a bit of a news story. Way back in March of 2020, right when the pandemic started, Chris and a few other of the core organizers you see in the film, Derrick Palmer, Jordan Flowers, Gerald Bryson, and Jason Anthony … This group of five individuals, and a few other people, led a walkout at the JFK8 warehouse which is the central location of the film. They led this walkout in protest of a lack of PPE and COVID safety equipment in the Amazon warehouse while simultaneously, right, they’ve just been categorized as essential workers, they’re processing PPE for the rest of the world, and yet they don’t have it themselves. So it’s this completely gross injustice and it’s incredibly ironic and disturbing. They do this very brave thing and conduct a walkout.

So within two hours Chris is fired. And then a few days later there is a leaked memo from an Amazon meeting with executives and C-suite level people at Amazon, including Bezos who’s in the meeting. And there’s a leaked memo that says, “Let’s make Chris Smalls the face of this movement. He’s not smart, he’s not articulate, let’s make him the face the union movement.” So this just shocking and incredibly racist memo comes out and tells you what we could guess they were thinking. So anyway. So that is a bit of a news story. It happened and then it went away.

And I just remember where I was when I heard that and I was incredibly moved and inspired by that action. When the pandemic started it was this moment in which, for a lot of people, they were reconsidering their relationship to their workplace. It became so clear, your boss does not care about you, this country does not care about you. Really all we have is each other. And you could see that yeah, in the way that this category of essential work was created, the way in which people were celebrating essential workers by banging pots and pans. It was just so ridiculous, right? So I felt very moved to make something about that moment, about how people … How there was this shift in consciousness about … Around labor, around where actually power lies in society, and how we are and are not supported.

My friend and I just DM’d Chris on Instagram and asked him if he would be interested in a documentary film, and he was. And so it was just very humble origins to the actual start of the project. So we DM Chris, we start getting to know him and building a relationship. I get connected with Samantha, who’s the other producer on the project, and we start working together. And so for the first year of development it was really building relationships. When you see the film it’s extremely intimate. The access to the organizing is incredibly intimate. And I think we were only able to do that because the whole project started with the foundation of shared political values of caring about … There was nothing incredibly exciting going on and so we were only there because we cared about organizing essential workers, because we cared about what Chris and his colleagues were doing, and we shared those political values.

So we’re getting to know each other, we’re building a relationship. For most of 2020, Chris and his colleagues were just organizing essential workers in a very general sense. And then by 2021 that had shifted into, we want to unionize JFK8, we want to unionize the warehouse that Chris was fired from, where the walkout happened, where this all started. And by that point, once it had shifted into that more concrete goal, we had brought on Brett Story as a director and we’re actually starting to build out our team a bit more. And so those things coalesced in really amazing timing and we were able to start filming, basically, as soon as they launched their union effort.

Danny Caine:

That’s amazing. I had no idea it started with just an Instagram DM to Chris Smalls. What a great story. I have a lot of follow-up questions from that. We’re going to return to the leaked memo in a second but I want to stay with the film for a minute. You mentioned intimacy. I was absolutely amazed at some of the footage you got whether it’s in someone’s living room as they’re debating the merits of strategy. I was especially amazed to see inside captive audience meetings or footage from the actual warehouse which is notoriously secretive. As much as you want to share, can you talk about getting that really intimate footage and building the relationships with the workers? And how were they involved in the process?

Mars Verrone:

Definitely. So as far as the vérité footage that we shot … Again, I think the foundation of that was really just demonstrating our shared political values as a team so there was just a trust and a sense of we’re in this for the same reasons. And I think part of that was also an understanding of the film team is going to see the good, the bad, and the ugly of our organizing because it’s not actually useful to future audiences to hide what this … There was a desire for people to understand how hard it was what they were doing and to not just make a commercial or a puff piece. That wouldn’t actually be useful. Which again, was just so generous and brave of the organizers to understand that for future audiences and then to open their lives up and their work up to us and our cameras. So I think that understanding just of our aligned missions was really important.

So one of our directors, Stephen Meng, was also a cinematographer. And then Martin DiCicco was our other cinematographer. And the two of them are just incredible and spent so much time out in Staten Island. Sorry to just back up a bit. The organizing itself, right, was happening outside of a tent across the street from the warehouse. And so organizers would basically get off their 10, 12-hour shift at the warehouse, go across the street, and then be at the organizing tent for many more hours in the middle of the night, rain or shine, snow. Just through anything were just there for hours and hours and hours on end. To this day I don’t understand the endurance that was demonstrated to do that.

So our team, and specifically our cinematographers, had this consistent presence and also were very conscientious and careful about how they were filming because, right, the last thing that you want to do in an environment that’s so built on fear … It’s an environment in which it’s notoriously difficult to organize because all of the workers are so afraid of retaliation from the company. The last thing we would want to do as a film team would be get in the way of that organizing by having a creepy camera present, right? And so our cinematographers just did an amazing job of making sure people were comfortable. Being very aware of their presence and explaining who they were. Doing what they needed to do to establish the right foundation so that the organizing could happen. And that both the organizers that we knew for a long time, but then also new passersby who were just workers had felt comfortable and we’re not confused. And also that it didn’t get in the way of the reality of what we were actually filming.

Time, and presence. And then shared political missions is what allowed for the access that you see in the vérité footage that we shot. And then as you’re saying, there’s also another really important element of the film which is this interior footage, right, that you see which shows captive audience meetings, it shows union busting signage that’s covering the entirety of the warehouse interior. And so what’s interesting about that is that prior to the pandemic Amazon workers could not have their phones with them in the building. And they had to change that policy because so many workers were just not coming to their shifts because they wanted access to their phones in case an emergency was happening, right, during the pandemic. So they had to change their … That policy, which was great for us because it meant that then there were phones in the building in a way that that we wouldn’t … That would not have happened before. So yeah, for that reason there was more access to having phones in the building.

But the footage that’s recorded is actually protected by labor law because the organizers are filming instances of union busting. Even though they were protected by both the policy change and labor legislation … Again, still so profoundly brave to have recorded what you see in the film. Even though it is permitted, they were up against such intense risk of retaliation, intimidation. It was really incredible. And then it’s so powerful to see actually live in the room, right, what it looks like to be in a meeting with a union buster. So yeah, just incredibly brave to record those things and then to share it with us so that we can incorporate that as part of the film.

Danny Caine:

And there are even instances of people filming themselves being reprimanded. The Union Busters or other Amazon employees confronting them for filming which is just … Again, the intimacy is amazing. So in talking about when Chris was initially fired you bring up this memo which I remember when it came out. And you mentioned it’s incredibly racist and I agree. I think anyone who looks at that story would agree. And watching the movie it’s hard to watch this and not think about race from the … Chris Smalls getting fired in the memo.

One scene that really stuck out to me, there are two organizers sitting out at the tent, one is black, and they’re debating the merits of Chris getting arrested. And the white organizer is like “This is great optics if he gets arrested.” And the black organizer, I believe who is named Natalie, was like “It’s New York. If he’s confronted by a cop he could get killed.” And it’s a really tense and racially charged scene. From the perspective of someone who was there, who has a lot of access to this story, can you talk about how just race plays into it?

Mars Verrone:

What made the ALU so unique is the way in which … It’s a multiracial, multigenerational, right? You have kids fresh out of college up to workers who are in their late 50s, right, working at the building. So multiracial, multigenerational, and actually multi-class because it’s a mix of people who are working at Amazon because they’re already working there because they need to. But then also you have some organizers who are called salts who join the effort out of political motivation and so those workers tend to be more upper-middle class, college educated coming from prestigious universities. And so it’s this really incredible mix of identities. And I think that diverse mix of identities that’s coalescing around building working class power is the most important thing that we need in our country. And that is really the only way to create change is that form of solidarity.

So that being said, it’s incredibly messy. It’s incredibly messy to have those mix of identities, and of lived experiences, and of ways of seeing the world. And so that was really important in the film was to demonstrate that messiness. But not to demonstrate it in a way where it reduced race into an impenetrable … It’s like oh, we’re all doomed. People of different races can’t get along and can’t organize. And so I think in the scene that you’re describing where it’s white organizers and organizers of color who are debating what it means for Chris to be arrested outside of the warehouse, it’s … We really try to purposely set it up so that no one is clearly right and no one is clearly wrong. And in fact, it’s just up to the audience to see what resonates with them. You can tell that the racial tensions are creating a lot of differences in how the different organizers are thinking through strategy and are thinking through the consequences. That’s clearly the highest-level dynamic that’s going on.

But we try to represent these racial differences and what that elicits in a way where you start to see a more unconscious level of it, right? Where it feels less on the surface, less obvious and more like … Everyone’s a little bit right, everyone’s a little bit wrong, everyone has good points, bad points. And you’re seeing this clash and this conflict but it feels less obvious.

Danny Caine:

Well, I think the film does a really sensitive job with it. It really struck me, exactly that, how diverse the organizing team was. I think that maybe flies in the face of what Amazon is doing. I was talking to some folks in North Carolina, for this podcast, the Amazon cause who’s trying to unionize their warehouse.

Mars Verrone:

Oh, nice.

Danny Caine:

And they saw evidence in their warehouse of Amazon racially manipulating them and pitting people against each other based on race or background or class. And one of the things we’re working on at ILSR is investigating the connection between building and maintaining monopoly power and systemic racism. So did you see any evidence of that with the Chris Smalls memo? Let’s portray him as inarticulate. That’s exploiting racial stereotypes in order to hang on to power. I wonder if you saw any more evidence of that in your time at the warehouse and with these folks?

Mars Verrone:

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think a lot of my experience was hearing from the stories and experiences of the workers and the organizers in the facility. That’s the journalistic caveat I’ll give is that a lot of these were just stories I received. But what I heard was that there would be a lot of … Inside the warehouse either the hired labor consultants, or aka union busters, or just Amazon management would try to spread rumors that were clearly racially charged. So would say things about like “Oh, Chris is going to buy a fancy car the moment he becomes union president.” I think thug was thrown around a lot. Just racially charged language, made up rumors that make it seem like the black leaders of the organization are just going to run away with your money and mishandle everything. That was definitely something that we heard a lot was just spreading those rumors and leaning into those stereotypes as a way to delegitimize the ALU and then try to discourage other workers from getting involved with them.

On the other side, similarly trying to delegitimize salts who more often than not were white middle-class people, and making it seem like they’re … Really don’t trust them they have … They’re not even Amazon workers because they have to be they’re just coming in here to enact their politics. So I think that came up mostly just as far as rumors within the warehouse. The company side of the campaign is just that psychological building mistrust.

Danny Caine:

It’s just horrible. It’s so ruthless.

Mars Verrone:

As it’s disturbing, ruthless, and horrible that they’re doing these things, it was also … There was a lot of humor in seeing that happen live. You would hear about a rumor that was spreading in the warehouse, and then you could just walk across the street to the tent and see how untrue it was. There was a lot of fun and humor just around disproving the union busters rumors because it was so … Literally just walk across the street, come over, have pizza with us and you’ll see how not true any of that is. So that’s also something I really appreciated about the ALU was for how serious and high stakes this effort was there was so much humor, and fun, and levity in how they were counteracting what the company was doing.

Danny Caine:

I love that. I want to wrap up by pivoting back to the movie. I’d love to hear you talk about the future of Union and your goals with it. Tell me about the challenges of finding distribution for a film like this. Tell me about how people can see it and how people can help you in spreading the word, both of the movie and its message.

Mars Verrone:

Sure. So this was, right, an independently made film which means that the film team raised money through grants, and private investors, and things like that. So it was made entirely independently. And then we’re now in a situation in which the release of the film is very likely going to continue to be independent. We premiered earlier this year at Sundance Film Festival, an independent film festival. And often, but not always, when you premiere at a prestigious film festival like that, right, you get a distribution offer from a major streamer or some other media company. That was not the case for us. And even though we were hearing a lot of positive things from the representatives at these companies, it never worked out into a deal. Many ways that we can speculate on that but I will leave that to your audience to think maybe why that didn’t happen.

But anyways. We’re not unique in that, right? I think there are a lot of political documentaries, I think there are a lot of independently made films that are in a similar boat. I think there are unique aspects of our film, the Amazon of it all, the focus on labor. Those are unique aspects that you can point to as far as our distribution troubles. But a lot of independent films are in the same boat as us. So rather than waiting around to see if something will come our way, we decided to continue leaning into the independent nature of our film and release it ourselves. So we’ve been at film festivals throughout the year.

And then last month we were in movie theaters across the United States, 20 cities across the United States. It really was an extraordinary run for an independent film. For all of the cities where we just had one screening, I think we sold out nearly all of them. And then we had extended runs in both New York and LA which is just a signal of people are actually coming out to the theater to see a documentary which is pretty hard to do so that was cool. So that was last month.

And then we’re actually gearing up to have a limited virtual release of the film on Black Friday on a platform called Gather. What’s very cool about that is that this will be a direct to audience release. It’s the same thing as if you rented the film on Amazon Prime or iTunes or wherever, but instead of most of the money going to some corporate entity it’s entirely set up for the film team to just reach audiences directly. And there’s a lot of other cool things that we’re doing around that where we have a lot of partner organizations, labor unions, worker advocacy groups that can affiliate with us on this release and actually benefit financially from it which is really cool. So we’re trying to build an alternative model to reach audiences directly outside of the scope of mainstream distributors. So we’re gearing up for that.

And the best way to follow along would be to connect with us on social media. We’re at unionthefilm on all major platforms. And then you can also go to Unionthefilm.com, sign up for our newsletter, find the social media links there, find more information there. I’ll just say, we’re just really taking notes from the ALU as far as being very indie, very grassroots in how actually the film gets into the world.

Danny Caine:

I was going to say, you’re talking about your strategy it reminds me of the ALU, it’s just being scrappy, and independent, and fighting the giant machine. They’re fighting Amazon you’re fighting the Monopolized Hollywood distribution network. It’s fun to see the filmmakers taking inspiration from the film subjects in terms of how to spread the message and make change in the world. Mars Verrone, thank you so much for joining us on Building Local Power. And congratulations on the film it’s an amazing piece of documentary.

Mars Verrone:

Thanks so much. Thank you for having me.

Danny Caine:

As Mars mentioned, Union is available to stream online from Black Friday to Giving Tuesday, November 29th through December 3rd. A link to buy tickets is in the show notes along with links to Union’s social media profiles and website. If you enjoy the work we do at Building Local Power please consider making a donation to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance to help us create more content like this. Donating is easy just go to ILSR.org/donate. This episode of Building Local Power was produced by me, Danny Caine, with help from Reggie Rucker. It was edited by me and Taya Noel who also composed the music. Thank you so much for listening.

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• More information about Union.