New ILSR research finds that systemic racism isn’t just a symptom of monopoly power; it’s also a method that corporations exploit to attain it. These are stories from the front lines of the struggle against monopoly-driven systemic racism.
It is well-established that people of color disproportionately confront the negative effects of monopoly power. However, the latest ILSR research goes a step further, finding that corporations exploit systemic racism to attain and grow their monopoly power. In this season of Building Local Power, we talk to the people on the front line of the struggle to combat not just the racially disparate outcomes of monopoly power but the ways monopolies use systemic racism to acquire it.
This season of Building Local Power brings us to Amazon’s RDU1 fulfillment center outside Raleigh, NC, where Amazon CAUSE is fighting to unionize a diverse coalition of warehouse workers in the face of racist agitation from Amazon corporate. We talk to the people behind Union, a film chronicling the successful effort to unionize Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse despite racist attacks on movement leader Christian Smalls. We talk to a professor pushing for responsible AI use, fighting against the tech industry norm of burdening poor neighborhoods with the staggering environmental impact of Large Language Model technology. We hear from a legal expert who studies Consumer Redlining,” or the practice of retail and restaurant chains providing poorer customer experience in Black and brown neighborhoods. And finally, we talk to Susan Holmberg, author of the ILSR report that inspired our storytelling.
Amazon CAUSE Founder Reverend Ryan Brown“If you ask most workers of Color, specifically Black workers, to describe [Amazon], you will hear several of them say that it is a 21st century plantation.”
Reverend Ryan Brown and Adam Stromme discuss their efforts to unionize a North Carolina Amazon warehouse and the role racism plays in the warehouse's story.
Producer Mars Verrone shares stories about the creation of Union, a new documentary about the fight to unionize an Amazon warehouse.
Not only does AI technology have severe climate impacts, it exacerbates environmental inequity. UC Riverside professor Dr. Shaolei Ren joins us to explain.
UC Davis professor Andrea Cann Chandrasekher shares her research into consumer redlining, the practice of retail chains providing lesser service in poor or BIPOC neighborhoods.
ILSR's Sue Holmberg discusses her Power Play report, which outlines the ways monopolies exploit systemic racism and how communities can fight back.