In the News: Stacy Mitchell
October 15, 2017
Media Outlet: The New York Times
The tech giant Amazon has come under quite a bit of criticism as of late. At The New York Times,tech reporter Cecilia Kang covers how Amazon is responding to this criticism, by heavily increasing their lobbying efforts.
In this story, our own co-director and the director of the Community-Scaled Economies initiative Stacy Mitchell spoke with Kang to offer perspective from our Amazon’s Stranglehold report, released last November.
Here’s Stacy’s contribution:
“They are doing all this reputation stuff around how it is creating jobs and that’s helped it generate a lot of media attention,” said Stacy Mitchell, co-director of Institute for Local Self Reliance, a nonprofit group that promotes community economic development. Last year, her organization published a paper that argued the company was making it harder for smaller retailers to make money from selling on Amazon.
Amazon has also decided in recent years to spend more money in the broader influence ecosystem of Washington. In 2016, Amazon gave more than $10,000 each to 66 think tanks, lobbying groups and political organizations. More than a dozen organizations were new to its sponsorship roster, like the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Foundation and the conservative Law & Economic Center at George Mason University.
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