pany with almost unlimited resources for
legal fights, public relations campaigns,
and strategic planning. But in the church
where Awood and warehouse workers met
to strategize, there was no falling back.
They decided to plan a new strike, this
one to be held on Prime Day itself. Euro-
pean Amazon workers had been doing it
for years, but as with a number of things
Awood was doing, it had never happened
before in the US.
VTT. ON
July 15, 2019, MSP1 was decked out as if for
a pep rally, with Prime Day banners and
mylar balloons and free commemorative
T-shirts for everyone. Amazon had decided
to expand its annual consumer bonanza into
a two-day affair, featuring a brand-new
service: free one-day shipping for Prime
members. Analysts predicted the event
would drive a record-breaking $5.8bil-
lion in global sales. For the company, the
stakes were high. Mandatory overtime was
in effect. In the early morning, managers
stood outside the lobby, high-fiving workers
as they arrived for 11-hour shifts.
A week earlier, the Awood Center had
announced its plans for the strike. Since
then, it had drawn widespread attention. A
group of white-collar Amazon tech work-
ers was flying in from Seattle to attend the
protest and lend their support. In Germany,
where a Prime Day strike was also planned,
a participant composed an ode called
“Flowers of Dignity” for his Minneapolis
comrades. That morning, Democratic pres-
idential candidate Elizabeth Warren had
tweeted: “I fully support Amazon workers’
Prime Day strike. Their fight for safe and
reliable jobs is another reminder that we
must come together to hold big corpora-
tions accountable.”
The strike was due to start at 2 pm. By
1:30, about 50 people—including off-duty
Amazon workers and local labor activists—
were marching in a circle with picket signs
in the warehouse’s truck lane. Ashley Rob-
inson, a senior Amazon public relations
manager, had flown in from Seattle and
was greeting reporters at the warehouse.
Outside, as the temperature hit 91, the air
was thick with humidity. Torrential storms
were predicted for later that day. “The
weather might work in our favor,” she said.
Meanwhile, Omar was stationed out-
side the lobby, waiting for people to walk
out. “My job is to corral workers and make
a march,” Omar said. As had happened back
in December, the rally was taking place on
the far side of the massive parking lot. On
the hot summer day—under the scrutiny
of managers—the expanse seemed like an
impassable desert, and the idea was to give
workers a feeling of strength in numbers.
Inside the warehouse, however, things
weren’t going as planned. Stolz, who’d
arrived around 5:30 that morning to hand
out strike flyers in the parking lot, was trying
to rally the day shift. He made the rounds
of the break rooms, where he saw man-
agers handing out snacks and chatting up
employees. People were getting nervous.
Some told Stolz they didn’t want to lose their
unpaid time off. Others balked when they
neared the lobby, where Shakopee Police
officers and Amazon’s in-house security
team had gathered.
Only a few people trickled out to strike,
and Omar gave up on the idea of leading
workers away from the warehouse in a
parade. According to Awood, about 35 people
took part in the walkout; Amazon would later
say, yet again, that only 15 employees partic-
ipated and it didn’t see the event as a strike,
either. Inside the warehouse, reporters were
handed the following press statement:
“An outside organization used Prime Day
to raise its own visibility, conjured misinfor-
mation and a few associate voices to work
in their favor, and relied on political rhet-
oric to fuel media attention,” it read. “The
fact is that Amazon provides a safe, quality
work environment in which associates are
the heart and soul of the customer expe-
rience, and today’s event shows that our
associates know that to be true.”
By 4 pm, a stage had been set up across
the parking lot. Despite the heat and the
poor showing of strikers, the protest took
on a festive mood. More than 200 people
had gathered. There were trays full of beef
sambusas, large thermoses of chai tea, and
a performance by a Somali dance troupe;
at one point, Hibaq Mohamed jumped into
formation with them. Finally an emcee—
an Amazon worker named Sahro Sharif—
took the stage.
“There were a lot of people who were
afraid to come out and stand out here today
because of the management that’s going oninside,” Sharif declared. “For the people that
actually came out tonight, I want to say thank
you and welcome, and let’s make it great!”
When the speeches were done, Omar and
a small group of activists walked back to
the warehouse to see if more strikers would
emerge. The shifts were changing, and an
employee leaving the warehouse looked at
the activists disdainfully. “There’s plenty of
jobs for you!” he hollered. “There’s Target!
There’s UPS! There’s Walmart!”
The air smelled sharply of ozone, and
forecasters were now issuing a tornado
warning. Omar and her group posed for a
selfie in front of the warehouse, and then the
sky opened up. Drenched, they hustled back
across the parking lot to help break down
tables and shade tents.
Today, there is no end in sight to the joust-
ing match between Amazon and Awood.
Immediately after the Prime Day strike, 13
members of Congress—led by Representative
Ilhan Omar and Senator Bernie Sanders—
led a call to investigate Amazon for work-
place abuse. Less than a month later, 50 to
80 workers staged a walkout at the Eagan
delivery facility, wearing yellow reflective
vests and singing “Aan Isweheshano Walaa-
layaal,” the same anthem Representative
Omar had sung the year before.
When labor experts characterize what
Awood has accomplished overall, they tend
to focus not on any specific concessions the
group has extracted thus far (which Amazon
denies are concessions anyway) but instead
on the national attention the group has
attracted—and its implications for other
workers in warehouses and in tech. Awood
bears a certain resemblance not only to
worker centers that focus on low-wage
industries, but to recent efforts by Google
employees and other tech workers to orga-
nize themselves and learn labor law without
the structure of a union. “Tech workers are
in this situation where they’re trying to figure
out: Where is their leverage? Where is their
ground to stand on? How do you negotiate
with an algorithm?” says Fine, the labor
scholar at Rutgers. Awood has become one
of the prime examples to learn from. Ama-
zon, in other words, is not the only one
watching a few Somalis very closely.JESSICA BRUDER (@jessbruder) is a
New America fellow and the author of
Nomadland: Surviving America in the
Twenty-First Century.