For the last two months we’ve been outside of JFK8, my former facility, organizing workers to create their own worker-led union, called ALU, Amazon Labor Union. I’ve been on the ground as the lead organizer, telling my story to the workers who just got hired this year and may have not heard what happened last year.

I’m there trying to help the organizers on the ground talk to workers and get workers to sign union cards. Right now, we’re in the beginning phase. We have to get at least 30 percent of workers to sign cards before we can file for a NLRB election — and once we get there, Amazon will probably dispute it. But I think that we have a great chance here in New York, a union town, to not only get to our election, but actually win this time around.

This is worker-led, meaning all the organizers are current workers of JFK8. I’m the only one that no longer works with the company. The rest of them are still current employees and they decided, along with myself, that this is the best route to take instead of going with an established union.

We know the ins and outs of the company. A lot of the lead organizers have been around Amazon for three-plus years — some of them even four, five, six, or seven years. They’re all seasoned Amazon workers. They’re veterans. They have a lot of influence in the building. Not only are they my former coworkers, but some of them are my closest friends. This is a different energy and we felt that this route is the easiest way to become successful after watching Bessemer.

We’re at the public bus stop right across the street. It’s actually a great location because you have to pass us when you’re taking public transit, and around 80 percent of the building takes public transit. We see a large majority of the workforce. A lot of the workers that we see used to be the employees directly beneath me, so it’s sort of like a reunion.

That’s what I mean by our approach being the easiest way. I was in conversations with a lot of these workers before I was terminated, and that helps get them on board. As far as the bus stop, it’s not like Bessemer, Alabama where the bus stop was down and around the corner. This is literally across the street. We’re visible every day. I think even management can see us from their front windows. It’s kind of fun because it’s a different energy.

Small victories matter, and we’ve had plenty of them beginning last year, before we began the union campaign. We connect people with the victories we had over the year — Amazon vice presidents resigning in solidarity with workers, media attention, the public opinion of the protests we’ve held against Jeff Bezos. We’ve filed about five Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs) already. Workers are seeing firsthand the strength of what a union does.

We’ve already had several different changes in JFK8 in the last two months since we’ve been there. The New York Times article that came out a few days ago was substantial because they had to remove all the anti-union stuff in the building. There was no anti-union literature inside for the last week and a half because Amazon was afraid of what was going to be in that article. We put this information into workers’ hands and they see that the strength of the union exists and is beneficial for them. It’s easier for them to sign and it’s easier for us to have that conversation.

They are definitely not wasting any time with us. They brought the same union-busters that were in Alabama up here. One in particular, Brad Moss, has been in the building. He’s the president of TBG (The Burke Group), a labor firm. They’ve also called the cops on us. They’ve called the fire department on us. They’ve effectively tried to get us removed from the property.

It all failed because the fire department, the police, the bus drivers, and the construction workers building the Amazon facilities are all unionized. Amazon is surrounded by unions and none of them want to intervene against our efforts because they know what we’re doing is the right thing for these workers. They know the horror stories of Amazon. They know the horror stories of these workers.

It plays in our favor and backfired on the company. We were able to prove that it was a victory because unions pretty much stick together and all of them have been pretty supportive. As far as the workers being exhausted and overwhelmed by management, that’s also backfiring.

Amazon hit the ground hard drilling anti-union messaging into workers, bringing in union-busters right away. We’re only two months in, and all the things they did in Bessemer six to eight months into the campaign they’re doing to us now. The workers are asking, “Why are they doing this? If it’s really something that they don’t want it’s probably something we need.” That’s why we’re able to continue to get signatures and go in the right direction because Amazon is going too hard at the workers and we’re just taking the cool, calm, collected route. We know that it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

I didn’t see them down there, but one of the ULPs that we’ve filed is from a witness who is a part of our organizing committee. She had a conversation with Moss and he was bragging about what he did in Alabama. He said that he was the one who stopped it.

He called us black organizers a bunch of thugs and said we’re nothing but “Black Lives Matter protesters” and that in Alabama the workers didn’t want the union. He’s dividing the workers. We know that he was down there. So, another victory that we’ve had already is that we were able to sue based on the racial rhetoric he’s been spreading. Now, we believe his contract has been terminated.

Besides the working conditions, it’s definitely been the systemic racism. I was a supervisor for four years there and it was very revealing to read that article because it hit a tough spot for me. It’s frustrating because I was robbed. I applied to be a manager forty-nine times and never got it, and could never figure out why when I had all the qualifications. I did my job well, opened up three buildings, put in the work, spent so much time away from my family and kid. So, for them to have a system designed to stop black and brown people from moving up is disheartening.

It starts at the top, with Jeff Bezos himself. We already knew that there was racism in the company. Just look at the smear campaign that they wanted to wage against me last year, calling me “not smart or articulate.” This is why I have to continue to fight. If we don’t stand up for ourselves, they’re not going to do it for us. They’re not going to stand in solidarity with the black community. We’re going to have to expose all of these things and hold them accountable. That’s what we’re trying to do as well as unionizing these facilities.

That’s also, once again, playing into our favor. When this New York Times article came out, we were immediately putting it into workers’ hands. One of the biggest barriers when it comes to organizing is that the working class is disconnected from all the controversy. They work ten, eleven, twelve hours a day, go home to their families, have to eat, wash, rinse, and repeat. There isn’t time to tune into the media or find the labor movement. So we have to educate, give them the articles, and let them know that what they’re working for is against them.

When the article came out, it was amazing because there were people who read it on the way to work and when they passed our tent, they didn’t hesitate to sign a union card. We had the article sitting on the table and had made some copies to give to workers, but they had already read it! I was passing it to people and they said “Nope, we got it!”

They were definitely struck by a lot in the article, but one thing that stuck out was the quote by Jeff Bezos basically calling the workforce lazy. He doesn’t care at all whether we stay. It speaks to how we’re looked at as nothing but profit. The high turnover is the number-one reason why we want to unionize, to get job security. So, this article is resonating with workers. It’s going to take time to get it to 7,700 workers in the area but word of mouth and the fact that we’re out there handing it out to them, blasting it on social media, is helping with our union efforts.

We know the high turnover is against us, that the clock is against us. When we get cards signed, we don’t know how long these workers are going to last at Amazon. We’ve had workers sign and get fired the next day. It happens. The beauty of it is that JFK8 has been around for three years, whereas the building in Bessemer has only been around for a year.

Some of our lead organizers have been with the company for three-plus years. Others transferred from other buildings that have been around for five, some seven years. So we have a lot more worker influence in Staten Island than they did in Alabama. That plays into our favor. I’ve known these workers for years and the lead organizers have known these workers for years and are still current workers.

We have a large committee within the warehouse and we’re building it week by week. I don’t need to be out there every day. The workers are organizing themselves and that’s what we want. We want to create a snowball effect. We built our structure and have our meetings every week, and now workers are starting to take their destiny into their own hands. They’re in the building, as we speak right now, talking about the union. They’re wearing ALU shirts and masks. They’re making statements. They’re putting things on the VOA (Voices of Associate boards). They’re confronting the union busters. We’re getting all the information in real time about what’s going on in the building.

I was surprised when I saw that quote. I don’t know what my relationship is with that union, to be honest with you. I reached out to them when I went down to Alabama and I was kind of taken aback that they didn’t want to rally with me down there. I wanted to do a rally that was worker-led. I thought that they were making it too political. Bringing politicians like Nina Turner and Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush is good but a lot of workers at Amazon don’t know them, especially in Alabama.

I said that wasn’t going to be enough to resonate with the workers. I think that at a worker-led rally you connect people’s stories. When I went to Alabama, they hadn’t heard about New York, or about who I was. That was a great conversation to have. I got people to change their mind. I had other workers tell their stories too.

That was the connection we were trying to make: workers to workers. It seemed like the union didn’t want that. I didn’t have a great experience with the union down there, so I was kind of surprised by Appelbaum’s quote in that article. It’s good to know that they support us but I think that we’re going to stay the completely independent route.

We’re raising money with our GoFundMe. We don’t have millions of dollars but I think that the power of the workers and the people is bigger than any amount of money we could get and it’s been working so far. We need a little bit of money but we just need enough to pull off our barbecues, rallies, and events. We don’t need millions of dollars. We just need the peoples’ power and the power of the community behind us.

They started doing this when I was still employed. They had a rollout where you’re at your station working and a message would come up that would say, “Take thirty seconds to meditate.” Thirty seconds is interrupting my flow. When you’re working there, you don’t want to be interrupted. You want to be in your flow. You’re not even trying to think about the time. Some people cover the time on their machines because they don’t want to see it. They just want to get their shift over. To be interrupted to meditate for thirty seconds and you’re working ten hours, eleven hours is just a waste of time. A lot of workers don’t like it.

That’s what we get when you have someone making decisions for warehouse workers who has never been in that work environment and doesn’t know what we’re going through. That’s what happens all the time with this company. They roll out these different things, thinking that it’s going to benefit us, but it doesn’t. What helps workers are longer breaks, shorter workdays, having time to be with their families, higher pay, etc. These things that they’re rolling out don’t do anything. From what I’ve heard, everyone is making fun of it and doesn’t like it.

It’s funny because I say this all the time: Amazon prepared me for this. Even though I wasn’t a manager, I was doing the job of a manager for the last four and a half years. The leadership principles that I had at Amazon made it easier for me to transition over to the activism that I’m doing.

I’m using a lot of the principles that I learned at Amazon, against them. My favorite one is: “have a backbone and commit.” They hated the fact that I use that all the time. But it’s probably why I never got promoted: I had a backbone, I stood up for what I thought was right, and I’m committing to seeing change. Another principle is “see it, own it, fix it,” which is probably one of my original principles — I saw the issues, I owned up to it, and now I’m trying to fix it.

Ironically, when they planned to smear me, they said they wanted to make me the face of the unionizing effort — those were their words. So, in a sense, I’m trying to make them eat those words. I don’t have anything else to do. I’m still unemployed — I can’t really get a job anywhere. This is my full-time job, and this time I’m on a different team.