amazon

JR. Forasteros 9-08-2023

'A Million Miles Away' / Amazon Studios

A Million Miles Away feels like a story too good to be true. But the new film is the true story of José Hernandéz (Michael Peña), a migrant farmworker who became a NASA astronaut.

Mitchell Atencio 11-16-2022
A red football helmet against a white background has parts of its outer shell disintegrating and floating off.

Gearstd / iStock

EARLY IN THE 2022 NFL season, I watched as the Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered a second head injury in the span of five days. Although the NFL would not admit the first of those was a concussion, it was painfully clear that Tagovailoa suffered serious brain trauma.

In that moment, I felt the culmination of years’ worth of fretting over the sport I loved and its relationship to head injuries. I determined then and there on a Thursday night that I would quit the NFL. Why? The NFL is violent — and Christians are called to peace.

The league is unrepentant and unaccountable in its abuse of the brains and bodies of its players, and no amount of reform can change that. I am convicted that if I am to love my neighbors — if I am to love God — then I must resist the NFL.

JR. Forasteros 9-01-2022

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” via Amazon Studios.

The stories we tell ourselves matter, even if you’re an immortal elf. The first season of Rings of Power, Amazon Studios’ new 8-episode prequel to The Lord of the Rings, opens with the scene of a young Galadriel, the Elvish royalty who will refuse Frodo’s offer to wield the One Ring thousands of years in the future.

At a Black Lives Matter protest in New York City, a protestor holds a sign backed with the Amazon logo. Photo by Ira L. Black / Getty Images

THE LATEST FAD among some conservative pundits and propagandists is to bash corporate executives who use their positions to promote “politically correct” causes. They call it “corporate wokeness,” and they see it everywhere. However, this is not a new phenomenon.

In 1971, in the backwash of the 1960s, America was very much a country in crisis. Large swaths of our inner cities still bore scars left by the uprisings that followed the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. A president elected on a promise to end the Vietnam War was widening it instead. Coca-Cola had the answer to all that trouble and strife. That year, the soda company assembled 500 young people of varied races and nationalities on a hilltop and filmed them singing, “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” So “corporate wokeness” was born.

Twenty-nine years later, Coca-Cola paid millions of dollars to settle a federal court case accusing it of a historical pattern of systematically underpaying and otherwise discriminating against its Black employees.

In spring 2020, just a few days after a police officer murdered George Floyd, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Brian Lamb, the company’s global head of diversity and inclusion, issued a statement that “we are watching, listening and want every single one of you to know we are committed to fighting against racism and discrimination wherever and however it exists.” A week later, Dimon was photographed, with some bank employees, down on one knee in the Colin Kaepernick pose, presumably in an attempted display of solidarity.

Alicia T. Crosby 10-04-2021

Pauli Murray / Coutesy Amazon Studios

What does a trailblazing Episcopal priest, a lawyer whose work helped to shape the Brown v. Board of Education case, a founding member of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt all have in common?

They are all the same person. And My Name Is Pauli Murray, a new documentary from Amazon Studios, tells the fascinating story.

Mitchell Atencio 7-23-2021

Billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos and pioneering female aviator Wally Funk emerge from their capsule after their flight aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket on the world's first unpiloted suborbital flight near Van Horn, Texas, July 20, 2021 in a still image from video. Blue Origin/Handout via REUTERS.

There’s more than one way to tell a story. As journalists, we know this well. As readers, you know this well. The news this week gave us ample opportunities to remember that stories can be told with different — sometimes even contradictory — purposes.

Jenna Barnett 7-19-2021
An illustration of a bumble bee flying in the sky next to an Amazon drone carrying a package.

Illustration by Melanie Lambrick

AMAZON FOUNDER JEFF BEZOS arrived at writer Wendell Berry’s home in Kentucky the same way he arrives anywhere on earth: by drone, covered in cardboard. When he stepped out of the large box, the two men shook hands and exchanged gifts. Bezos gave Berry a single octopus tentacle wrapped in burlap. Berry offered Bezos a gooseberry coated in local honey. Both quietly hoped the exchange was a step forward for modern masculinity. It wasn’t.

Bezos: This is a fabulous berry, Wendell. Do you live off the food you farm? Or book sales?

Berry: Well, tax-evading corporate conglomerates have made it harder for authors to earn a sustainable living, but I’m happy with my lifestyle.

Bezos: So, you have other investments?

Berry: I invest in sequoias and in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years.

Bezos: I LOVE hummus. But I’m not familiar with Sequoia. Has their stock gone public?

Berry: They are trees. Very old trees.

Bezos: Oh.

Dean Dettloff 4-28-2021

Danny Gonzalez makes deliveries for Amazon during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Anaheim, California, U.S., March 23, 2020. REUTERS/Alex Gallardo

Theological language might seem out of place from an organizer in a secular union, but faith has been a constant piece of the campaign in Bessemer. While the first vote was a loss for Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, the historic effort offers important lessons for the relationship between faith, labor organizing, and the struggle for racial justice.

Illustration of a hand sticking out of an Amazon box pushing away a library building with books flying out.

Illustration by Michael George Haddad

AMAZON FOUNDER JEFF BEZOS has never been seen in a top hat like the guy on the Monopoly board game, but, in every other way, he is a classic monopolist—the very model of a 21st century robber baron.

There’s at least one difference, however, between Bezos and robber barons of the past. While steel baron Andrew Carnegie became famous for building nearly 1,700 public libraries in small towns across the United States, Bezos has turned his wealth and power to strangling them.

One mark of the monopolist has always been predatory pricing—selling an item at a loss to force a competitor out of business. As the first company to perfect an online ordering and delivery system, Amazon used that advantage to destroy its independent, brick-and-mortar retail competition. As rival online merchants emerged, Amazon systematically underpriced them until they shuttered or fled to the “shelter” of the Amazon Marketplace.

Another classic monopolizing strategy is vertical integration—controlling the supply chain from production to point of sale. When streaming video became the next big thing, Amazon didn’t simply start a streaming rental service, it went into the movie production business.

Jim Rice 4-27-2021
Pastor José Chicas spent 1,300 days in sanctuary in Durham, N.C. He returned home in January. / Illustration by Jenny Kroik

Pastor José Chicas spent 1,300 days in sanctuary in Durham, N.C. He returned home in January. / Illustration by Jenny Kroik

AMAZON'S STRONG-ARM TACTICS and disinformation campaign enabled the behemoth corporation to prevent workers from organizing in Alabama earlier this year. That Amazon used its overwhelming power and wealth—and some would say lack of scruples—to undercut its employees came as little surprise to anyone who’s observed its treatment of any entity it perceives as competition. And, as Danny Duncan Collum explains in this issue, Amazon is going after public libraries the same way it attacks small businesses and union organizers—ruthlessly, methodically, and without remorse.

While Amazon’s blatant abuse of monopolistic power is plain to see, the proper response is anything but easy, even for Christians committed to putting our purchasing power where our morals are. Often, using alternatives to Amazon means paying a little more and waiting a little longer for our order to arrive. But unless people with a conscience begin to send a message in the only language Amazon understands, the possibility of change will remain remote.

Andrew J. Wight 7-28-2020

Members of the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra, CPT), a Catholic land rights organization linked to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil. Photo courtesy of  Comissão Pastoral da Terra, CPT.

More than 200 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2019 according to the report released by Global Witness this week. Colombia topped the country rankings with 64 deaths, while Latin America continued its 8-year run as the worst-hit region, accounting for two-thirds of global deaths.

Arlo Voorhees 11-11-2019

Juan Walter Lomas Pacaya / photo by Erika Unyatinszki

One who properly experiences the Amazon and its give-and-take of inter-species compromise, feels a fundamental shift in the world thereafter — the same world which has forced 51 Peruvian species onto the critically endangered list.

Andrew J. Wight 11-04-2019

Brazilian indigenous leaders proceed out of Saint Peter's Basilica after the closing mass of the Amazon synod on Oct. 27, 2019. Credit: Andrew J Wight

Indigenous women from Amazon basin nations spoke with high-level clergy at the Amazon Synod. 

William Fellows 10-22-2019

A worker at an Amazon warehouse in Florence, N.J. / Photo by Bryan Anselm / Redux

“MY SHIFT ACTUALLY starts at 6:30 a.m., but I punch in at 6:25, get my coffee, and then we have a thing called ‘stand up’ where the managers talk about safety, what they expect for the day, and building announcements. They try to motivate people to pick faster. And then you’ll go to your station and you’ll start your job. In my case, it’s picking.

The screens display which item I need to pick out of a particular bin, and I’ll pick that item and put it in the yellow tote. Once the tote is full enough, I’ll set it down and replace it with another tote. That’s pretty much what I do for my whole 10-and-a-half-hour shift.

We get a 30-minute break at 10 a.m., after four and a half hours. Our next break is from 1:30 p.m. until 2. And then we work until 5 p.m. Yesterday I picked 1,300 items the first period. Second period I picked over 900 items.

Andrew J. Wight 9-18-2019

Members of the Azaire indigenous community in their traditional dress, in front of their fish farming ponds in Madre de Dios region, Peru on Sept. 1, 2019. Credit: Andrew J Wight

More than two dozen indigenous women leaders from across the Madre de Dios region of the Peruvian Amazon met to share their experiences.

Ed Spivey Jr. 8-05-2019

Illustration by Ken Davis

WITH THE NATION'S economy on the brink of another crisis (what, you haven’t heard?) and major banks expecting their feckless greed to again be punished with a harsh government bailout, what can we citizens do to help? We can shop, that’s what. It’s our patriotic duty.

In this capitalistic democracy we cast a vote for freedom every time we make a purchase. The more we buy, the more freedom we celebrate. (I didn’t just buy cat food this morning, I made a profound statement about America. And I’ll make it again when I go back for the cat litter that I forgot.)

The Founders might not have had this in mind when they conceived our republic, but they never felt the joy of buying a 24-pack of tuna at Costco, did they?

Roman Catholic pilgrims travel as they accompany the statue of Our Lady of Conception during an annual pilgrimage along the Caraparu River in Santa Izabel do Para. REUTERS/Paulo Santos/File Photo

The document also issues a strong defense for the protection of the environment in the Amazon, deforestation, illegal mining, and development projects that threaten native cultures and the delicate ecosystem vital for the planet.

THIS YEAR MARKS the 50th anniversary of the invention of the internet. One day in October 1969, scientists successfully transmitted data from a campus computer at UCLA to a computer at Stanford. Twenty years later, the infrastructure for the World Wide Web went into operation, and the creation of our whole digital universe quickly followed.

Lately, there have been plenty of days that have convinced me that the invention of the internet is one of the worst things that has happened since our first human parents decided that a little bit of “knowledge of good and evil” couldn’t possibly hurt anything.

the Web Editors 2-02-2018

8. What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

Is any new job a good job? As cities scramble to lure Amazon’s HQ2, a look at what the massive influx of warehouse jobs has changed cities.

9. Nearly 9,000 DACA Teachers Face an Uncertain Future

“Maria Rocha, a teacher in San Antonio, Texas, says it's gut wrenching, but she's trying not to show it in front of her third-graders. … It's even harder, she says, because some of her students are also at risk of being deported.”

10. Groundhog Sees Jungian Shadow, Predicts Everlasting Winter of the Soul

“We aren’t sure what was different this year, usually he either calls for six more weeks of winter or an early spring, not unending self-inflicted spiritual torment.” #2018

Pope Francis (R) greets a member of an indigenous group of the Peruvian Amazon region, at the Coliseum Madre de Dios, in Puerto Maldonado, Peru January 19, 2018. REUTERS/Henry Romero

"The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present," the pope told a crowd of indigenous people from more than 20 groups including the Harakbut, Esse-ejas, Shipibos, Ashaninkas, and Juni Kuin.