Athena Coalition

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Break Up with Amazon: A Citizen’s Guide to Ending Amazon’s Government Contracts. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the ... A recent investigation by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has uncovered that Amazon is capturing billions of dollars in government purchasing in cities, counties, and school districts across the...

In 2023, Amazon charged some schools $13 for a case of markers, while other schools paid $74 for the exact same product -- a difference of 469%. It's time for local gov'ts to break up with Amazon. RSVP for the Jan 8th webinar with @ilsr.bsky.social to learn how: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

US schools face big price swings for basics under Amazon’s ‘dynamic pricing’, report claims Amazon calls the report ‘flawed and misleading’ and says it offers lower prices than competitors

Too many state and local governments blindly trust Amazon to offer low prices on things like school supplies. In reality, the site's dynamic pricing means schools can pay wildly different prices for items purchased on the same day. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Turning Public Money into Amazon’s Profits | Independent Business Amazon has quietly captured a growing share of government purchasing. This major report explains how, and what to do about it.

1. Amazon has become a major force in how cities, counties & schools buy basic supplies. Our new report finds Amazon is using opaque pricing algorithms to drive up costs and eliminate transparency—while harming competition by pushing out better-performing independent suppliers.

ICE couldn't do its job without Amazon Web Services. That's why organizers in Oakland, DC, NYC, and San Bernardino are rallying to expose the company's role in storing the data that ICE uses to track & target people.

"We see you Amazon, and we see you helping I.C.E. surveil, track and terrorize our neighbors." 🐎🐎🐎

Workers with Warehouse Worker Resource Center marching in Bloomington CA yesterday!

This Cyber Monday, remember that Amazon is raking in billions of dollars while offering $1 billion worth of free services to ICE & the fascist U.S. government. It's time for local governments to cut ties with Amazon: the largest cloud-computing provider for DHS and ICE. #NoTechforICE #MakeAmazonPay

This holiday weekend, organizers in Chicago protested to expose Amazon's ties to ICE. AWS is the computing backbone of ICE’s surveillance operation – it stores vast amounts of data that ICE uses to track and target people. @caarprnow.bsky.social @chitorture.bsky.social

One more reason to shop indie -- your local stores aren't collaborating with ICE.

In the words of an AWS software engineer, "When the AI bubble pops, Amazon will have taken a huge amount of land, water, and wealth, and the public needs to know."

As Amazon starts its busiest sales season, organizers with @freedcproject.bsky.social are kicking off protests around the country aimed at exposing the company’s ties to ICE. AWS stores and processes vast quantities of data that ICE uses to track and target people.

If Amazon is offering $50 billion worth of computing services to the government, they're almost certainly not doing it out of the good of their hearts. We wonder what they expect to get out of this. www.reuters.com/business/ret...

Have Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez just doomed the Met Gala? As the Amazon billionaire and his wife are announced as the financial backers for the biggest event on the A-list social calendar, Ellie Muir looks into what their involvement means for the institutio...

"...the Bezos takeover underscores a darker shift in culture, where creative platforms, institutions and even media are increasingly controlled by a few power players." www.the-independent.com/life-style/b...

Amazon cuts 700 jobs in NYC alone on quest to streamline by slashing 30,000 positions “The size of the Amazon cuts remains a head scratcher given the battle for talent and [the] AI revolution in motion,” said Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

Hmm, "streamlining" seems like a fancy way of saying "enriching a handful of executives" here... 🤔 nypost.com/2025/11/11/b...

‘Big Beautiful’ tax benefit: Amazon and other tech giants reap the rewards of new law, for now Amazon’s cash tax payments fell 45% in the third quarter, driven largely by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025, even as profits surged 38%. The new U.S. law, championed by President Trump, allows ...

Profits are up, taxes are down, yet thousands of workers are getting laid off anyway. Almost like the economy doesn't actually work for everyone... 👀https://www.geekwire.com/2025/big-beautiful-tax-benefit-amazon-and-other-tech-giants-reap-the-rewards-of-new-law-for-now/

Amazon closes at record after $38 billion OpenAI deal with AWS OpenAI will immediately begin tapping Nvidia's AI processors using infrastructure from Amazon Web Services.

Really hard to see how any of these deals are going to benefit regular people. And given AI's energy demands, much of this $38 billion deal is likely to be powered by fossil fuels. www.cnbc.com/2025/11/03/o...

Now Amazon wants to take its monopoly to the streaming industry. If the company buys Warner Bros (owner of HBO Max), it'll own 35% of the market -- 50% more than its closest competitor 😬

How Americans View AI and Its Impact on People and Society Americans are worried about using AI more in daily life, seeing harm to human creativity and relationships. But they’re open to AI use in weather forecasting, medicine and other data-heavy tasks.

Oligarchs might be excited about AI's ability to make them richer. The rest of America is a lot more concerned than excited about its impact. www.pewresearch.org/science/2025...

Amazon Tells Driver to Keep Delivering Packages Amid Raging Wildfire Amazon is accused of controlling workers through a surveillance dragnet, while skirting responsibility for their wellbeing.

Amazon Flex drivers report being pressured to deliver during natural disasters, and getting penalized for braking suddenly to avoid accidents: futurism.com/future-socie...

Trump's Corporate Colluders - More Perfect Union We analyzed more than 150 top donors to Trump's inauguration fund and the White House ballroom construction to figure out which corporations are donating — and what they got in return.

So far, Amazon has donated over $1.8M to Trump -- more than Chevron, Meta, Lockheed Martin, and even the Heritage Foundation itself. perfectunion.us/trumps-corpo...

Tech giants are rushing to build data centers in Indiana. Communities are pushing back — and winning Tech giants are rushing to build data centers in the Midwest. Some Indiana communities are disrupting their plans.

“This is really just a nonpartisan issue...Everybody wants access to drinking water, everybody wants affordable utility bills. Everybody wants to feel like their voice matters in their community.”
www.wfyi.org/news/article...

Really good take on how last week's AWS outage proves how incredibly risky it is to have so much of the internet rely on a handful of tech monopolies.

What To Know About Data Centers As the use of AI increases, data centers are popping up across the country. The Onion shares everything you need to know about the controversial facilities.  Q: What do data centers need to run? A: Wa...

"Q: What do data centers need to run?

A: Water, electricity, air conditioning, and other resources typically wasted on schools and hospitals." 🙃🙃 theonion.com/what-to-know...

White House releases list of donors for Trump’s multi-million-dollar ballroom | CNN Politics Apple, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Google, Coinbase, Comcast and Meta are just some of the major companies who have made donations to build President Donald Trump’s proposed 90,000-square-foot...

Amazon is on the list of donors who gave money to tear down part of the White House. It's.... almost like that's a metaphor for something.... 🤔 www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/p...

We couldn't agree more! Too many of these projects use NDAs to hide their water and energy use from the public until after they're approved. And they barely even create any jobs!

So glad to see this! 🙌 It's appalling what a trillion-dollar company will do to avoid treating its workers like human beings.

It's the perfect time of year to curl up with a book and raise a middle finger to billionaires!

We're sending stacks of free stickers out to indie bookstores around the country this week. If you're in the industry, DM us if you'd like some.

Amazon Plans to Replace More Than Half a Million Jobs With Robots

Instead of treating its workers fairly, Amazon would rather replace them with robots. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/t...

Amazon has a pattern of trying to classify workers as "independent contractors" so they can weasel out of giving them decent pay and benefits. Glad to see more AGs calling them out for this!

With the AWS outage, now‘s as good a time as any to post this old strip.

Ring cameras are about to get increasingly chummy with law enforcement Amazon’s Ring partners with company whose tech has reportedly been used by ICE.

Once again, Amazon wants to bring mass surveillance to your doorstep. Reminder that in 2023 they settled a lawsuit claiming that employees illegally spied on Ring customers. What could go wrong? arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...