On the eve of the Met Gala, one of New York's flashiest nights of wealth and fashion, a very different image lit up Jeff Bezos' luxury residence: the testimony of a 72-year-old Amazon worker who says she is still struggling to survive.
According to Hyperallergic, activists projected messages criticizing Bezos and Amazon onto the billionaire's Madison Square Park penthouse Sunday night, just hours before Monday's gala.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute selected Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, as honorary co-chairs of the Met Gala in February.
The activist group that organized the protest, Everyone Hates Elon, has accused Amazon of unsafe workplace conditions and criticized its contracts with federal immigration agencies through a series of attention-grabbing demonstrations.
Last week, the group left bottles of fake urine (water dyed yellow) around the Met in reference to Amazon delivery drivers suing the company for "inhumane" working conditions that prevented them from stopping to go to the bathroom and being forced to urinate in plastic bottles. Organizers also wheatpasted boycott posters across the city ahead of the gala.
The guerrilla protest on Sunday centered on Mary Hill, an Amazon warehouse worker battling cancer, turning a red-carpet lead-up into a pointed rebuke of how working people are treated.
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Sunday's projection featured Hill's recorded testimony on the side of the building, along with slogans including "Boycott The Bezos Met Gala." Later, similar messages were projected onto the Chrysler Building and Empire State Building, expanding the protest far beyond one billionaire's home.
Hill has been a leading voice in a campaign for better conditions for older Amazon workers. Described by her peers as "a legendary fighter for justice and kindness," Hill has beat cancer three times and is now taking on Amazon.
According to The Labor Force, Hill has continued to pack boxes at Amazon with a chemo pump in her liver because "Amazon won't pay her if she doesn't show up." The GoFundMe for Hill is close to its $25,000 goal, sitting just at $21,500 at the time of writing.
In the video projections, Hill called for Met Gala recognition to go to the people who keep the company running, not to one of the richest men on Earth.
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For consumers, the protest serves as a reminder that convenience and corporate prestige do not erase the human cost behind massive delivery systems.
When workers, especially senior and disabled workers, say they are being pushed to the brink, that frustration speaks to something larger than one event: It reflects a broader demand for communities to value dignity, health, and fairness over spectacle and excess.
A small group of union workers, including former Amazon warehouse employee Lamont Hopewell, gathered nearby to watch. Hopewell told Hyperallergic, "All working-class people deserve better than what we're getting, especially workers at Amazon; that's the main reason we're here."
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