Endings and Beginnings in Bessemer

by Kim Kelly

Photo taken by Kim Kelly

On Friday, April 9th, as what seemed like the entire world (or at the very least, the lion’s share of the U.S. labor movement) were glued to their screens watching the final, painful moments of the Amazon union election vote roll in, I was hauling ass through the Philadelphia airport, desperately hoping to catch my flight down to Birmingham. I’d already gotten a call from a Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union organizer the day prior that laid things out pretty bluntly, but by the time I landed in Alabama, it was all over.

It didn’t take long for the hot takes and rapid-fire critiques to roll in. For the sake of my time and sanity, I decided to ignore the chatter, and just focus on getting over to the union hall. The rest of the world could wait; what mattered now was how the folks who were directly impacted by those numbers were feeling. 

A half hour later, I was in RWDSU Mid-South Council President Randy Hadley’s office, squeezed in a corner alongside a handful of the Amazon workers and union organizers I’d gotten to know so well over the past several months. We watched as the union’s international president, Stuart Appelbaum, delivered remarks via Zoom to a virtual media scrum. Michael “Big Mike” Foster—a now-former poultry plant worker who has since been hired on by the union because of his tireless, big-hearted efforts on the Amazon campaign—rose to speak next, followed by pro-union Amazon workers Emmit Ashford and Linda Burns. 

They each emphasized a core message: we’re not giving up. 

“No matter what the outcome here on this battle, we have set the tone,” Foster boomed. “The labor movement is alive right now, Black Lives Matter is alive right now, and we will not be oppressed by billion dollar industries anymore. We’re gonna stand up and fight, and we’re gonna fight until we can’t fight anymore.’

“Of course, we're going to be feeling a lot of different things right now; of course, you're gonna be disappointed, frustrated, and angry about the way this election has turned out, because of being misled and manipulated and lied to, but not only are we feeling that, I'm feeling hope and joy today,” Ashford said. The soft-spoken 26-year-old is a social worker, and picks up shifts at Amazon on weekends. That day, he was dressed for a funeral—more than a little on the nose—which meant he needed to cut out a little early to make it to the church on time. 

“This is just the spark that has started a fire across the United States,” he continued. “This news has not discouraged us, and we are holding our heads high marching forward. We will get what we deserve.”

Burns, a nursing student and COVID-19 survivor working two jobs—and currently suffering from tendonitis she developed during her time at Amazon—was even clearer. “I am not discouraged, I'm happy, I'm proud, because this is the beginning,” she said. “Bezos, you wrong, you are wrong all the way around, you misled a lot of our people… I’m not going nowhere. I want all of my fellow Amazonianss to know that it's not over. We’re gonna fight for our rights as human beings, not robots.” 

The defiant mood at the union hall didn’t match up with the alternatingly mournful and scornful takes proliferating across Twitter and the media writ large—and which kept up throughout the weekend. On Sunday, April 11, with assistance from Socialist Alternative members who’d driven down from Boston weeks prior (and become a major part of the massive community canvassing operation), the union threw a “Hold Amazon Accountable” rally in the parking lot behind its brick headquarters. 

With a podium lashed to the bed of Hadley’s hulking Dodge pickup, BAmazon signs papering the fences, two local food trucks doling out free grub, and a strong showing from local union folk–including a contingent representing the striking United Mine Workers of America members  from just down the road in Brookwood—the overall vibe was scrappy, but positive. Those sentiments expressed in the glare of a news conference hadn’t been for show; the workers and organizers I chatted with throughout the day meant it when they said they intended to keep fighting, no matter how long it took. 

Prior to the kickoff, a group of workers from the organizing committee gathered in the union hall basement to meet with union lawyers and discuss their next steps forward. Supporters milled around outside in the Alabama sunshine until, a little after 5 p.m., the Amazon workers stomped up the stairs and streamed out into the parking lot as the assembled crowd cheered them on. They looked every inch the victors, vote count be damned.

The ensuing string of fiery speeches from their leaders cemented their posture. Jennifer Bates, a warm, godly, and unwaveringly determined woman whose name and face have become synonymous with the campaign, delivered her remarks with aplomb. She made it clear that nobody was backing down, and with all the righteous fire of a gospel preacher, ended her speech with an exhortation that, “The fire has started! Burn, let it burn!”

Darryl Richardson, her counterpart in the original outreach effort, is a sweet, kind man who threw his whole being into this union drive, and made that first fateful call to RWDSU. The initial loss hit him hard, but he chose to speak too, with passion and heartbreak radiating from his words. He told the crowd about what it felt like to hear the vote tally come in, and about the conversation he had with Bates that day as they sat together in his truck, reeling from the unfairness of it all. 

“I was hurting; I wanted to give up, I ain’t gonna sit here and tell no lie,” he said. “I was disappointed. But so I walked back in the facility, and saw the employees still getting mistreated, still upset, still going through the things they going through, and I thought about it, and I said, we can’t give up. I got to stay strong, I got to stay in the fight. I started this, and I ain’t gonna give up on it.”

Representative Andy Levin and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler traveled down for the event, and hopped up on the truck to offer their support and rally the crowd around the PRO Act–passage of which could prevent generations of workers from having to stomach the gut-wrenching loss of a busted union drive. The crowd also heard from local organizers like Eric Hall, the founder of Black Lives Matter Birmingham, and Erica Iheme from Jobs to Move America, who had mobilized in support of the campaign. 

Larry Spencer, the International District 12 Vice President and President of the Alabama Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, stood up to offer solidarity from the striking coal miners in Brookwood and invite the Amazon workers to join the CBTU. “We’re gonna be there with y’all,” he said. “We’re fighting a company that’s just as bad as y’all’s. They’re wanting to take the good wages that coal miners make and pay them just a little bit, and we wanted to be here to really let y’all know that if you need anything, we’ll be there.” 

Unlike the scant handful of other reporters I eventually ran into down there, I wasn’t really there for work. I’ve been covering the campaign for More Perfect Union since February (with the help of the Sidney Hillman Foundation), but this time, I went because I felt like I should be there. I’ve always been a little bit of a Pollyanna about these things—of course good will triumph over evil, right?—even as I’ve dealt with organizing defeats and frustrations of my own. I know that sometimes cynicism can be a more practical stance, and that neither history nor the law was on their side. The odds were stacked sky-high against them, but fuck it. I wanted my friends to win, and I believed they would. 

When they didn’t, I was glad I was there to offer (vaccinated) hugs and promise them I’d stay with them to cover this story every step of the way, and use whatever platform I have to amplify their thoughts on what happened. The five or so weeks I spent in Birmingham and Bessemer covering the campaign have been the most incredible experience of my career, and their story is far from over. 

A lot of brilliant labor organizers have weighed in on what went wrong in Bessemer, but personally, I’m more interested in what went right, and what we can learn from the successes of this campaign—not just its failures. It may be cliche to fall back on the old entreaty of “don’t mourn, organize,” but I think there’s room for both right now. 

The workers and the RWDSU both have a lot of work to do, and debriefs and strategy meetings have already begun. The pandemic had a major impact on the campaign, as did our broken labor laws and the power wielded by an enemy like Amazon. We can’t predict what will happen by the time the next election is run. 

But whether or not the federal government has recognized them as such, BAmazon is already a union, and has already become an important part of our international labor family. The road ahead is littered with uncertainties—and perhaps even more heartbreak—but it’ll be an honor to walk alongside them on that eventual path to victory. Solidarity now, and solidarity forever.

Kim Kelly is a freelance writer and a labor columnist for Teen Vogue and The Baffler. You can follow her on Twitter at @GrimKim.