This wasn’t a good week for Amazon.

The world’s fifth biggest company by market capitalisation was hit by strikes in Germany, disrupting its Prime Day of special offers. In Britain, the GMB union announced strike action over four days for next month including on Black Friday. As bombs rained down on the Gaza, an open air prison caging 2.3 million people, tech workers in the US demanded Amazon stop work on Israel’s Project Nimbus, which provides surveillance capacity for the Israeli military. And the coalition to Make Amazon Pay, which the Progressive International co-convenes, announced we are bringing together workers, unions, civil society, regulators and parliamentarians for the first ever Summit to Make Amazon Pay.

The Summit will take place in Manchester, UK, on 27 and 28 October at the historic Mechanics Institute, where the Trades Union Congress was formed in 1868. Delegates including Spanish Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz, US Senator Bernie Sanders, UK MP Zarah Sultana, workers, trade union leaders and activists from around the world will develop strategies to address Amazon’s exploitation of workers, communities and the environment, building on recent progressive advances like Warehouse Worker Protection legislation in the United States, Barcelona’s Amazon tax and Spain’s Riders Law, as well as impacts of the major antitrust case recently filed by the US Federal Trade Commission and legislation like the European Union’s Digital Markets Act.

Together they will work to turn the growing popular power of the Make Amazon Pay movement into progressive legislative and regulatory change.

See who is attending and sign up to keep up to date and follow the proceedings live by clicking here.

Latest from the Movement

End the Nakba

As an intensified cycle of violence unleashes atrocities on civilians in Israel and Palestine, members of the Council of the Progressive International renew their call for Palestinian liberation.

The thirty signatories condemn Israeli war crimes and the collective punishment of Gaza. They argue, “these crimes promise not to end the cycle of violence, but rather to sustain it. “Since oppression is the root cause of violence, to end all violence — the initial and ongoing violence of the oppressor and the reactive resistance of the oppressed — we must act to end oppression,” writes the Palestinian BDS National Committee.”

That’s why they “call on the world's progressive forces to march in their millions for Palestinian liberation. The only way to forge a lasting peace is to end the Nakba once and for all.” Please read and share the statement here.

National strike in Guatemala

For more than a full week, Guatemala's popular and Indigenous movements have maintained a "paro nacional" (or national strike), including road blockades and marches, all across the country. The mobilisation demands the resignation of Attorney General Consuelo Porras after sustained attempts to undermine and thwart popular sovereignty in the election of president-elect Bernardo Arévalo, from Progressive International member Movimiento Semilla. The lawfare being deployed to deny the presidency to Arévalo and ban Movimiento Semilla is a prolonged attempt at a coup d'état.

Finally this week, after months of mass protest by the Guatemalan people and international solidarity, the Constitutional Court issued an order to guarantee the transfer of power to president-elect Arévalo. However, the people are not backing down — calling national strike "indefinite" until the coup plotters in the Attorney General's Office resign.

Ecuador goes to the polls

On Sunday, Ecuadorians will elect a new president. The vote is expected to be tight with polls suggesting that the result could go either way by a slim margin - that could be more vulnerable to manipulation and lawfare. The two candidates offer vastly different futures for the country. Luisa González, who led the first round, is from the Citizens Revolution movement and served in the Pink Tide government of Rafael Correa. Her opponent, Daniel Noboa is the son of Alvaro, a former politician and banana magnate, representing the country’s traditional elite. The Progressive International’s Observatory is on the ground in Ecuador and will post updates over the coming days.

Free Mimmo

This week, the charges against former Italian mayor Mimmo Lucano have collapsed. As the mayor of Riace in southern Italy, Lucano breathed new life into his “dying town” of 2,000 inhabitants by welcoming migrants. Mimmo resettled hundreds of migrant families, and the ‘global village’ of Riace flourished. He faced 13 years in prison for his courage.

Along with our members in MERA25 Italy — who fought and helped win the dropped charges in the Mimmo Lucano case — we renew our call: Free Mimmo! End Fortress Europe!

Art: The banner of the London Jewish Bakers Union, formed in east London in 1909 by mainly migrant and refugee Jewish bakers to organise to improve pay, win an eight hour day and abolish night shifts. At the time, many trade unions would not allow migrants as members.