It was a moment of unexpected drama in a night known for high theatrics.
As a parade of celebrities streamed into the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its annual gala on Monday evening, a horde of police officers tackled a man who was trying to force his way onto the red carpet while carrying a sign attacking Amazon, which was founded by one of the event’s lead sponsors, Jeff Bezos.
The man at the bottom of that pile was Christian Smalls, the renegade labor leader and longtime Amazon antagonist whose progressive politics and personal flair have made him an unlikely celebrity. Since leading a successful effort to unionize an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island in 2022, Smalls has become a known figure in the labor movement and the subject of an acclaimed documentary, “Union.”
His arrest on Monday, however, resulted in a more complicated reaction from the group he once led — the Amazon Labor Union, which is affiliated with the Teamsters. Local union officials effectively disavowed his actions, saying they “were not coordinated with the rank-and-file worker leaders and movement partners currently building a national campaign to take on Amazon.”
The union added, in a statement released on Tuesday, that it doesn’t condone “lone-wolf direct actions which aim to center one individual as the focus of what must be a collective struggle.”
Smalls, 37, was charged with two misdemeanors: trespassing and obstruction of governmental administration, related to his jumping of a police barricade. He spent about 24 hours in custody, before accepting an offer from prosecutors to consider dismissing the charges if he is not arrested again for six months, according to his lawyer, Gideon Oliver.
The office of Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, confirmed that Smalls had accepted the offer, and that his next court date is in early November. An Amazon spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Smalls said in a phone interview on Wednesday that he had jumped out of a vehicle in front of the Met and tried to pass a barricade with a protest sign because he hoped to “shine a bright light on Jeff Bezos” and what he said were unethical business practices by Amazon. (The company has been accused of treating workers poorly and was found to have violated labor law during the Staten Island union effort.)
“It shouldn’t be that way when you have all of this money and wealth,” Smalls said of Bezos, adding, “He should pay his workers a fair share.”
In response to the statement by Amazon’s union, where he had served as president but left in 2024 amid reports of internal divisions, he said that he had acted alone.
“It wasn’t involving them,” he said, adding that he didn’t “want to get the union in trouble,” but that he simply wanted to call attention to and call for a deal for workers at the Staten Island Amazon warehouse.
“Solidarity comes in various forms, and this is my way of showing solidarity with the union,” he said, “whether they was aware or not.”
He felt his short stay behind bars was worth it, he said, because he had drawn attention to the continuing fight with Amazon. “My phone is literally lighting up like a Christmas tree,” he said.
Bezos’ role as sponsor and honorary chair, along with his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, had set off protests in the weeks leading up to the event on Monday, including when an activist group projected videos of Amazon workers on the facade of the couple’s penthouse apartment. (One of those videos featured Smalls.)
If the red carpet and after-parties were any indication, however, the fashion world seemed largely unbothered by Bezos: Indeed, even as Smalls was struggling in the arms of the police on Fifth Avenue, stars like Alysa Liu, the stripe-haired Olympic figure skater, and Heidi Klum — the host of “Project Runway,” dressed as a statue — continued to pose for photos along the carpet. Bezos did not walk the carpet.
The muted reaction to Bezos came as no surprise to Smalls, who noted that he, too, had met quite a few famous people at fancy events.
“Even when I talk to celebrities face to face, people will be shocked of how tone deaf they really are, even in person,” Smalls said. “So, honestly, just once again, we have to just continue to fight how we do. And hopefully one day they have a moral compass and wake up on their own.”
Jesse McKinley is a Times reporter covering politics, pop culture, lifestyle and the confluence of all three.
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