After Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the knot in Venice on Friday, a few hundred protesters gathered Saturday at a city train station for a march, united with one message for the Amazon billionaire and his bride: go away.
“Bezos, f**k off,” they chanted in Italian. “Out of our lagoon!”
One bearded man toted a Shrek-themed placard with the same message: “Get Out of Our Lagoon,” the “a” in lagoon sprouting Shrek ears, with a Spotify link below for the theme song from the first movie in the series, Smash Mouth’s “All Star.”
“Bezos goes hand-in-hand with (US President Donald) Trump, who’s fueling more money in war,” one woman bellowed into a microphone by the station. “We are for peace.”
“(Bezos) has such a lot of power,” Austrian protester Hans Peter Martin told CNN. “And now he’s abusing this city as a place to show off. So, he’s not welcome here.”
Sofia D’Amato, a 22-year-old Venetian, emphasized that the protests weren’t about envy for Bezos’ wealth or power.
“We are not jealous of the fact that he earns so much money, that he is one of the most powerful men in the world,” D’Amato told CNN. “We are jealous when his wealth hits us in the face.”
Venice’s Ministry of Tourism says the three-day wedding, which reportedly cost $55 million, could provide a boost of almost 68% of the city’s annual tourism turnover. On top of that, Sanchez and Bezos gave 1 million euros each to three Venetian cultural institutions, according to Reuters; a total of 3 million euros worth of donations.
Their philanthropy left D’Amato unimpressed.
“They say that Jeff Bezos donated money to Venice,” D’Amato said. “It was donated after our dissent. Such a sum for a magnate is paltry.”
Protesters drew a stark contrast between the decadence of Bezos and Sanchez’s wedding the day before and the harsh realities of working at the billionaire’s company.
“We can barely pay the rent,” one woman, who identified herself as an Amazon worker, told a crowd of demonstrators. “Many of us come from far away to reach the warehouse. We make do … we don’t see these millions.”
Some protesters joined in an old leftist chant as the demonstration moved toward the Ponte delle Guglie: “The people united will never be defeated.”
At least one protester took aim at the couple’s fashion sense with a sign declaring that “Money Can’t Buy Style.”
Many held aloft Amazon boxes with various messages inscribed: “Rejected,” “No Space for Bezos.”
Multiple flags were visible among the protesters: Palestinian flags, pride flags, anti-fascist flags and Venice’s fimbriated red standard were among the popular choices. A few individuals waved a modified version, the sword-bearing golden lion at its hoist wearing a black balaclava.
Venice city officials were unamused by the protesters, denouncing them in a press release as “ridiculous” and “grotesque.”
“Contesting a wedding (any wedding) is already ridiculous in itself. But here we have exceeded all limits of common sense,” read a municipal statement released Saturday. “We have descended into the folklore of ‘No to everything.’”
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