Under gray skies and steady rain in downtown Seattle, activists, Amazon employees, and community members gathered outside the company’s Spheres to protest what they described as Amazon’s role in federal immigration enforcement and surveillance infrastructure. Organizers estimated that between 200 and 250 people attended the Friday demonstration, while other accounts described the turnout as dozens. Protesters stood in rain gear, holding laminated signs and chanting “shame” as speakers addressed the crowd.
The rally came one day after Amazon-owned Ring announced that it would cut ties with Flock Safety, a law enforcement technology company. The decision followed public backlash to a Super Bowl advertisement promoting Ring’s “Search Party” feature, which allows users to share doorbell camera footage across a network of neighbors. Although the ad showed people using the system to find a lost dog and did not reference Flock, critics argued that the technology could enable broader neighborhood surveillance.
According to organizers, ending the Ring and Flock partnership had been one of three key demands issued by a coalition of worker-led and immigrant justice groups. The remaining demands include ending Amazon’s cloud computing support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection and severing ties with Palantir, a data analytics company that activists say facilitates deportations and surveillance.
In January, Forbes reported that ICE and CBP have spent $140 million purchasing cloud services from Amazon and Microsoft during the second Trump administration. Protesters said Amazon Web Services plays a central role in hosting and supporting federal agency infrastructure.
Emily Johnston, one of the protest organizers, described the cancellation of the Flock partnership as a sign that public pressure is having an impact. “Our third demand has already been met—which shows that these companies are waking up to how appalled regular people are about the dystopia they’re creating for us,” Johnston said in a statement. She added that recent protests and corporate responses show “it’s clear that we have momentum.” Johnston also said, “We want them to see that partnering with Palantir was a mistake and hosting ICE and CBP on Amazon Web Services was a mistake.”
Johnston further emphasized the role of consumer and worker pressure. “No one wants surveillance and state violence except those who are profiting from it—and Amazon’s thriving depends on both its workers and customers,” she said. “We have leverage, and we’re going to use it.”
Ring said in a statement that “following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated,” and clarified that the integration never launched. The company did not state that the decision was connected to the protest campaign.
Eliza Pan, co-founder of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, addressed the crowd and described the Flock decision as “a big victory for every single person here.” She said, “We’re adding to that pressure by being here together.” Pan also told attendees, “Amazon knew about this rally, and knows that this is the first of many if they do not end these other partnerships. Amazon knows that we know now that they are facilitating and profiting from the rise of a supercharged surveillance state that does not respect human rights or the rule of law, and it must end.”
Concerns about surveillance technology were echoed by privacy advocates. In response to the Super Bowl advertisement, Beryl Lipton of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, “The addition of AI-driven biometric identification is the latest entry in the company’s history of profiting off of public safety worries and disregard for individual privacy, one that turbocharges the extreme dangers of allowing this to carry on.” She added, “People need to reject this kind of disingenuous framing and recognize the potential end result: a scary overreach of the surveillance state designed to catch us all in its net.”
The protest was organized by a coalition that included Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, No Tech for Apartheid, Defend Immigrants Alliance, La Resistencia, Troublemakers, Washington for All, Seattle Indivisible, Seattle DSA, 350 Seattle, and Southend Indivisible. Participants distributed flyers with QR codes linking Amazon employees to organizing resources.
The demonstration also reflected broader unrest within the technology sector over government contracts. Microsoft and Google have faced protests from employees over cloud computing agreements with the Israeli government. Several Microsoft events were disrupted by employees calling on the company to sever those ties, and activists escalated actions over the summer by planning encampment-style protests and breaching the office of Microsoft President Brad Smith. Google employees circulated an open letter urging the company to disclose and divest from dealings with ICE and CBP.
At the Seattle rally, speakers included former tech workers who had been fired after criticizing their employers’ relationships with the Israeli government. Among them was Ahmed Shahrour, a former Amazon software engineer who urged workers to join him in a worker-led Palestinian resistance. Signs at the protest criticized President Donald Trump and expressed support for Palestinian rights, expanding the rally’s focus beyond immigration enforcement contracts.
Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck also addressed the crowd. “This is a moment where every action matters, where every decision matters,” Rinck said. “Where you decide to spend your money as a consumer matters. And that was proven today, with Amazon ending their relationship with Flock because the consumer said ‘absolutely not.’”
Protest organizer Evan Sutton framed the issue within the context of the Trump administration and corporate alliances. “We are seeing the American technocrats just full body hug the Trump administration right now, and in the case of Amazon, it’s a company that was born in Seattle, that has made Seattle home, that benefits from all the wonderful things about Seattle and is completely betraying Seattle values by profiting off of the industrial deportation complex and cuddling up to the Trump administration,” Sutton told Common Dreams.
Sutton also pointed to recent events involving immigration enforcement. He referenced the killing of Alex Pretti by a CBP agent and noted Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s attendance at a White House premiere on the same day. “We have a duty to let these companies know that we won’t stand for it,” he said.
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