While final minute preparations for Jeff Bezos’ luxurious marriage ceremony of Venice subsequent week ought to be ongoing, the demonstrators are elaborating parallel plans to dam roads and waterways and ship a message: the founding father of Amazon isn’t welcome to their metropolis.
For some Venetians, the marriage of Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a former tv journalist, who is claimed to price about 10 million euros, represents the sale of their metropolis to the very best bidder-and are mobilizing towards it.
Marta Sottoriva, organizer of the No Space for Bezos marketing campaign, instructed Euronews that activists are exhibiting towards Bezos’ marriage ceremony due to what it represents for the town.
“We will not be protesting for the marriage in itself, however a imaginative and prescient of Venice … like a metropolis that individuals come and eat,” mentioned Sottoriva.
The billionaire can also be a “image for a kind of wealth constructed on the exploitation of the various”, citing Amazon’s resistance to the Union, mentioned Sottoriva, observing his presence on the inauguration of the American president Donald Trump.
Sottoriva claimed that the town turns increasingly vacationers and huge -scale occasions quite than its residents, with consequent “depopulation and closure of many companies and areas for the locals”. In a way, the issue of Surism and the posh occasion of the billionaire “symbolize the identical imaginative and prescient of the town as a commodity,” he mentioned.
“We want respectable homes and wages”
Details have been made official on the marriage, however about 200 company have been anticipated to boast the most costly resorts within the metropolis, whereas the founding father of Amazon will journey along with his yachts.
While the marketing campaign doesn’t anticipate to cease the marriage, he hopes to throw a key to the works. The activists have already began taking a place, particularly by hanging a banner with the title of Bezos crossed on the bell tower of San Giorgio Basilica on Thursday, whereas the posters that publicize their actions are plastered within the metropolis.
The group is planning its principal demonstration for June 28. “We will create some inconveniences and delays and make the protest seen,” mentioned Sottoriva, including that peaceable protests will current individuals who block the roads, clog the channels on boats and kayaks and leaping into the water.
Hopes that a whole bunch come out of Venice. “We can even have individuals who play music – it’ll even be a celebration for the town.”
It isn’t the primary time that Bezos’ presence has courted controversies in Europe: in 2022, Rotterdam has confronted criticism for having considered the dismantling of his iconic De Hef bridge in order that his yacht may cross, regardless of the promise of the town council to not disturb the monument after he had been restored 5 years earlier.
Venice has develop into a baby for the impacts of the overcoming, with the variety of guests to scorching air balloons in current many years, with some 30 million visits to the small city every year.
Only 51,000 rooms reside within the historic middle, with about 250,000 extra that reside on the mainland of Venice. Some Venetians complain that they’ve been expelled from their neighborhoods from the rise in prices and that tourism is striving the infrastructures of the town and diluting the distinctive character of Venice.
The metropolis has launched a vacationer tax, with a every day tax for guests, that its mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, mentioned that he goals to assist the town to dampen enormous affluses of vacationers, even when critics say that he has not managed to dissuade vacationers from the arrival in droves.
But some see the wedding as a chance, with some entrepreneurs who say to the Italian media that oppose protests and that occasions reminiscent of Bezos’ marriage ceremony deliver habits.
The marriage ceremony was additionally embraced with all my coronary heart by the mayor, with Brugnaro who mentioned he was “honored” that Bezos had chosen Venice. “We are very proud,” he instructed the AP final week, including that he hoped that he would have the chance to satisfy the billionaire.
“I do not know if I’ll have time, or if he’ll do it, to satisfy and tighten his hand, however it’s an honor who’ve chosen Venice. Venice proves to be as soon as once more as a world scene.”
It isn’t a surprise that Sottoriva has a contrasting imaginative and prescient. “We do not want bezos. We want homes, respectable wages and a sustainable future.”
