There’s a lot of hype in that, but the memo does not do Amazon any favors. It’s full of pablum and reeks of smugness — the author refers to the company, more than once, as “Earth’s Best Employer,” and calls its allies “Amazonians.”

Really?

The memo suggests that the company, for all its self-regard, has thin skin. It complains that after receiving donations from Amazon in 2022 and 2023, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Arts & Culture, part of the Riverside Art Museum, had the audacity to exhibit a local artist “who depicted an Amazon facility on fire.”

Earth’s best employer didn’t like that. “We will not donate to The Cheech,” the memo declares with all the haughty insecurity of an unclothed emperor.

But is any of this remarkable? Amazon is a major employer (sorry, not the best but certainly one of the biggest) with far-flung and sometimes very specific ambitions. It has every right to strategize about its future and to plan for it.

Susan Phillips, who directs the Redford Conservancy at Pitzer College and is a leading critic of the region’s warehouse boom, called the memo “totally unsurprising … and basically what we’ve known all along.” A very large company has interests and influence and seeks to use its influence to advance them.

Self-serving goals

More revealing, however, are the assumptions it incorporates: the unthinking acceptance of a worldview in which self-serving corporate behavior is sold as a social good.

It demonstrates, Phillips noted, that Amazon, like so many big and influential companies, believes that it is embracing “community engagement” when in fact it is practicing “manipulation.”

As she points out, the strategies that the memo outlines do not actually aim to engage the community in conversation about its future. Instead, Amazon seeks to use money and community contact to secure advantages — to head off labor organizing, to keep wages low, to build more warehouses.

The goals are not healthier or more prosperous places to live. They are fending off “reputational challenges” by doling out modest grants and backing supportive officials who are willing to carry out the company’s agenda.

Mind you, Amazon thinks that’s for the public’s own benefit. As the memo showed, Amazon sees its interests as commensurate with the region’s health — that what’s good for Amazon is good for Southern California.

It’s a “positive impact” when Amazon works to halt a warehouse moratorium for the Inland Empire, or when it influences alcohol advertising legislation, or promotes “proactive competition work” (see: pablum).

To be fair, those goals may sometimes be good for the public. But Amazon isn’t interested in them because they’re good for the public; it’s interested in what’s good for Amazon.

Messaging vs. solutions

Asked about the memo, company spokesperson Jennifer Flagg was prompt, polite and deflective. The memo, she said, should not be considered complete or approved but merely a leaked draft.

To the larger point of Amazon’s place in California, Flagg stressed its employment of more than 162,000 people, its investments in infrastructure and compensation and its charitable work — all of which are unchallenged and speak to the company’s commitment, if not necessarily its motives.

The disconnect between Amazon as a corporate entity and guardian of public trust comes through in the memo’s discussion of public concerns.

“Our customers in this region believe that homelessness is the overwhelming priority across the region,” the memo concludes, “as well as supporting children and families in poverty, and reducing hunger.”

Fair enough. Data supports that conclusion, and it seems intelligent of Amazon to note it.

But Amazon’s proposed strategy in the face of those concerns is to “increase … visibility,” to “hone language” and to make better and more frequent use of “the words ‘hunger,’ ‘homelessness’” in its corporate speech.

“Additionally,” the memo notes, “we will work with communications and PR to ensure our speeches, press releases, any external communication ties back to these topics.”

Amazon does not, however, propose to increase wages for those struggling families or those who may be hungry. To the contrary: “Pay continues to be a significant concern,” the memo states.

Instead, the company proposes to hone its messaging.

It’s not Amazon’s job to solve homelessness, but the company wants it both ways. It wants to be thought of as a partner to local governments, a beneficent corporate citizen here to help local electeds help their constituents. But it’s really here for itself — for its profits, its future, its warehouses and its sales.

Government allows it

Amazon’s communications and strategic investments may end up being good for the public, but that’s not the goal. The goal is Amazon’s image and the protection of its interests.

That is not engagement. It is, as Phillips put it, “corporate narcissism.”

Amazon is hardly alone in all of this. This is what happens when governments relinquish leadership to special interests. It’s neoliberalism and marketplace confidence at its worst, and it’s mostly shocking in that it fails to shock. It seems perfectly natural of Amazon to think of itself as an exemplar of what a community needs because government encourages it to do so.

It’s no great stretch for elected officials, especially those cultivated by the company, to think of it that way, too.

Government is supposed to sniff out special interests and think outside it — to do what’s best for the public, not just for those who stand to make money. It might be good for the Inland Empire to have more Amazon warehouses and the minimum-wage jobs they supply, but it might not. In fact, it might be that warehouses are crowding out other uses of land that might be better for the region.

Amazon’s strategy does not entertain those possibilities because, from its perspective, they are beyond consideration. And because of that, Amazon’s “community engagement” approach will not actually engage those questions.

Rather, they will steer and guide conversations toward answers that favor “Earth’s Best Employer.”

Jim Newton is a contributor to CalMatters. He worked at the Los Angeles Times for 25 years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist, covering government and politics.

The reforms were meant to allow the electorate to remove the officials responsible, pass laws over their objections, or undo their acts. People over business.

Yet next fall Californians will consider a referendum sponsored by big business to undo the act of the people’s elected leaders — a recurring theme in recent years. The specific matter at issue is Senate Bill 1137, a 2022 law that bans oil drilling within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, hospitals and the like. Oil companies responded by circulating petitions to challenge the legislation with a referendum, and voters will get the opportunity to decide its fate this year.

“It’s an egregious attack on democracy,” actress and activist Jane Fonda (yes, that Jane Fonda) told me recently. “It’s the most egregious attack on democracy and public health I’ve ever seen.”

Substantive issues

At its core, the referendum is one of “environmental justice,” said Fonda, who is helping organize the opposition. In a state where some 2.7 million people live within a few thousand feet of an oil well, public health advocates made their case that buffer zones were in the public interest, and their elected leaders responded.

That is how representative democracy is supposed to work. The referendum seeks to undo that, and it does so by marshaling a tool historically intended to curb the power of big business.

There are certainly substantive issues to consider. How bad are the health consequences of growing up in a home a few hundred feet from an oil well? Would creating the setbacks required by the bill damage the economy of California or raise the price of gasoline? Would that price be worth paying if it was spent to protect the state’s public health?

Supporters of the bill (and therefore, the opponents of the referendum) say that the price is minimal and the benefit considerable. A report to the Los Angeles City Council noted that “activities related to oil and gas operations have been associated with many potential negative health and safety impacts, especially when they occur in close proximity to sensitive uses such as homes, schools, places of worship, recreation areas, and healthcare facilities.”

In 2022, the council voted to ban new wells and phase out old ones over the next two decades.

SB 1137 was a companion idea. But even as Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill, oil companies rushed to head it off, calling their effort “Stop the Energy Shutdown.”

They were successful. After spending some $20 million to collect signatures, the law was shelved. Next November’s vote will determine if it gets implemented.

The industry’s argument is that, as long as oil is being consumed, it is better for it to come from local sources. If SB 1137 is allowed, California would be forced to “increase its reliance on imported oil, which could come from other oil-rich countries,” Rock Zierman, CEO of the California Independent Petroleum Association, wrote in an op-ed for CalMatters.

Last week, Zierman elaborated on that point, asserting that the law does nothing to decrease the state’s demand for oil.

“Californians consume 1.8 million barrels of oil a day,” he noted.

Supporters of the law question the seriousness of that argument, pointing out that oil is an internationally traded commodity, and a few oil wells in California residential neighborhoods are a negligible piece of the global market. Darkly warning of increased gas prices in this context is scare politics.

Test of democracy

For whatever reason — concern for prices, resistance to regulation, fear of the precedent of government mandates — oil companies have chosen to fight this. But they start at an obvious disadvantage: Californians have fought Big Oil before — some chart the modern environmental movement from the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill. Environmental justice, with its emphasis on the disparate effects on poor Californians, is a compelling political argument in this very blue state.

It would take a lot of money to persuade Californians to trust Big Oil with their health and safety. But if Big Oil is unpopular, it is also rich. The campaign over drilling setbacks could thus be both a threat to democracy and a test of it.

Which brings me back to Jane Fonda.

She is not an official campaign spokesperson, but Fonda brings near-iconic status to the effort. First introduced to the public decades ago as a beautiful and talented actress, Fonda has parlayed her fame into political action. She has placed her reputation — even her life — in defense of participatory democracy. It is natural, then, that this test of democratic institutions and environmental protection drew her interest.

Fonda’s activism has made her a polarizing figure at times, but the issues that may have once struck mainstream America as fringe thunderbolts have gradually become recognized as sensible, even moderate, positions. It hardly seems radical today to have advocated for ending the Vietnam war, desegregation and equal voting rights; empowering women; or protecting the environment.

Fonda championed those causes when they were hard. In 2023, they seem natural.

“We’ve made quite a lot of progress,” she told me. “But the problems haven’t gone away.”

The solution, she said, is to energetically plow ahead. In our interview, she quoted Greta Thunberg, the young climate change activist. Pursue action, Thunberg advised Fonda. “Hope will follow.”

It is typical Fonda that this veteran of so many struggles, now in her 80s but as clear-eyed, open-hearted and forceful as ever, would credit a teenager for inspiration.

Over the coming months, Californians will get the chance to decide who to believe: oil companies and their spending or Fonda, her allies and her principles. I would not bet against Fonda.

Jim Newton is a contributor to CalMatters. He worked at the Los Angeles Times for 25 years as a reporter, editor, bureau chief and columnist, covering government and politics.