‘Make Amazon Pay’ demonstration held on Black Friday in London

Activists from Extinction Rebellion blockaded more than a dozen distribution centres of online retail giant Amazon in Britain in what they called coordinated global Black Friday sales protests. Dozens of demonstrators from the environmental movement — known as XR — blocked the company’s largest UK warehouse, in Dunfermline in Scotland, as well as sites across England collectively responsible for around half of its deliveries in Britain. The group also claimed to have targeted Amazon’s distribution sites in the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, on the busiest day of the year for the retail behemoth. The disruptive protests were “to confront the exploitative and environmentally destructive business practices of one of the world’s largest companies”, XR said in a statement. It blocked the entrances to the UK sites using bamboo structures and so-called lock-on devices, and displayed banners featuring slogans like “Amazon crime”, “Infinite growth, finite planet” and “Black Friday exploits people and planet”.