Bi-Co Students were not in attendance for Sisterhood*’s teach-in on “the impact of Amazon’s exploitative labor practices on Black life, from the DRC to the Amazon Labor Movement,” despite the event having been advertised to the student body weeks prior to it taking place.
Held on February 12, the teach-in was intended to inform attendees about the unethical labor practices rampant in the mineral mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo and how many popular United States companies participate in these human rights violations. Event organizers Adara Alexander, Breia Vann-Crump, and Viviana Wallace focused on the censorship of information online.
The organizers spoke about how many Bi-Co students are complicit in the atrocities through their use of companies such as Amazon, Google, and Apple, all of which (directly or indirectly) support the unethical labor practices in the DRC by buying and selling products that use minerals mined via unethical labor.
Event organizer Adara Alexander expressed that she thought the teach-in was vital for Bi-Co students because “not a lot of people know the actual history” of mining practices in the DRC.
Bryn Mawr President Wendy Cadge was in attendance and asked the organizers about how they collected their sources for the event. The organizers said that they relied on many nonprofits as well as TikTok to inform the teach-in, adding that they used TikTok as a jumping-off point for their research due to widespread censorship relating to the DRC online.
The teach-in described the conditions in many cobalt, diamond, copper, and other mineral mines in the resource-rich DRC as “slave-like,” with many workers receiving little to no compensation for their extremely physically taxing and risky work. Child labor is also rampant in these mines, with Amnesty International officially calling for an end to it in the DRC. The organizers explained that while there are some pieces of legislation in place to protect miners, they are minimally enforced.
Additionally, many foreign governments support and benefit from the instability in the DRC by funding the Ugandan and Rwandan militias. The Rwandan rebel group the M23 Movement captured the DRC capital of Goma just this Jan., displacing over 737,000 and killing 2,900. An estimated 6.9 million people have been displaced since the start of this conflict, and the United States’ humanitarian aid to the DRC was included in President Trump’s pause on all foreign aid.
Later in the teach-in, the organizers connected international labor violations in the DRC to the current fight against Amazon’s labor violations in the United States. Amazon has been accused of a plethora of labor rights infringements, many of which are felt more keenly by Black Amazon employees. Amazon has placed impossibly high quotas on their workers and even fired Black workers for speaking out or attempting to organize a union, both of which are illegal. This connection is representative of the theme for Black History Month this year, African Americans and Labor.
For those interested, there will unfortunately not be a rescheduled teach-in. However, “Bi-Co students can take action against the genocide happening in the DRC by being mindful about what organization they give their money to, and to try and find alternatives to Amazon. They can also donate (if they are able) to any one of these organizations that have been active and on the ground supporting Congo: Friends of the Congo, Focus Congo, and Embrace Relief,” said Adara Alexander.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this implied that Sisterhood* chose the theme for Black History Month. This is incorrect. The nationally recognized theme is African Americans and Labor.
