CNN
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After Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez tied the Venice knot on Friday, hundreds of protesters gathered at the city’s railway station on Saturday to unite with one message to the Amazon billionaire and his bride.
“Bezos, f**k off,” they chanted in Italian. “From the lagoon!”
One bearded man tots a Shrek-themed placard with the same message. “Get Out Out Our Lagoon,” “A” in the Lagoon has the Spotify link below for the theme song of the first film in the series, “Smash Mouth’s “All Star”:
“Bezos is working with President Trump (the US President), who is burning more money in the war,” said one woman who gets caught up in a microphone by the station. “We are for peace.”
“(Bezos) has a lot of power,” Austrian protester Hans Peter Martin told CNN. “And now he’s abusive as a place to show off the city. So he’s not welcome here.”
22-year-old Venetian Sofia Damato emphasized that the protest was not about Bezos’s vy wishes for wealth or power.
“We’re not jealous of the fact that he makes so much money, so he’s one of the most powerful men in the world,” Damat told CNN. “We are jealous when his wealth slams us in the face.”
Venice’s tourism ministry says the three-day wedding, which is reportedly costing $55 million, could provide a nearly 68% increase in the city’s annual tourism sales. In addition to that, Sanchez and Bezos each gave 1 million euros to three Venetian cultural institutions, according to Reuters. A total of 3 million euros worth of donations.
Their charity efforts were impressed by D’Amato.
“They say Jeff Bezos donated money to Venice,” Damat said. “It was donated after our opposition. That amount on a massive scale is a small amount.”
The protesters portrayed a harsh contrast between Bezos’ decadence the day before and the harsh reality of working for Sanchez’s wedding and the billionaire company.
“We can barely pay rent,” one woman who identified herself as an Amazon worker told the protesters’ crowd. “Many of us come from far away to arrive at our warehouse.
Some protesters joined the old left hymn as the demonstrations moved towards Ponte del Gugli. “United will never be defeated.”
At least one protester targeted the couple’s fashion sense with a sign declaring “Money cannot buy style.”
Many people kept an Aloft Amazon box with various messages engraved: “Rejected”, “No space for Bezos”.
Multiple flags were visible among the protesters. The Palestinian flag, pride flag, anti-fascist flag, and Venice’s delicate red standard were one of the common options. Several individuals waving the modified version to get a golden lion with a sword on a hoist wearing a black balaclava.
Venice City officials were fascinated by the protesters and denounced them in a press release as “silly” and “grotesque.”
“The inherent challenge to weddings (all weddings) is already ridiculous, but here it exceeds all the limits of common sense,” read the city’s statement released Saturday. “We descended on the folklore of “no to everything.” ”
