Jeff Bezos is getting married this week in a lavish wedding filled with famous guests that’s rumored to cost as much as $75 million. The Amazon founder and his bride-to-be, Lauren Sanchez, have arrived in Venice, Italy, for the celebration, but protesters have already derailed some of their plans. Specifically, activists threatened to fill the Venice canals with inflatable animals to make sure that guests would be unable to get around.
Activists with Greenpeace, No Space for Bezos, and a UK-based group called Everyone Hates Elon have all been making their displeasure known this week, with a large banner unfurled in St. Mark’s Square reading, “If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax.”
But the main victory that protesters are claiming thus far is forcing Bezos to change venues for the wedding reception, which was originally slated for Scuola Grande della Misericordia (Old School of Mercy), a 16th-century church and meeting building. Organizers from No Space for Bezos told the BBC they’d gotten the venue moved to the Venetian Arsenal after saying they would fill the canals with inflatable crocodiles, flamingos, ducks, and unicorns.
“We are very proud of this! We are nobodies, we have no money, nothing!” an organizer from No Space for Bezos, Tommaso Cacciari, told the BBC. “We’re just citizens who started organizing and we managed to move one of the most powerful people in the world—all the billionaires—out of the city.”
A Greenpeace organizer said it wasn’t so much about protesting these specific two people but what they represent more broadly. “The richest live in excess, while others endure the consequences of a climate emergency they didn’t create,” the protester explained to the BBC.
The Arsenal is a 12th-century complex of former armories and shipyards, which the Guardian notes is fortified in such a way that it’s harder for protesters to disrupt. The goal with all the inflatable animals was to make it harder for guests of the wedding to arrive at the venue, and those folks are high-profile enough that they’ll certainly be coming with their own entourages. Rumored guests include Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Ivanka Trump, and Leonardo DiCaprio, among a host of others. The guest list includes about 200 people, according to the Guardian.
The Instagram account for No Space for Bezos posted a video last week showing the group hanging up a banner that included the word Bezos crossed out in red. The video also included a song about Bezos by Bo Burnham that’s critical of billionaires, to say the least.
Another post on Tuesday declared victory over Bezos by forcing the billionaire to change his plans, writing, “We have proven once again that Venice is not a servant of the powerful but continues to be rebellious and resilient.” The group went on to warn that war was looming over the horizon, a reference to the Israel-Iran war, declaring “NO WAR.”
Another post from the account depicted Bezos with a World War II-era German military helmet that reads “AWS,” a likely reference to the fact that Amazon is a major defense contractor through its cloud services. The caption reads, “No Bezos, No War.”
Bezos owns the Washington Post and, by most accounts, spent years without interfering with the newspaper’s coverage after first buying the media outlet in 2013. But that seems to have changed with the 2024 election, when the billionaire stopped the Post from publishing an endorsement of Kamala Harris. And it’s that little fun fact which would be good to keep in mind now when you’re reading anything in the Post that could be sensitive for Bezos or his buddy Donald Trump.
What are we talking about? An article published Wednesday about the Bezos-Sanchez wedding in the Post tries to downplay the disruption to the city, calling it “on par with major events including the city’s star-studded film festival,” and suggests Venice officials love the money that’s pouring in from the wedding.
From the Washington Post:
Glassblowers, mask makers and bakeries are counting their euros for a multiday event that has City Hall swooning. Officials project the economic benefits — among them a $1 million donation to groups including a research institute — in the low eight digits.
The newspaper also noted that other big weddings in Venice over the past two decades, including George Clooney’s wedding in 2014 and the wedding of an Indian heiress in 2011, didn’t attract protests. But that might have something to do with the fact that Clooney isn’t the third wealthiest person in the world or working to help the most powerful fascist in the world, Donald Trump, as he recklessly bombs other countries.
The No Space for Bezos Instagram account posted a video earlier this week showing Bezos, who’s worth $228 billion according to Forbes, attending Trump’s inauguration and palling around with other oligarchs like Elon Musk.
Bezos and Sanchez will reportedly be exchanging vows on Friday at the San Giorgio Maggiore basilica on San Giorgio Maggiore island. But activists aren’t done yet.
Even if they can’t physically disrupt the wedding venues anymore, No Space for Bezos plans to use projections on Saturday to protest, according to the BBC. They also plan on leading a march and they’re inviting everyone in the area to join.
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