While last-minute preparations for US billionaire Jeff Bezos’ lavish Venice wedding next week should be under way, protesters are drawing up plans in parallel to block streets and waterways and send a message: the Amazon founder is not welcome in their city.
For some Venetians, the wedding of Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a former TV journalist, which is rumoured to be costing some €10 million, represents the sell-off of their city to the highest bidder – and they are mobilising against it.
Marta Sottoriva, an organiser of the No Space for Bezos campaign, told Euronews that activists are demonstrating against Bezos’ wedding because of what it represents for the city.
“We are not protesting the wedding per se, but a vision of Venice … as a city that people come and consume,” Sottoriva said.
The billionaire is also a “symbol for a type of wealth built on the exploitation of the many”, citing Amazon’s resistance to unionisation, Sottoriva said, while noting his presence at US President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Sottoriva argued the city increasingly caters to tourists and large-scale events rather than its residents, resulting in “depopulation and the closure of many services and spaces for locals”. In some ways, the problem of overtourism and the billionaire’s luxury event “represent the same vision of the city as a commodity”, she said.
‘We need houses and decent wages’
Scant details have been made official about the wedding, but some 200 guests are expected to attend and are said to have booked the city’s most expensive hotels, while the Amazon founder will be travelling with his yachts.
While the campaign does not expect to stop the wedding, it hopes to throw a spanner in the works. The activists have already begun to take a stand, most notably by hanging a banner daubed with Bezos’ name crossed out on the bell tower of San Giorgio Basilica on Thursday, while posters advertising their actions are plastered around the city.
The group is planning its main demonstration for 28 June. “We will create some inconvenience and delays and make the protest visible,” Sottoriva said, adding that the peaceful protests will feature people blocking roads, clogging up canals on boats and kayaks and jumping into the water.
She hopes hundreds will come out across Venice. “We’ll also have people playing music – it’s going to be a party for the city, too.”
It is not the first time Bezos’s presence has courted controversy in a Europe: in 2022, Rotterdam faced criticism for dismantling its iconic De Hef Bridge so that his yacht could pass, despite the city council’s promise not to disturb the monument after it was restored five years prior.
Venice has become a poster child for the impacts of overtourism, with the number of visitors ballooning in recent decades, with some 30 million visiting the small city each year.
Just 51,000 locals reside in the historic centre, with around 250,000 more living on Venice’s mainland. Some Venetians complain that they have been pushed out of their neighbourhoods by rising costs and that tourism is straining the city’s infrastructure and diluting Venice’s unique character.
The city has introduced a tourist tax, with a daily fee for visitors, which its mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, said aims to help the city to dampen down massive influxes of travellers, though critics say it has failed to dissuade tourists from coming in droves.
But some see the wedding as an opportunity, with some business owners telling Italian media that they oppose the protests and that events like Bezos’ wedding bring in custom.
The wedding has also been wholeheartedly embraced by the mayor, with Brugnaro saying he felt “honoured” that Bezos had picked Venice. “We are very proud,’’ he told the AP last week, adding that he hoped he would get the chance to meet the billionaire.
“I don’t know if I will have time, or if he will, to meet and shake hands, but it’s an honour that they chose Venice. Venice once again reveals itself to be a global stage.’’
Unsurprisingly, Sottoriva holds a contrasting view. “We don’t need Bezos. We need houses, decent wages, and a sustainable future.”
Read the full article here
