Not us, Amazon!

The city’s business leaders appealed to Amazon to move to Spokane, despite witnessing the destruction it wrought to Seattle’s culture and inhabitants. In doing so, those in power have spat in our collective faces.

When did the oligarchs of the region decide our culture and the welfare of our working and middle classes sell for so little? Under this leadership, we dump rocks under a bridge so the California retirees don’t have to witness “the poor” tampering their view. We relegate classic Northwest victories, like slowing the increase of disaster-ridden coal trains through our cities (Millennium Bulk Terminal permit denied) or farmers winning legal battles against the state to the back pages of the paper, replacing them with desperate, salivating appeals to Fortune 500 companies to purchase us.

I suppose we all carry some blame, but those in charge, who care so little for us “peasant” locals, have lost what it means to be an Inlander.

The last line of their appeal is correct: Amazon did “create enormous amounts of wealth,” but since when did people move to Spokane to become enormously wealthy? A wealth reserved, no less, for those already richest among us.

Nicholas Johnson

Spokane