Venice activists plan to disrupt Jeff Bezos’s wedding

Venice activists launched a series of protests against the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos, who is scheduled to marry her fiancé Lauren Sanchez next week at a luxurious and million dollar party that could close parts of the famous city.

Jeff Bezos, 61, is the third richest person in the world, with a net value of $ 220.9 billion. He is the founder of Amazon and Space Tech Blue Origin.

Hundreds of prominent guests in Venice will descend between June 23 and 28 for marriage, which will take over the entire Saint Georgio Island, opposite Saint Mark Square.

According to the Italian media, almost every luxury hotel was booked by the wedding, as well as many water taxis.

“Venice is treated like a width, a stage,” said Federica Tonnelli, a 33 -year -old Venice activist.

“This wedding is a symbol of the city’s exploitation by strangers … Venice is now just a balance.”

There is no space for Bezos uniting activists belonging to various groups in Venice-of those campaigns for more housing for the declining Venetian residents to the anti-vineyard ships committee.

“All these topics are linked,” Tonnelli told the BBC. “They are all related to the rifle that turns into a place that places tourists, instead of residents, at the center of its policy.”

On Thursday, collective banners are not intended against Bezos from the bell tower in San Giorgio Magior Bazilica and the Rialto Bridge. Next week, they are planning to disrupt the celebrations by jumping to the channels to impeding and prohibiting water taxis and prohibiting them CausalThe narrow gun streets, to prevent the wedding guests from reaching the place.

In a summons on social media for people to join the protests, activists accused the mayor of the conservative Venice Luigi Berginaro of the treatment of the population “like the inconvenience … because for him, the only correct use of the gun is a background of events that make the rich rich.”

Organizers say that the goal of protests – that they insist to be completely peaceful – are two parts.

“We want to publish a conversation at the city level and say that people like Bezos – who represent a future we do not want and a scientist we do not want to live in – are not welcome here,” said Tonelili, a citing Bezos commercial projects and his proximity to the Trump administration.

But Mayor Berginaro said that he was “ashamed” of the demonstrators: “What is the other city that will organize a committee against the wedding of such an important person?”

“hope [Bezos] He has no second ideas.

Establishing the wrath of the mayor, telling the Setrak Tokatzian jewelry – who heads the store owners’ association in St. Mark – the Italian media that those who protest “harm the city.”

“This type of events brings work and wealth, otherwise all that we have left is increasingly low -cost tourism.”

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, a former author and news presenter, was together for several years and became involved in 2023.

Although the details of the wedding ceremony have not been revealed, the no no Bezos committee believes that the couple will link the knot in the Church of the tenth century of the Miricordia Monastery.

About 200 guests are expected, with many hotels remaining in Venice as well as on yachts Bezos, Koro and Pioonna.

According to Vogue, the list of guests can include Kim Kardashian – which attended a single Sánchez party in Paris last month – and the pop star Katie Perry, with which Sánchez was Sánchez It flew into space on the blue -origin missile Earlier this year. It is also rumored that members of the Trump family are attending.

Ms. Tonnelli said that protesting the luxurious Bezos wedding would attract attention to the broader problems facing her city and her fragile lake.

With the replacement of local housing with holidays, the Venice left the city in large numbers. According to the group of local activists OCIO, in 2023, the number of tourists exceeded the population for the first time.

Its population is just less than 49,000, compared to 175,000 in 1950.

last year The city provided entry fees for today’s sport on peak dates. Mayor Brojennaro celebrated the scheme as success, but opposing politicians argued that it did not help spread the flow of tourists who overwhelm the streets of the narrow gun regularly.

However, Mrs. Toninelli insisted that she and other activists were not against the concept of tourism. “We also love to travel around the world. The problem here is not tourists – it is taking advantage of tourism and based on everything on it.”

She said, “We need to think about the transition of post -tourism,” and it highlights the need to move away from the concept of the gun as a stage of great and wonderful events.

“The city’s administration that places the population – not visitors – the front and the center will be a good step forward.”

Jeff Bezos’s wedding is not the first wide -ranging celebration of this type in Venice.

In 2014, actor George Clooney, a human rights lawyer, married Amal Al -Din in a prominent relationship that saw a group of celebrities on the Italian city channels. There was no sensation against their event at the time.