A thread on Uber’s new billboard & what it means alongside the March on Washington.

Uber has always pushed a particular narrative about racial justice. It's tried to transform from a rapacious tech firm to a stalwart defender of the civil rights... 1/ https://twitter.com/jboyolee/status/1299047636234833925

In Uber’s narrative, the struggle for racial justice is simply a struggle for consumer rights. Though Ubers taps into a set of tangible anxieties about the unmet promises of the civil rights, it focuses on the politics of “access” and treats Black people as “consumers.” 2/

In this narrative the demand for justice is a demand for equity in the realm of consumption, or public accommodations, and of commercial services. 3/

In reality, Uber is less a purveyor of racial justice than it is a potential threat to the very institutions that advance the interests of working people, minority or otherwise. These interests? Guarantee of full employment, union protection, and security of good jobs. 4/

When millions of people in 1963 descended on DC for the March for Jobs and Freedom, their demand for racial justice ***was also*** a demand for economic justice and jobs. 5/

Alongside calls for desegregation of schools were demands to train and place unemployed workers, a nat'l min wage & broader labor standards. For a generation of civil rights activists, questions of racial justice were also invariably questions of justice at work. 6/

For those 1963 marchers, the distinction that has become so central to Uber’s campaign --- the distinction between customers and workers that's on display in the new billboard --- would be met with a great deal of suspicion. As it, of course, should be. /End