This weekend’s star-studded Venice wedding of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez has galvanised activist groups which are protesting against it as a sign of the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots as well as disregard of the Italian city’s residents.
About a dozen Venetian organisations – including housing advocates, anti-cruise ship campaigners and university groups – have united to protest over the multi-day event under the banner “No Space for Bezos”, a play on words also referring to the bride’s recent space flight.
They have staged small-scale protests, unfurling anti-Bezos banners on famous Venetian sites.
They were joined this week by Greenpeace and the British group Everyone Hates Elon, which has smashed Teslas to protest against Elon Musk, to unfurl a giant banner in St Mark’s Square protesting over purported tax breaks for billionaires.
On Wednesday, other activists launched a float down the Grand Canal featuring a mannequin of Mr Bezos clinging on to an Amazon box, his fists full of fake US dollars.
The British publicity firm that announced the stunt said it was not a protest of the wedding “but against unchecked wealth, media control, and the growing privatisation of public spaces”.
“If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax,” read the banner, which featured a huge image of Mr Bezos.
Police quickly took it away.
There has been no comment from Mr Bezos’s representatives on the protests.
The local activists had planned a more organised protest for Saturday, aiming to obstruct access to canals with boats to prevent guests from reaching a wedding venue.
Then they modified the protest to a march from the train station after claiming a victory, asserting that their pressure forced organisers to change the venue to the Arsenale, a more easily secured site beyond Venice’s congested centre.
“It will be a strong, decisive protest, but peaceful,” said Federica Toninello, an activist with the Social Housing Assembly network.
“We want it to be like a party, with music, to make clear what we want our Venice to look like.”
Among the 200 guests confirmed to be attending the wedding are Sir Mick Jagger, Ivanka Trump, Oprah Winfrey, Katy Perry and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Venice, renowned for its romantic canal vistas, hosts hundreds of weddings each year, not infrequently those of the rich and famous.
Previous celebrity weddings, such as that of George Clooney to human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin in 2014, were embraced by the public.
Hundreds turned out to wish the couple well at City Hall.
Mr Bezos has a different political and business profile, said Tommaso Cacciari, a prominent figure in the movement that successfully pushed for a ban on cruise ships over 25,000 tons travelling through the Giudecca Canal in central Venice.
“Bezos is not a Hollywood actor,” Mr Cacciari said.
“He is an ultra-billionaire who sat next to Donald Trump during the inauguration, who contributed to his re-election and is contributing in a direct and heavy way to this new global obscurantism.”
Critics also cite Amazon’s labour practices, ongoing tax disputes with European governments and Mr Bezos’s political associations as additional reasons for concern.
Activists also argue that the Bezos wedding exemplifies broader failures in municipal governance, particularly the prioritisation of tourism over residents’ needs.
They cite measures such as the day-tripper tax – which critics argue reinforces Venice’s image as a theme park – as ineffective.
Chief among their concerns is the lack of investment in affordable housing and essential services.
City officials have defended the wedding.
Mayor Luigi Brugnaro called the event an honour for Venice, and the city denied the wedding would cause disruptions.
“Venice once again reveals itself to be a global stage,” Mr Brugnaro told The Associated Press, adding he hoped to meet Mr Bezos while he was in town.
Meanwhile, a Venetian environmental research association, Corila, issued a statement saying Mr Bezos’s Earth Fund was supporting its work with an “important donation”.
Corila, which unites university scholars and Italy’s main national research council in researching Venetian protection strategies, would not say how much Mr Bezos was donating but said contact began in April, well before the protests started.
