Here in New York, this year’s Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art faced protests on Monday. The event was sponsored by Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez. Ahead of the gala, the activism group Everyone Hates Elon projected video interviews with Amazon workers onto the Bezoses’ Manhattan penthouse, alongside slogans including “If You Can Buy the Met Gala, You Can Pay More Taxes” and “No Red Carpet for Trump’s Billionaires.” On Friday, the group placed hundreds of bottles of fake urine inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, referring to complaints by Amazon workers of having to skip bathroom breaks and urinate in bottles. The group also plastered ads across the city reading “The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to You by the Company that Powers ICE,” a reference to Amazon’s cloud computing contract with ICE. Amazon’s labor union founder Chris Smalls was arrested outside the Met Gala after allegedly jumping a barricade. Meanwhile, labor unions staged a “Ball Without Billionaires” in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District as an alternative fashion show to the Met Gala. Amazon, Whole Foods, Washington Post, Starbucks and Uber workers walked the runway in looks by immigrant designers. This is SEIU President April Verrett.

April Verrett: “They can try to take our rights. They can try to redraw the lines. They can try to control the systems. But they will never, ever be able to replicate the brilliance, the creativity, the resilience of the people they are trying to hold down. So this ball without billionaires is not just about fashion. It is about power. It’s about telling the truth that people who sew and care and drive and cook and clean and secure and those that create are the ones who make everything possible. Labor is art.”