Protesters force Jeff Bezos to change wedding plans

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez on Tuesday relocated their upcoming lavish Venice wedding celebration, a move cheered as an "enormous victory" by protesters whose recent demonstrations in the northeastern Italian city have highlighted the socioeconomic and climate damage caused by billionaires.

Bezos—who is currently the world's fourth-richest person, according to lists published by Bloomberg and Forbes—is set to marry Sánchez, a journalist, later this week, and the couple is planning to celebrate the occasion with a three-day extravaganza costing an estimated $46-56 million, according toReuters.

Around 90 private jets are scheduled to land in area airports and local yacht harbors are fully booked, underscoring the climate and environmental impact on a city struggling to survive on one of myriad frontlines of the planetary emergency.

"We are very proud of this! We are nobodies, we have no money, nothing!"

The nuptial celebration has been relocated from the Scuola Grande della Misericordia to the Arsenale di Venezia, a historic fortified palace about 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) away from the original location. Officials cited concerns for the security of guests including several members of U.S. President Donald Trump's family.

Members of groups including No Space for Bezos, Greenpeace Italy, and Everyone Hates Elon—which targets Elon Musk, the world's richest person—have staged a series of demonstrations, including one on Monday at which protesters laid out a massive banner with Bezos' face and the message "If You Can Rent Venice for Your Wedding You Can Pay More Tax" in Piazza San Marco.

Responding to the celebration's relocation, Tommaso Cacciari of No Space for Bezos told the BBC Wednesday: "We are very proud of this! We are nobodies, we have no money, nothing!"

"We're just citizens who started organizing and we managed to move one of the most powerful people in the world," Cacciari added.

Wedding-related festivities are set to kick off Thursday evening, and city officials have blocked off parts of central Venice. While some residents have welcomed the money and fanfare the event will bring to a city with a long and storied history of oligarchs and opulence, others bristle at what they see as the transformation of their home into a playground for the superrich.

"There's only one thing that rules now: money, money, money, so we are the losers," Venice resident Nadia Rigo toldReuters. "We who were born here have to either move to the mainland or we have to ask them for permission to board a ferry. They've become the masters."

In the United States, critics contrasted the stratospheric cost of Bezos' celebration with the multicentibillionaire's history of personal and corporate tax dodging—and the hyper-capitalist system that enables it.

"Jeff Bezos is worth $230 billion and is reportedly spending $20 million on a three-day wedding in Venice while sailing around on his $500 million yacht," former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich said Wednesday on the social media site X. "If he can afford to do that, he can afford a wealth tax and to pay Amazon workers a living wage. Hello?"

While No Space for Bezos organizers are celebrating their victory and have canceled plans to fill Venice's canals with inflatable crocodiles in a bid to block celebrity guests from accessing the Scuola Grande della Misericordia, they said they still plan on protesting the festivities by holding a "No Bezos, No War" rally and march.

"It will be a strong, decisive protest, but peaceful," Federica Toninello of the Social Housing Assembly network toldEuronews Wednesday. "We want it to be like a party, with music, to make clear what we want our Venice to look like."