Chris Smalls in conversation w/ Theresa Warburton-When the Revolution Comes

In the early days of the Covid pandemic, warehouse worker Chris Smalls and his colleagues continued showing up as the rest of the world was shutting down. A dedicated and experienced Amazon employee, increasingly frustrated by the inner workings of the retail giant, Smalls had already felt himself reaching a breaking point. So, when coworkers around him began falling ill, and with no transparency or assurances of safety coming from those in charge, he made the only choice left available to him. He staged a walkout with friend Derrick Palmer, eventually finding himself on the picket line without a job. But what began as a demand to keep essential employees safe in a crisis would grow into a movement devoted to achieving dignity and security for the American wage worker, sparking a groundswell of organizers at the most notable companies across the nation—including Starbucks, Trader Joe's, and Apple—and leading to lasting change for labor.

When the Revolution Comes is the riveting inside story of how a young Black man from Hackensack, NJ with little-to-no resources led a scrappy band of Staten Island warehouse workers in an improbable fight against Amazon, the second largest private employer in the U.S., and won. This epic David-and-Goliath tale traces Smalls’ dramatic story, from a childhood spent navigating his dad’s stints in and out of prison to his early pursuits of a career in music; from his years of sacrifice and economic uncertainty as a father of three, fighting a miasma of warehouse managerial politics in an effort to make ends meet, to his ascension as the leader of a new generation’s labor movement. Along the way, he details lessons learned from a life spent working paycheck-to-paycheck, advocating for those around him, and persevering in the face of adversity, and shares how those lessons helped him build the coalition that became the first-ever union of American Amazon workers.

A deeply personal and eye-opening account of the creation of the Amazon Labor Union, When the Revolution Comes is both a searing exposé of what it’s like to be working class in America today as well as the empowering story of what is possible when the overworked, underpaid, and disempowered join together, a movement born in community.

Chris Smalls is the co-founder and former president of the Amazon Labor Union. Under his leadership, the ALU successfully unionized an Amazon warehouse: a historic victory for workers' rights in America. A Fortune “40 Under 40” honoree, he was named one of the 100 most influential people of 2022 by Time magazine, alongside his fellow union organizer Derrick Palmer. When the Revolution Comes is his first book.

Theresa Warburton is a teacher, writer, and organizer living in the Pacific Northwest. She has written articles and books that focus on anarchism, feminism, and Native literatures, including the forthcoming co-edited collection Visions and Interventions: Thirty Years of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory which will published by AK Press in July 2026. In addition to being a faculty member at Western Washington University, she is the current president of the United Faculty of Western Washington (UFWW).

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