Stunning that Amazon’s groundbreaking union vote is in Alabama Updated Feb 14, 2021; Today’s guest columnist is Eli Cohen. When I first saw that Amazon’s biggest unionization effort to date was taking place here in Birmingham, I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I grew up in Birmingham. Even as a child, I was politically involved, travelling to Montgomery to visit lawmakers at the capital, and later to learn the dark sides of our history at the Equal Justice Initiative. I was no expert, but I thought I understood Alabama politics. I didn’t know everything, but I was confident Alabama was not going to be the site of Amazon’s first domestic union showdown. But as voting begins at the company’s Bessemer facility, that is exactly what’s happening.