Chris Smalls says memoir was written to 'control his narrative' about organizing Amazon workers

Chris Smalls, the organizer who helped found the Amazon Labor Union, said he wrote his memoir When the Revolution Comes to take control of his public narrative beyond short media clips and viral videos. "A lot of people read articles about me... but even in those short clippings you don't really get to know who I am as a person," Smalls said during an interview in Washington, D.C.

Smalls described growing up with a mother active in a union and a family shaped by hardship and incarceration. He recounted his first job at Target in Hackensack, N.J., where he said a hit-and-run left him with a torn ligament that altered his athletic prospects and pushed him toward activism. "That was my first time actually taking on a major corporation," he said, crediting his mother and a lawyer, April Gilmore, for helping him win a settlement that supported his first year of college.

The interview framed the book as both personal history and political argument: Smalls tied his upbringing and early fights to his later decision to organize Amazon workers and found a nonprofit, the Congress of Essential Workers (TCOEW). He said the memoir lets him explain "where I come from, how I was raised" and to show readers he is more than the headlines.