Working-Class Institutions, Amazon and The Politics of Local Economic Development in Western Queens James DeFilippis 1 and Samuel Stein 2 Abstract In November 2018 Amazon announced that they had selected Long Island City, Queens (LIC) as one of two locations for their second headquarters. While there had certainly been criticism and organizing against the proposed deal, given that it had the vocal support of both Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo, most New Yorkers had assumed that the deal would be implemented. Then, rather surprisingly, on February 14th, 2019, Amazon announced its withdrawal from the deal and its decision not to come to LIC. This article uses the case of Amazon and other large scale developments in western Queens to discuss the conflictual and often messy politics of local economic development (LED) in working class com- munities. It argues that urban studies pays too little attention to how and why working class organizations participate in the politics of LED; and often thereby shape the enacted policies of LED. Keywords Local Economic Development, Queens, New York, Working Class Politics 1 Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA 2 Community Service Society of New York, New York, New York, USA Corresponding Author: James DeFilippis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Email: jdefilip@rutgers.edu Article Urban Affairs Review 1–22 © The Author(s) 2022 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/10780874221100695 journals.sagepub.com/home/uar