“A lot of people are going to understand,” Chamel Abdulkarim reportedly told his girlfriend over the phone just moments after burning down the 1.2 million square foot Kimberly Clark distribution center where he worked.

He wasn’t wrong. A lot of people did understand. Regardless of whether one condemns or condones arson as a valid method for venting one’s rage at the Epstein class, his sentiment resonates deeply among the American working class of today.

The desperate act was filmed from a first-person perspective and published on the 29-year-old worker’s Instagram account. The footage, which has since gone viral, depicts an outstretched arm using a lighter to ignite several pallets of toilet paper while fire alarms blare.

The tone of his voice is unmistakably that of a worker who has been pushed over the limit: “All you had to do was pay us enough to live … If you’re not gonna pay us enough to fucking afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this shit … there goes your inventory.”

The fire started just after midnight on the morning of April 7, as the entire night shift crew went on break. Within 45 minutes, the structure—large enough to fit 21 football fields within its walls—was engulfed in flames. It took 175 firefighters to extinguish the inferno, which completely consumed the building and all its inventory, valued at $650 million in total. None of his coworkers were hurt.

Abdulkarim was confronted by local police a short distance from the burning building. As the officers approached him, he said, “I’m confessing,” but refused to answer further questions.

He was arrested and charged with six counts of “aggravated arson” under California state law, and one count of “federal arson” as the FBI alleged that his act interfered with “interstate commerce.” For these charges—to which he has pleaded not guilty—he faces up to a life sentence in prison.

Within days, on a concrete wall along Interstate 10 not far from the warehouse, a message was painted in large letters and flame symbols: “PAY US ENOUGH TO LIVE.”

“Didn’t see the shareholders picking up a shift.”

Federal court documents have been made public, including a criminal complaint filed with the California Central District court by an FBI agent who specializes in “people who commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of their political and social ideology.” The document contains records of Abdulkarim’s text messages and excerpted transcripts of a phone conversation he had with his girlfriend, described as “Witness 1.”

When “Witness 1” asked Abdulkarim why he set the fire, he responded, “They had it coming … fucking eight hours, six days, stuck paying rent on a bullshit ass apartment that I can’t afford to fucking live … pedophiles out here fucking children, profiting off [unintelligible] fucking wars.”

The document alleges that Abdulkarim compared his actions to when “Luigi popped that motherfucker,” adding, “I just cost these motherfuckers billions.”

The report says Abdulkarim sent text messages to a co-worker—possibly his manager—saying: “All you had to do was pay us enough to live. Pay us more of the value WE bring. Not corporate. Didn’t see the shareholders picking up a shift.” His text messages also referred to “billionaires profiting off of war” and said the “1% is a fucking joke.”

The final page of the FBI file reports that the Kimberly Clark corporation—referred to throughout the document as “The Victim”—brings in an annual revenue of over $20 billion.

A notorious employer

Abdulkarim worked under a third-party logistics contractor, NFI Industries. The company employs 18,000 workers who operate 73 million square feet of warehouse space across the country. NFI is number 165 on the Forbes list of largest privately owned businesses, generating $3.7 billion in annual revenue. But it ranks in the bottom 35% of its industry for employee compensation, and in the bottom 20% for employee benefits. A survey of over 100 NFI employees found that 51% of its workers are not satisfied with their benefits, and 44% say they are paid unfairly.

The average warehouse stocker at NFI makes just $12.68 an hour, 20% below the national average, while a forklift operator earns around $18 an hour. At some facilities, stockers earn as little as $7.25—the federal minimum wage set in 2009. One NFI stocker from South Bend, Indiana left the following review of his position: “Horrible management didn’t care about their workers. Won’t give you an injury work release form to fill out.”

In response to the question, “Why do you feel undervalued and what would make you feel better about your compensation?” another employee wrote: “If they would pay the amount that they verbally agreed on.”

In other words, Abdulkarim is far from the only worker to feel taken advantage of by NFI Industries, in order to line shareholders’ pockets.

The company has been embroiled in numerous lawsuits over the years—each one reflecting a corporate management determined to squeeze every drop of surplus value out of its workforce. Last year, NFI settled for $5.75 million to compensate for withholding pay through illegal deductions and misclassification of more than 100 truckers over nearly a decade. In 2020, NFI was sued for forcing employees to clock in and out of their shifts using a device that recorded their fingerprints and surreptitiously collecting their biometric data.

Before that, NFI was forced to pay a settlement of over $1 million for violations of labor standards, including paying workers less than the legal minimum wage and withholding overtime. The company’s sordid history is a long one, leading the Teamsters to formally request the criminal prosecution of NFI in 2019.

The courts vs public opinion

Today, Abdulkarim’s actions are at the center of a raging national debate. One side calls him a criminal who endangered his coworkers and put them out of a job. The other side resonates with the words he spoke as he lit up his workplace—because they know the miserable reality of a paycheck-to-paycheck existence.

The first group can’t see any reason for such a drastic response. The second group feels the reason for it in their gut. A one-bedroom apartment in Ontario, California rents at around $2,300, while gas is at $6.00 a gallon. Abdulkarim was working six days a week, putting in nearly 50 hours, and still couldn’t get by. Millions of other workers across the US are in the same boat.

“Arson for me is a real head-scratcher,” said Jason Anderson, the San Bernardino County district attorney at a press conference. “I do not understand that someone who is suspected of arson does something where they get no value out of it other than to displace people from their jobs, to ruin commerce, to get in the way of labor, to put people in physical harm.”

The prosecution treats Abdulkarim’s words as the deranged ravings of a lunatic. The district attorney may not understand Abdulkarim’s language, but many people do. However coarsely worded, he was speaking the language of class struggle. His methods were not the collective methods of mass struggle that communists advocate. Yet, like the mass sympathy for Luigi Mangione, this individual act has elicited a social response that is more telling than the arson itself. And it’s a story that can only be told by referring explicitly to class.

A recent Yahoo News article provided a poignant example of class politics cropping up in an unlikely mainstream media outlet. It pondered the mass appeal of Abdulkarim’s catch phrase, “All you had to do was pay us enough to live”:

The people who carry the boxes, stock the shelves, scan the packages, and drive the routes know what Abdulkarim’s quote means. Not because they think arson is justified—they don’t. Because the sentence did not sound foreign. It sounded like something millions of people say in less catastrophic ways every day, in kitchens, in group chats, in cars outside warehouses before shifts they cannot afford to quit … Criminal acts deserve criminal consequences, full stop. But punishment does not answer the question underneath all of this, the one nobody in power addressed this week: what happens to the people who cannot afford to live in the economy being built above them?

In parallel to the trial that will play out in the court room, public opinion is working out its own verdict—in workplaces, at kitchen tables, and in the comment section of every recent social media video depicting an industrial fire, whether it was lit intentionally or not. One user compiled links to news articles reporting nearly 40 commercial fires in less than two weeks after the April 7 fire. Most of them say the cause is under investigation, while at least six are being investigated as arson.

Who’s defending the Epstein class?

Leading the charge against Abdulkarim is Los Angeles’s top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, a Trump administration appointee. He was personally selected by former Attorney General Pam Bondi, who Trump fired earlier this month after her disastrous handling of the Epstein scandal—and to save her from having to testify about it under oath.

That is to say, Abdulkarim is being tried by the same “justice system” responsible for covering up the crimes of the Epstein class. As if to deliberately underline the class content of this case, Essayli decided to turn a recent press conference into a defense of capitalism itself. His message was if you come after “our system,” we’re coming after you:

Look, America is founded on free enterprise and capitalism. There is an extremely disturbing trend where people are resorting to violence to communicate political messages or economic messages. I don’t know if this guy saw himself as a Luigi, but he’s an arsonist. He’s a criminal. America is founded on capitalism. Anyone who attacks our values, our way of life, our system, which provides the best goods and services to the most people, we’re going to come after aggressively.

As it turns out, Abdulkarim had tried to work within the system. In 2024, he was involved in a class action lawsuit against his employer at the time, PrimeFlight Aviation, a contractor that provides services to airports. The workers represented in the lawsuit accused PrimeFlight of wage theft and denying them legally mandated time for lunch and rest breaks. The case was dismissed by a judge in January 2025.

At a press conference on the morning of Abdulkarim’s arraignment, a reporter asked the prosecutors if they were aware of this 2024 lawsuit. “No,” Essayli replied, breaking into an ironic grin, “I’ll be shocked if there’s a major corporation in California that’s not paying their employees! California comes down hard on corporations like that. Any other questions?”

In reality, while this official of the Epstein class’s justice system laughs it off as a joke, wage theft is rampant in the US. Employers steal around $50 billion from workers through a variety of labor violations each year. It is worth remembering that Abdulkarim resorted to desperate measures only after he was denied justice by pursuing it according to the law.

“Is the revolution beginning?”

Any social media user who has come across videos of the recent warehouse fires can attest to the exuberance on display in the comments. But few of the people cheering are would-be arsonists themselves. What they’re expressing is a collective acknowledgement that the working class is suffering and nobody seemed to be saying or doing anything about it—until now. In that sense, Abdulkarim’s outburst gave vent to the feelings that were finding no other visible expression.

It’s not the first time that workplace discontent has found its complement in fantasies of “burning it all down.” Just watch the two classic workplace crashout films of 1999, Office Space and Fight Club. You’ll be reminded that the grey cubicle ennui of the 1990s now seems quaint next to the class anger of the 2020s—yet look how both movies ended.

On the same day that Chamel Abdulkarim burned down his workplace, the president of the United States threatened to permanently annihilate “a whole civilization”—a statement which can only be described as a threat of genocide.

Later in the week, a 20-year-old attempted to firebomb the $27 million San Francisco mansion of Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, before showing up to the company’s headquarters with a jug of kerosene and attempting to do the same. He had allegedly called for “Luigi-ing Tech CEOs” earlier this year.

The CEO in question replied to the attacks with a blog post asking people to “de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics” and to work toward “fewer explosions in fewer homes.” To no avail. Two days later, shots were fired at his mansion by two other young people, one 23 and the other 25. Both were arrested.

While the California warehouse and Sam Altman’s front gate were still smoldering, the Yahoo article remarks, another tech company made headlines for the largest round of layoffs in its history. Amazon—whose CEO makes over $40 million a year and plans to spend $200 billion on AI infrastructure this year—just finished laying off 30,000 workers. “Nobody set anything on fire over those layoffs,” the article comments, yet the events are linked:

These were not coordinated acts, and they did not come from one ideology. A warehouse worker allegedly burning down his workplace over wages is not the same thing as someone attacking a tech executive’s home, which is not the same thing as a corporation restructuring around AI. Different people. Different motives. Different culpability.

 

What they share is a week. And a pressure system.

But if all of this can take place in the space of one week, the author asks, “What does the next one look like?” We can answer that now.

The article was published on Saturday, April 11. By Tuesday, a New Orleans Tesla building had been struck by a Molotov cocktail, and a man was arrested for starting multiple fires in a shopping mall in the same town as Abdulkarim’s warehouse. On the same day, it was reported that an Amazon warehouse worker died during his shift in Portland, Oregon. Management told workers: “Just turn around and not look. Let’s get back to work.” By the end of the week, 20 more fires were reported at warehouses, industrial complexes, or other commercial facilities—most of them are still being investigated.

“The proletariat goes through various stages of development,” Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto:

At first the contest is carried on by individual laborers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labor, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

Abdulkarim’s actions were not a case of 21st-century Luddism. If anything, it was an individual act of despair and rage “against bourgeois conditions of production,” but without any further strategic rationale, or any hope of making a change.

The American working class is also passing through a stage of development before our eyes. It’s not an exact repeat of the first steps taken by the rising industrial workforce of the 19th century. Yet, there is a parallel. Class consciousness is emerging, not for the first time in history, but, rather, for the first time since the end of the post–World War II boom.

As with the development of a human, the early stages are confused, the first steps unstable, and the distress of the whole process can feel unbearable. But in time, the working class will find its footing, it will find its voice, and it will find the outlet for its anger that will allow it to transform the world.