ABANDON CART

I know he doesn’t work there anymore, but Jeff Bezos still profits from our Amazon addiction. This rankles me, because that fucker manufactured our addiction in the first place.

When Amazon was new, it was nice to be able to have books and CDs delivered to my house. In my early 20s, as a young single mom who was working full time while also going to college full time, I didn’t have time for things like going to the mall to browse Waldenbooks and Sam Goody. I’m not sure how I had time to read piles of books, but I guess that’s where being single came in handy!

Over the years Amazon expanded its offerings and it became easy to finish holiday shopping without leaving the house, which was ideal because I hate both winter and shopping. When I moved house last year I was in the middle of a trial and didn’t have time to buy the things I needed to set up a new household, so I relied heavily on Amazon for everything from storage bowls to water pitchers to dishes. I even ordered a bed on Amazon which turned out to be a very expensive mistake.

Now, the habit of ordering things I need (or want) from Amazon the second the idea bounces into my brain is so ingrained that when I see myself getting low on ramen I hop on Amazon and order a case. Almost out of glue sticks? Amazon. Oh no! I forgot to pick up a swimsuit and goggles and kiddo starts swim class this week. Amazon to the rescue! 🥳 It’s gotten so normal to just click add to cart and have things show up the next day that I stopped needing to plan for anything. Amazon was there to meet my every need for the low low price of $139 a year. Amazon became my poorly paid personal shopper.

There are people who have never known a life without at least a weekly Amazon delivery.

So anyway, I ripped the band-aid off this morning and will no longer be using anything to do with Amazon. My life will be harder at first. I’ll have to remember to plan ahead or do without until I can get to a store. I’ll have to hunt some things down or substitute if I can’t find that specific thing. I’ll probably save a shitton of money, because a) I’m lazy and won’t run out to the store for just one thing and b) I’ll likely find that my life is just fine without whatever that thing was I desperately needed to order immediately by the time I actually get around to going to the store for it.

There’s not a whole lot we can do to change the political predicament we now find ourselves in. The people are in office doing the terrible things they promised to do and all we can do is watch in horror and hope we get ourselves to a better place during this year’s state elections and midterms in a couple of years.

We can, however, make an annoyance out of ourselves. If we stop shopping at Amazon, specifically, but also all of the other stores abandoning their DEI initiatives (Amazon is one of them), they’ll be less profitable but ONLY if enough people do it. Little old me doing this by myself isn’t going to make a dent. I’m ok with being the cheese standing alone, but it would be nice to have some company!

You cannot reject this toxic technocratic political regime while continuing to fill its coffers. We don’t have a choice in much of it. But where we choose to spend our own money? That’s an easy one.

The hardship of having to remember how to plan ahead is nothing compared to the hardship that will result from doing the same thing over and over again – only doing the easy things – and expecting different results. If we can’t, as a unified action, manage not buying things from bad places while things are fairly easy, we have no hope of organizing actions like national strikes when the going really gets tough. By then it will be too late.

This is the high cost of low prices and convenience we’ve been warned about for years. Those chickens are coming home to roost, sick and with barren wombs.

Your actions are your values. Not what you say. Not what you post on social media. Not what’s on the sign you hold when you march. Your values are not the lies you tell yourself about who you are so you can sleep at night pretending you’re one of the good ones. Your values are what you do when nobody is looking.

We have already seen our small towns and local shops decimated by retail behemoths. The businesses we’ve lost aren’t coming back. It will become prohibitively expensive for new small businesses to organize. If you want options other than continuing to enrich people who are demonstrating day after day that they don’t deserve your business, now is the time to make a change. Yesterday was the time to make that change. Our lives are about to get very, very expensive. Those of us who are able to pay a little more and take on some inconvenience to support local businesses MUST. If we don’t, the only options we’ll be left with are the ones that harm us all.