How to Break Up With Amazon
Tips that work and swaps that aren’t destroying the world
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Make America for Everyone Merch is still for sale, here!
To do: Stock up on Plan B and Mifepristone to help invest in a future of bodily autonomy for all women. Rebecca Traister has an excellent write up of where to buy now.
Call your reps: Last week Republicans approved the first step in passing a budget, but now they are back-tracking in a dangerous way.Democrats have said that in order to support a budget, they want a guarantee that Trump and Musk will spend funds the way Congress appropriated them (ie: stop firing the federal workforce and shuttering departments). Republican House Leader Mike Johnson is now saying that instead of doing a budget he wants to do a “CR,” a continuing resolution that just maintains the current budget until September. It’s the congressional version of an extension on their homework. If Republicans want to govern, they should govern, and Democrats should hold their ground.
SCRIPT: HI, I’m a constituent and I’m calling to demand that Congress vote on a budget and not pass a continuing resolution. Thanks! (you don’t need to say more than that, for more info on calling your reps, see here!)
Given last week’s news about Jeff Bezos announcing that opinion articles at the Washington Post now must adhere to his personal ideologies, I have been hearing from a lot of you that you are interested in breaking up with Amazon. It’s become increasingly clear that giving so much power, and even more money, to a billionaire is not how we want to spend our dollars.
Bezos declared that the Post's opinion pages will now focus exclusively on defending two core principles: personal liberties and free markets, a major departure from the previous broad-ranging approach to opinion content. He emailed the Post staff but he also posted on X:
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.
There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical , it minimizes coercion , and practical , it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity.
This is code for promoting corporate rapid growth at the expense of worker welfare and job security while trying to skirt any kind of climate regulation. It’s a textbook example of how billionaires rewrite the rules of journalism and public discourse to serve their own interests. Bezos’s version of “freedom” is one where corporations are free to exploit workers, avoid accountability, and amass unfathomable wealth while dismissing critiques that challenge the status quo. Under his vision, The Washington Post will no longer be a platform for a diverse range of perspectives but instead a megaphone for a billionaire’s ideology, one that prioritizes deregulation, corporate power, and the unfettered pursuit of profit.
This shift at the Post should concern anyone who values a truly free press. A media landscape where one of the country’s most influential newspapers openly declares its editorial bias in favor of corporate interests is a dangerous one.
More than 75,000 digital subscribers to The Washington Post have cancelled their subscriptions since the announcement. Last year more than 300,000 subscribers canceled the Post after Bezos killed the planned endorsement of Kamala Harris for President. Since then they’ve brought in 400,000 new subscriptions, “often at highly discounted rates” according to NPR.
Amazon's operations have long raised serious safety concerns, with federal regulators like OSHA directly accusing the company of prioritizing productivity over worker wellbeing. The company's emphasis on speed has reportedly led to significant workplace injuries in its warehouses. Employees face physically demanding conditions that many describe as dehumanizing, including work requirements that involve frequent kneeling and bending while attempting to meet what critics call dangerously high production quotas. These grueling working conditions have become a focal point for labor advocates, who argue that Amazon's business model inherently creates an unsafe environment as workers struggle to keep pace with the company's aggressive performance metrics, often at the expense of their physical health and safety.
Here are a few articles worth reading and podcasts worth listening to if you want to learn more about Amazon:
How Walmart and Amazon Fuel the Dupe Economy (Read here)
Ruthless Quotas at Amazon Are Maiming Employees.(Read here)
The Hate Store: Amazon’s Self-Publishing Arm Is a Haven for White Supremacists (Read here)
I’ve been working towards having less Amazon in my life and I know it isn’t easy. But there are steps we can all take, starting out small, to get to a place where we use the platform less. My goal here isn’t to shame or demand immediate purity of purpose, but rather to offer suggestions on changes you can make to move you towards a shopping lifestyle that better reflects your values.
If Amazon is the only place where you can find or afford essentials like baby formula or other necessities, there’s absolutely no shame in that. I would never want to guilt anyone for making the choices that work for them. When I share links to buy my book, I include both Amazon and Bookshop because I know accessibility matters. But this conversation isn’t about shaming, it’s about expanding our awareness. It’s about realizing that supporting Bezos by impulse-buying that fast fashion dress your favorite influencer is pushing isn’t the only option. There are other ways to shop, other businesses to support, and other places to invest our dollars that don’t funnel even more money and power into the hands of a billionaire who is actively reshaping the media to serve his own interests.
Canceling a Prime subscription is a good start. Orders still ship free at $35+ and you can still subscribe to Prime Video separately. This NYT story about quitting Prime is a great read.
Slow the impulse shopping down. Quitting Amazon impulse shopping can be really hard, especially when we are served so many links to Amazon on social media. I put things in my cart as a sort of purgatory where I wait a week to see if I still want them. Almost all the time, I no longer want to buy them. And if I do, I try to find another website to buy them from. It just injects a little bit of mindfulness into the whole process.
Figure out what you really want. When you see something you love, add the image to a note on your phone to create a portable vision board. That way when you are out in the real world in physical stores you know what you want to be looking for.
Delete the Amazon app from your phone. It's still available online if you pull up a browser, but that little speed bump makes you think twice before diving in.
Do it with friends. Get at least one friend to reduce their Amazon dependence with you so you can plan fun shopping trips around the neighborhood together to get some of the things you would have otherwise bought at Amazon. Shopping local is one of the best ways to support your community and to keep it vibrant. It isn’t always easy and it might require more time, but in the end it will likely be worth it.
Clean out your closets. We often don’t realize that we already have a lot of the things we end up buying, especially clothes, kid toys and kitchen items. Start sorting one closet or drawer at a time. Toss and donate, but also take stock of what you already have. Realizing your drawers are already full might be enough to scratch the itch.
And then here are some direct swaps for Amazon in your daily life: