In response to the ability and politics of considered one of our new techno-Caesars, the Heart on Religion & Justice at Georgetown College lately launched a brand new marketing campaign encouraging individuals to pledge to not store on Amazon throughout this Introduction season. The “No Amazon for Introduction” effort can be backed by quite a few different teams, together with Trustworthy America, Pink Letter Christians, and state councils of church buildings in California, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Wisconsin. A Public Witness can be one of many official marketing campaign companions.
“Many people already take concern with giant companies like Amazon for his or her exploitation of employees, environmental harms, and the damaging results they’ve on small companies,” the No Amazon for Introduction web site explains. “The shut relationship between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos is indicative of an alarming pattern of the ultra-wealthy having access to political energy on the highest ranges, solidified via exchanges like Amazon’s $1 million donation to Trump’s 2025 inauguration. Amazon has stood complicit within the present administration’s assault on democratic norms and human dignity by persevering with to revenue from authorities contracts and surveillance applied sciences that allow these injustices. Amazon earns hundreds of thousands annually by offering cloud computing companies to ICE — companies that ICE depends on to conduct its operations. Amazon represents an ethical disaster in company America.”
“As an alternative of enriching the world’s wealthiest, we select to strengthen the locations and those who make our communities complete. We select native companies struggling to outlive, nonprofits caring for the weak, and neighbors in want of compassion,” the positioning provides. “We select to go down recollections to our new generations via the gifting of heirlooms and different objects that maintain particular significance to us and our households. We observe being intentional by spending much less on issues and extra on goal.”
Grounding the enchantment within the lengthy custom of boycotts, the No Amazon for Introduction initiative emphasizes that such strikes “permit abnormal individuals to problem unjust methods by redirecting their financial energy towards justice and neighborhood. Even when this boycott doesn’t have an effect on Amazon’s income, it nonetheless issues. Taking motion — nevertheless small — helps us break habits of complicity and reminds us that democracy is determined by hundreds of thousands of small, ethical decisions made on daily basis.”
Along with urging individuals to withstand the over-commercialization of Christmas and to cut back and even keep away from purchasing at Amazon, the hassle features a name to Amazon “to face up for democracy and human rights, deal with employees with dignity, and align its huge affect with equity and accountability.”
Jim Wallis, the director of the Heart on Religion & Justice at Georgetown College, defined the hassle is de facto about working “to strengthen our communities.”
