The only armchair activism that counts

By Hannah Savage

Will there be a time when receiving a package from Amazon is done with all the furtive looks of an illicit drug deal? When the arrival of your pre-ordered Super Mario game has you sprinting to the front door to quickly grab the brown paper package before anyone can figure out what deal is going down?

If the recently launched campaign by the Progressive International is successful, clicking order on your local Amazon website will be akin to taking a whip to your children because they spilt their juice: you simply won’t contemplate it, let alone actually do it.

The Progressive International – a newly formed international organisation uniting and mobilising progressive individuals and organisations globally – launched its “Make Amazon Pay” campaign to coincide with this year’s Black Friday. In a video to announce the one-day boycott on Amazon’s busiest days of the year, one of the initiative’s council members, economist Yanis Varoufakis, described Amazon as “not a mere company”. “It is not merely a monopolistic mega-firm. It is far more, and far worse, than that. It is the pillar of a new techno-feudalism.”

The campaign’s launch came on the heels of a Vice investigation into how Amazon spies on social movements, especially those focused on labour and environmental rights – and especially during the period between Black Friday and Christmas. The excellent story by Vice Motherboard’s Lauren Kaori Gurley contains a reminder of an earlier piece by Sarah Jones writing in The New Republic that detailed how Amazon is using the Pinkerton agency to spy on Amazon’s own workers. Ring a bell? Over centuries the name Pinkerton has become shorthand for union busting, starting in 1850 in Chicago when the agency hired goons to break up strikes, infiltrate unions and intimidate labour union bosses.

Why is Amazon – a thoroughly 21^st century company – using a tactic – gumshoe detective spying- on both its workers and social movements? What is it about Amazon that has led them up (or down) this path? “Because Jeff Bezos is scared of us,” says The Progressive International. He is scared that “we will come to collect on the debts that Amazon owes to its workers, to our societies, and the planet”.

It is a powerful statement, but the Amazon boycott might have a chance of finding an increasing number of ordinary people willing to step up and show the company the black card on Black Friday – and beyond.

Virtually every week, sometimes daily, there are stories shared on social media about how much Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires have added to their Mount Everest sized wealth. Just a few days ago, 24/7 Wall Street pegged Bezos’s wealth during the period March to October this year at +$90.1 billion (+79.8%), making the e-commerce site’s founder and CEO the richest person alive.

Stated the report, “As of 2020’s second quarter, Amazon’s year-over-year sales increased 40%. The company noted its online grocery delivery sales tripled from the previous year.”  And there was no mystery as to what was fuelling the growth: “As people have avoided going outside amid the pandemic, many have also been choosing to do their shopping online on the world’s largest ecommerce site, Amazon.”

Admit it: few of us living in the developed world have not found ourselves clicking on our local Amazon site and hitting that purchase button during the pandemic. Most of us would have taken delivery of a package bearing Amazon’s extended swish and taped up with see-through tape advertising Amazon Prime’s movies and tv streaming. Yes: by that you can tell that I am looking at an Amazon box right now and does it matter that it was a package ordered by a friend in South Africa who is prevailing on my cousin to take it over when she flies home mid-December? The point is Amazon’s ever-presentness in suburban homes.

But as the stories about the wealth of billionaires gather steam, it becomes increasingly hard to ignore the call to Make Amazon Pay. After all, being this kind of activist is something you can do from the comfort of your own home – there is no standing in the cold on dark winter days, or glueing oneself to the road, Extinction Rebellion style. “Today, Black Friday, we boycott Amazon,” said Varoufakis in a Tweet last Friday. “For ONE DAY we don’t even visit its webpage. In solidarity with the international alliance of workers, climate & tax justice activists.” There’s no excuse now for not being an armchair activist.