November 27th
Dear friends,
I hope you enjoyed your holiday and the particular joy of not doing mountains of dishes. Above all, I hope you got to connect with loved ones. In addition to seeing friends in the park, we cleaned out our freezer, which would have been even more fun if we had found chocolate chip cookies, but was fun anyway because we did it together.
While walking in the park, I was cheered by the thought that perhaps all future Interior Department meetings would open with a land acknowledgment of the peoples on whose ancestral homelands they gather. I am writing from Lenape land and thinking about how single day that honors people is a poor substitute for respecting their values and humanity, just as one day for gratitude is inadequate.
When I got home, I found an email from the good folks at the Maple Street Community Garden (bold type is theirs):
Now, when our city needs composting the most, three of the largest community compost processing sites are in jeopardy. This is due to the NYC Parks Department refusal to renew its license agreements with the NYC Compost Project. We write to you today because Big Reuse’s Queensbridge site will be evicted on December 31st, 2020. Presently, there are no public plans for this space unless there is another publicly beneficial use of the space, there is no legitimate reason to stop our operations.
Let’s join the effort to save the Queensbridge site. Please contact Mayor De Blasio and Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver; here are ready-made letters! This is a two-minute action that will support community efforts to compost and honor the values of the people on whose land we live.
Composting is one way to keep from overwhelming the earth and ourselves with garbage; another is to reduce our insane habits of consumption. Typically, we enjoy celebrating Buy Nothing Day on the Friday after Thanksgiving, another holiday we should celebrate more than once a year. (We could quit shopping for a month now that we know what’s in our freezer.) Please boycott Amazon today (and everyday), not just because limiting consumption is responsible and relieves clutter, but because there’s an organized effort by unions, environmental activists, and advocates for privacy and for tax justice to send Amazon a message:
The economist Yanis Varoufakis has called for a one-day boycott of Amazon on Black Friday.
“By boycotting Amazon you will be adding your strength to an international coalition of workers and activists,” he said. “Amazon is 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.”
Under a banner of “make Amazon pay”, Friday’s actions are intended as the start of a campaign against the retailer’s record on workers’ rights, environmental impact, tax avoidance, work with police and immigration authorities, and what activists say are invasions of privacy via its growing range of internet-connected devices.
There are so many good reasons to reject ‘techno-feudalism’. Here’s one more: We mail-ordered a new scrabble set for Lena’s birthday, which was in late October. Since we ordered from not-Amazon, we could not get the same delivery-date guarantee that one gets from a monopolistic mega-firm. In fact, the package seemed to be lost. But then, earlier this week, it arrived:
After some study of the box and consultation with Lena’s partner, we got a *clearer* explanation: It is a “classic Tatooine skiff” (assembly required) which hovers over the Sarlac pit at the behest of Jabba the Hut. I hope that clears things up for you, because it’s all the explanation we got. Even after seeing it fully assembled yesterday, I still don’t know what it is. This sort of serendipity is not, to my knowledge, a feature of the ‘fulfillment centers’.
Needless to say, it was the most fulfilling shop in a while, providing suspense, humor, and enduring mystery. Wishing you all the joys of the season. Please boycott Amazon.
with love,
L