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#BoycottAmazon has been trending on Twitter lately. Maybe you\\u2019ve seen the headlines about Amazon\\u2019s alleged unsustainable and\\xa0unfair working conditions\\xa0or grown concerned about the massive\\xa0wealth chasm\\xa0between the company\\u2019s founder and its 1.3 million employees.\\xa0

Perhaps you\\u2019ve witnessed several mom and pop-owned businesses close their doors during the pandemic, while Amazon\\xa0earned billions. You may be embarrassed about the amount of money you spend at the retail behemoth. Or maybe you just want to better\\xa0support minority-owned businesses.

Whatever the reason, you may be compelled to quit Amazon for good.\\xa0Today\\u2019s episode interviews one New York City journalist and mom who\\u2019s given up her Amazon spending as best she can.

Julie Scelfo officially kicked her Amazon habit in 2019 for \\u201ca combination of reasons,\\u201d she told me. Between the excessive packaging that made recycling a \\u201cpart-time job,\\u201d the financial toll on mom-and-pop stores, and the overtime delivery teams suffered around the holidays to get Amazon packages to doorsteps, Scelfo had witnessed enough. The site was once her go-to for everything from laundry detergent to books, baby gifts, and kid clothes, but she banned it altogether.

As an activist, this isn\\u2019t Scelfo\\u2019s first retail boycott. Several years ago, she gave up the Gap when she saw the clothing store monopolizing city street corners and edging out smaller shops. \\u201cI\\u2019ve always tried to spend my dollars in line with my values.\\u201d But, she admits, \\u201cit\\u2019s not so easy.\\u201d

Listen to find out more about Julie\\u2019s reasons for banning Amazon, how she\\u2019s finding alternative vendors and how others can follow in her footsteps.

More about Julie: She is a journalist, author and justice advocate who helps people discover the forces that help shape human thinking.

Recently, she gave a TED Talk about how humans make meaning and why being \\u201cmedia savvy\\u201d \\u2014 having an understanding how media works \\u2014 is essential for parsing today\\u2019s cluttered information environment.

Previously, Scelfo was a staff writer for\\xa0The New York Times, where she wrote stories about how we live in contemporary American society that frequently ended up on the\\xa0Times\\u2019s most-emailed list. Before joining the\\xa0Times\\xa0in 2007, Scelfo was a Correspondent at\\xa0Newsweek\\xa0where she covered breaking news, including the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

Scelfo is most popularly known as the author of\\xa0The Women Who Made New York\\xa0(Seal Press/Hachette, 2016), a collection of intersectional biographies that reveal how it was women \\u2014 and not just men \\u2014 who built one of the world\\u2019s greatest cities. Irin Carmon described the book as \\u201cboth a public service and a pleasure;\\u201d Maria\\xa0Popova\\xa0of Brain Pickings deemed it \\u201crigorously researched and elegantly written.\\u201d

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