As 2019 comes to a close I’ll leave you with two caricatures by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones. The first depicts, I think, William Morris after a night of partying.

The second one is a self-portrait. There’s a nice anecdote about Burne-Jones,

….his pet grandson used to be punished by being sent to stand in a corner with his face to the wall. One day on being sent there he was delighted to find the wall prettily decorated with fairies, flowers, birds, and bunnies. His indulgent grandfather had utilised his talent to alleviate the tedium of his favourite’s period of penance.

Thanks to the Pre-Raphaelite Society for these images.

I’ve long made it a policy of this blog to avoid political discussions, believing that we needed to unify folks under a big tent of growing food, keeping livestock and learning to cook from scratch. But in recent years, all around the world, we have collectively slipped into a dangerous crisis I can not longer be silent about.

The neoliberal order has crumbled. Populist, authoritarian leaders such as Trump, Bolsonaro and Johnson have ascended to power. Here in the U.S., nearly everyone I know, including myself, can’t seem to turn our attention away from Trump’s siren call of attention getting antics and late night twitter screeds. Concurrently, interest in urban homesteading has waned. It’s almost as if you have to lash yourself to the mast not to wake up with Trump so much on your mind that you forget to let out the hens.

Over the Christmas break we joined 15,000 of our fellow Angelinos at a Bernie Sander’s rally at Venice Beach. It was a beautiful, cool and sunny winter day. We stood with the ocean at our back and a magnificent view of the mountains that surround our city. After a few warm-up speakers and music, surprise guest Dr. Cornell West ascended the stage. Quoting Sly and the Family Stone West said that it was time to take a stand, “You’ve been sitting much too long/There’s a permanent crease in your right and wrong.” Invoking a long list of brave Americans who took a stand, including Martin Luther King and Dorothy Day he noted that “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Then he introduced Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and, as the crowd went wild, I felt an energy and solidarity that I never thought I’d live to see.

As a long time attendee of lost-cause leftist events I’m used to a scattered message, marginal ideas, anger and disappointment. Not at this rally. Everyone was unified behind Dr. West’s message of a “love supreme.” There were people of all races and ages at the rally (though it skewed young). The rally looked like a cross-section of this diverse city. People were happy and positive. Ocasio-Cortez said “One of the things that makes this campaign different is that we know we can’t go back to the way things were before. Because the way things were before is how we got to where we are now.”

The rally, without exaggeration, was a life changing event for me. This is why I’m joining with our friend, climate scientist Peter Kalmus, in endorsing Bernie Sanders. I respectfully ask all of you who live in the U.S. to consider his policies and to vote for Bernie Sanders in your state. I believe that we all need to act on the household level and the community level and the national level and the global level. Yes we need to take personal actions, but those personal actions alone won’t get us out of the crisis we are in. Especially when it comes to climate change we need, radical, immediate action at the national and international level. The time for moderate, measured change has long since past. Electing Bernie Sanders is not an end but a beginning. If he gets into office the struggle will be even more difficult than taking on a few corrupt, corporate Democrats.

Be wary of the mainstream media’s treatment of Sanders. The Los Angeles Times did not even bother to show up to the Sanders rally. When Joe Biden came and spoke to less than 100 people at LA Trade Tech back in November the LA Times deemed it worthy of attention.

I struggled to find any wide shots of the Biden LA rally but couldn’t find any. It’s an exercise in how photographs lie. Frame a candidate tightly and it looks like there’s a lot of people. For contrast, here’s what the Sanders rally looked like from where Kelly and I stood:

In the coming months, as the oligarchs who run this country begin to freak out at the rise of a popular left, I predict that the mainstream media will throw everything they can at Sanders. They will call him an anti-Semite, a misogynist and worse. The Democratic party establishment and their friends in the media will do everything they can to prevent Sanders from winning. I’ve seen, at the local level, how this same establishment does the bidding of powerful interests–here in LA that’s Hollywood and real estate developers.

I’m also sticking my neck out because I’ve seen some in the urban homesteading movement drift towards what I’d call a fascist and/or alt-right adjacent ideology and I want to distance myself from that contingent. More on that in another post. I believe that the way we treat the environment, our bodies and our households is on a continuum with the way we take care of all people. Everyone has a right to health care, housing and education. For the sake of future generations we need to join with Dr. West, AOC and Bernie Sanders in seeking immediate and radical change based on love for each other and for all creation.

Many thanks to the Root Simple readers who left comments on my post about my ambivalence on selling things through Amazon on this blog. One reader suggested IndieBound’s affiliate program and I just signed up for an account. Another reader noted Amazon’s convenience for folks who live in rural places, something that reminded me of how out of touch I am with life outside of big cities.

The Atlantic has a long profile of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos written by Franklin Foer that’s well worth reading. It has a number of Bezos factoids that caress all the keys of my trigger piano all at once. If you’d like to get me a-ranting just mention your idea that our future is in orbiting space colonies and that you pal around with Holllywood industry critters. Then there’s this:

At the heart of Amazon’s growing relationship with government is a choking irony. Last year, Amazon didn’t pay a cent of federal tax. The company has mastered the art of avoidance, by exploiting foreign tax havens and moonwalking through the seemingly infinite loopholes that accountants dream up. Amazon may not contribute to the national coffers, but public funds pour into its own bank accounts. Amazon has grown enormous, in part, by shirking tax responsibility. The government rewards this failure with massive contracts, which will make the company even bigger.

But, as the article points out, all of us Amazon Prime members pay a sort of tax every year. It turns out that tax may not make sense from a home economics standpoint:

When Amazon first created Prime, in 2005, Bezos insisted that the price be set high enough that the program felt like a genuine commitment. Consumers would then set out to redeem this sizable outlay by faithfully consuming through Amazon. One hundred million Prime subscribers later, this turned out to be a masterstroke of behavioral economics. Prime members in the U.S. spend $1,400 a year on Amazon purchases, compared with $600 by nonmembers, according to a survey by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. It found that 93 percent of Prime customers keep their subscription after the first year; 98 percent keep it after the second. Through Prime, Bezos provided himself a deep pool of cash: When subscriptions auto-renew each year, the company instantly has billions in its pockets. Bezos has turned his site into an almost unthinking habit. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Jack Ryan are essential tools for patterning your existence.

In addition to my problems with all the affiliate links embedded on the 3,345 posts on this blog I’m also left to ponder an alternative to our Ring doorbell that I bought before the company was owned by Amazon. I don’t like that Jeff is watching my front porch and turning over the data to the Man. I miss what the Bezos doorbell gadget replaced.

News of Amazon’s atrocious labor practices, creepy surveillance deals, and Jeff Bezos’s idiotic techno-utopian space fantasies means that I can no longer use their affiliate program on this blog. For the time being I’ve stopped adding new links to Amazon products.

For years Amazon provided an ever decreasing affiliate income that, partly, pays the hosting bills for this blog and podcast. I’ve written about my ambivalence about Amazon before back in 2015 and many of you said, at the time, that you didn’t mind. I suspect, in the years since, many of you may have changed your mind about this company. I know I have.

Practically speaking, there is so much dubious, bootlegged content on Amazon’s website that I don’t trust it for purchases anymore. If I need something I will try to buy it directly from a company or a specialty retailer. Most of my books come from the library. When I do buy a book I should probably order it through my local bookstore Skylight (which has always been very generous to Kelly and I as authors–placing our books prominently and hosting a book launch event for us).

Right now I’m left with a problem. I’ve got hundreds of Amazon links embedded on this site and need to ponder what I’m going to do about that. When Amazon dumped California-based affiliates a few years ago rather than pay their taxes I switched to Portland-based Powell’s partner program but nobody used it. I’ve also got a Patreon program and, while thankful for those of you who chip in, I think I’d rather sell a physical object (like a zine) rather than beg for donations.

So I’ve got a lot to think about and I’m interested in your feedback. Do you use Amazon? What do you use it for? Do you mind affiliate links?