During the earlier part of April – as civil rights veterans and young radicals observed the anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (April 4) – the Rev. Graylan Hagler, along with other D.C. area clergy and activists, launched a movement in solidarity with a national boycott that has decimated Target Corporation’s profits.
The national boycott, founded by three women in Minnesota, in addition to highly promoted efforts by the Rev. Jamal Bryant and the Rev. Al Sharpton, inspired a meeting between Target executives and the two clergy activists.
In the nation’s capital, for at least three weekends, Hagler has stood among those posted in front of D.C. USA Shopping Center — the site of a popular Target retailer. For hours at a time, he and other protesters, some coming from as far as Frederick, Maryland, stand in front of the shopping center, passing out information to consumers about the larger goal behind the Target boycott.
“It’s one thing to call for a boycott. It’s another thing to educate people on the ground [about] why you’re boycotting,” Hagler told The Informer.
“We’ve been speaking to the crowd,…handing out about a thousand handbills an hour,” Hagler continued. “We’re really sort of trying to remind people that our dollars have power [and] it’s not just a matter of what we can consume, but…how much we’re respected.”
In February, civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, Jaylani Hussein, and Black Lives Matter Minnesota co-founder Monique Cullors-Doty kicked off Black History Month with their Target boycott.
Bryant, former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, freedom fighter Tamika Mallory, and others later coalesced around a 40-day Lenten season fast from Target that started on Ash Wednesday and ended on Easter Sunday.
The National Newspapers Publishers Association (NNPA) also launched its public education and selective buying campaigns.
At the time of the boycott’s inception, Target counted among the first Fortune 500 companies to abandon its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives upon President Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House.
By late February, Target reported $12.4 billion in market value loss, becoming the subject of multiple lawsuits related to its policy change.
Hagler said that Target, one of the first to support equity initiatives during the 2020 uprisings, proved to be the ideal case study in how Black people could leverage their collective buying power against entities contributing to their marginalization.
“It was the first and most robust to lead the efforts after the murder of George Floyd, partly because [the murder] happened in the town [where] this company was founded,” Hagler said in reference to Target. “It also was quick to surrender in terms of its robust initiatives around DEI. And so, that’s one of the first companies, not the only one, but the first ones that we’re holding publicly accountable.”
Another Weekend for the Books, and Big Plans Ahead
On Monday, Bryant, Turner, and Mallory announced the launch of a Target boycott organizing committee that will include faith leaders, activists, and other relevant groups.
As reported by Informer senior writer Stacy Brown, Levy Armstrong declined an invite to join the organizing committee, in part citing what she described as Target’s divide-and-conquer tactics that center Sharpton and others, more so than grassroots organizers, as vanguards of the boycott.
Though not formally aligned with Bryant’s coalition, those who continue to gather in front of D.C. USA Shopping Center, located in Northwest’s Columbia Heights neighborhood, do so with the same goals in mind. On the morning of April 19, a day before the national 40-day Target fast was scheduled to end, nearly one dozen organizers posted along the shopping center entrance with pamphlets in hand, eager to urge Black and Latino shoppers to avoid shopping at Target.
Local organizer Dante O’Hara told The Informer that, while spreading his message that morning, he heard a diverse array of perspectives about the Target boycott.
“The majority of the response has been [that] folks are already boycotting or they ask for more information,” O’Hara told The Informer. “The main pushback has been folks [with] children [saying] this is their go-to for basic necessities like toilet paper.”
O’Hara told The Informer that, in response to such concerns among working-class consumers, he and other members of the coalition are working to get more Black vendors to sell products alongside the mostly Latino and immigrant vendors that set up shop on 14th Street and Irving Street in Northwest.
Those efforts, he said, have the potential to snowball into a permanent network that Black people could utilize in place of what he described as exploitative corporations.
“A few Black entrepreneurs selling products and possibly some mutual aid networks as well that might have more basic necessities,” O’Hara added. “And obviously encourage people to go to the farmer’s market and support small Black and Latino businesses, not only in the area, but throughout the city.”
This movement, O’Hara said, will happen for the foreseeable future– likely in collaboration with groups within the Black community and other communities.
“We’re trying to build up a broad coalition of Black working class and Black labor as well. Black vendors, Black Greek letter organizations, Black student organizations, and the old school mainstream civil rights organizations like the NAACP and Urban League,” he told The Informer. “It’s a broad spectrum of folks, [and] not everyone’s going to agree on everything, but I think the community in general, nationally, is, you know, trying to fight back against MAGA, Trump, and Musk in a deep way.”
Target Employees, Consumers and Outdoor Vendors Question Feasibility of National Boycott
While many Black people celebrate the boycott as a bold stand for economic justice, the effects have been complex, especially for those representing the very community the boycott was meant to empower.
During a January livestream, award-winning actress Tabitha Brown expressed concerns about how the Target boycott would affect her and other Black business owners who feature their products at locations across the country.
Facing public pressure to pull her products from Target and Walmart, Brown sought to educate her supporters about the finances and logistics required to pull products from stores.
“You have to have a place to store it, another place to sell it, which is almost impossible sometimes,” Brown said on her livestream. “Even if you sell online, it’s a process, and everyone does not have the availability or the space to house their own products.”
Brown also predicted that the significant loss of revenue by vendors, small and large, could lead to the pulling of underperforming Black brands from store shelves, which she said ultimately leads to the whitewashing of Target and Wal-mart.
“You take all our sales and they dwindle down, and then those companies get to say, ‘oh your products are not performing’ and they can remove them from the shelves,” Brown said.
On the employee side, some of those who work at Target said they’re seeing the consequences of a boycott when speaking to colleagues who work at other locations.
“They have had their hours cut due to low sales,” a Target employee said on the condition of anonymity. “Some Targets have had to lay off workers, and yes, a high number of these workers are Black.”
The employee went on to question the degree to which the boycott was helping Black people who depend on a corporate paycheck.
“Black mothers and Black families are trying to work hard to feed their kids,” the Target employee said. “We can’t say we are uplifting the Black dollar and impoverish[ing] working-class people at the same time.”
A young African American couple, with a 6-month-old baby in hand, shared similar sentiments as it relates to consumerism among working-class Black people.
“I’d love to do it because control of Black dollars uplifts our people,” the mother said as she explained their apprehension about participating in the boycott. “But I have two children and limited transportation. I honestly don’t have the money to pay online separate shipping fees and lose the savings of Target sales and specials, which would not be available by buying from each individual website.”
Years after street vendors in Columbia Heights celebrated the passage of legislation decriminalizing their economic activity and providing an affordable path to proper licensing, some of the homegrown entrepreneurs who set up shop along 14th Street near D.C. USA Shopping Center said they too are feeling the brunt of the Target boycott.
A vendor who identified herself as Miss Carol told The Informer that reduced foot traffic along 14th Street has eaten into profits that she’s accumulated while selling her wares at a table directly in front of D.C. USA Shopping Center.
“As entrepreneurs, many of us Black vendors depend on foot traffic and sales from customers shopping at Target,” said Ms. Carol, owner of My Virtue, a handbag and accessory venture. “People who don’t even plan to shop with us become return clients because of the convenience of having so many diverse vendors right outside the store.”
Although Hagler empathized with vendors and employees, he mentioned that detractors of the South African anti-apartheid divestment movement decades prior took on a similar position.
“The argument was that Black miners were working the mines [for us] to buy diamonds,” Hagler told The Informer.
That’s why, for Hagler, concerns about Black employment at racially oppressive institutions are shortsighted and without any regard for the ultimate goal.
“The reality was that [the boycott] may have done something to the economic world, but the far-reaching benefit was the issue of justice,” he continued, touting the need for collective action.
Looking at What’s Next
Hagler said he and others are exploring a long-term roadmap to Black economic self-determination.
“People are continuing to talk about putting together a directory of … those Black vendors, those Black entrepreneurs, to make sure that we have to connect to them,” Hagler said. “We can be in the stores, and that’s good, but that’s still operating on somebody else’s plantation, when we can actually all develop, guide, and secure the grounds from which we produce.”
While the Target boycott has proven successful in raising awareness about the assault against DEI and the collective power of the Black dollar, some people, like Richard B. Lewis, said that Black people need to first collaborate around internal problems that prevent long-term, operational unity.
“I am for the boycotts,” Lewis, 37, told The Informer. “However, when we focus on us as a collective internally, I think the path to widespread, sustainable change becomes more attainable. Through it all, faith in God, and working on changing the men and women in the mirror is how we continue to advance as a people.”