More than a year into a nationwide boycott that decimated Target’s revenue, members of the “Mothership Three” made an announcement that has raised questions about the status of a movement to hold Target accountable for its capitulation to the Trump administration.
Though the Rev. Jamal Bryant has ended his “Target Fast,” his fellow Mothership members Tamika D. Mallory and former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner are still locked in with those who’ve sworn off the red bull’s-eye. D.C.-based boycott organizers, who’ve paused their weekly pickets for the time being, are also planning a pivot that places them more in solidarity with the Black and brown entrepreneurs posted outside DC USA, the location of the District’s largest Target retailer.
“What we want to do is create space for those vendors to be able to have all that they need, and we will be redirecting people to them,” said the Rev. Patricia Hailes Fears, lead pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Northwest. “The vendors are ready to receive us. It’s been a year, and when we started out, it wasn’t so friendly, but they’ve gotten us together.”
Last year, on the April 4 anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the local Target boycott coalition launched their movement under the direction of the late Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler. Each Saturday, Hagler, Fears, the Rev. Lewis T. Tait Jr., Dante O’Hara, and several others picketed in front of DC USA in Columbia Heights. That’s where the collective educated passersby and consumers about their cause.
Over time, they also established relationships with local vendors, who, amid great efforts to overcome government-imposed hurdles, sold their wares along portions of 14th Street NW and Irving Street NW. As Fears recounted, the vendors soon aligned their business with the efforts of the D.C. Target boycott coalition.
“We treat them like they are the big box,” Fears told The Informer. “When we were out there on Saturdays, even the vendors changed because they knew what we were doing. They started changing from the souvenir stuff to toothpaste, soap stuff because they knew that we were directing money to them.”
The Press Conference That’s Still Raising Questions
On the afternoon of March 11, Fears counted among more than a dozen organizers who attended a press conference that the “Mothership Three” organized at the National Press Club in Northwest.
By that time, Target had lost at least $12 billion in valuation and reported three quarters of profit loss. Corporate leadership has yet to publicly apologize for its rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, despite acknowledging wrongdoing in a private meeting with employees.
As recently as last month, the “Mothership Three” had asked leadership to issue a clear-cut statement on the matter — all to no avail.
“As a billion-dollar company, you cannot harm people in public and then apologize in private,” said Mallory, co-founder of the intersectional social justice organization known as Until Freedom. “If the harm was public, then the acknowledgement must be public as well. It must be clear and it must be heard by all of those impacted.”
As Bryant would later explain, Target followed through on the three other demands. He noted that the corporation would’ve doled out $2 billion via partnerships with Black-owned brands, Black-owned media and Black-owned suppliers by Easter. Other developments included another $100 million from Target that would go to grants and scholarships to Black-led community organizations.
Pencil Lewis College of Design, a Detroit-based historically Black institution of higher learning, has received another $10 million. Target, according to Bryant, has also pledged $18 million to UNCF, and $8 million toward a Target Scholars program through which business students at a historically Black college or university (HBCU) learn how to navigate the corporate workspace.
“Nelson Mandela, in his autobiography, ‘The Long Walk to Freedom,’ said that the long walk to freedom begins with the first step,” Bryant said. “And I believe, ladies and gentlemen, history will record this was the first step to the new civil rights movement. And so I am grateful for those who walked alongside us, those who partnered with us, and I am thankful that we can claim in this hour that victory is ours.”
In the absence of a newly revitalized DEI program, Target has launched the Belonging Program, aimed at attracting women and other marginalized populations into entry-level roles with the potential for promotions.
On March 11, Bryant noted that Target’s board has at least 13% nonwhite board membership, and took the steps, in partnership with Atlanta’s Citizen Trust Bank, to seek out Black-owned banks for a collaboration aimed at expanding Black home ownership and Black business capacity.
“We are prayerful that Target will be able to align itself with a Black bank….It is so necessary that our banks have equal and strong footing because home ownership is the entry point for generational wealth. And we’ve got to move our people from a renting mindset to an owning mindset,” Bryant said. “We cannot talk about Black businesses without talking about Black entrepreneurship. An overwhelming majority of our Black businesses only have one employee, which is the owner, and they are not able to go to scale because they don’t have access to capital.”
The Power of Collaboration
Last year, 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. Soon after Mallory and Turner collaborated on a national boycott, aligning their efforts with Bryant’s Target Fast.
During their Wednesday afternoon press conference, Mallory basked in what she called a victory of everyone’s making.
“People changed where they spent their money. Small businesses and families made difficult decisions. I think about the authors who asked people not to purchase their books from Target,” Mallory said. “I think about those vendors who redirected sales to their own websites, and also some of them showed up at community events to sell their products directly to consumers. It’s not easy to do that when you’ve already worked so hard to become a vendor in a place like Target. And they should be celebrated.”
Despite what Turner described as Target’s attempt to divide and conquer, she said that the “Mothership Three” found great success. On March 11, she shouted out veteran labor leader Delores Huerta and the Latino Freeze Movement, both of whom expressed solidarity throughout the course of a national movement that surpassed the Montgomery Bus Boycott in longevity.
Turner later reflected on the power of collaboration that started after unsuccessful attempts, shortly after the start of the second Trump presidency, to convince Target to continue its DEI initiatives.
“It’s not just the Mothership 3, but to see the incredible outpouring of love and support of tens of thousands into millions of people,” she told The Informer. “Because it takes many, many people to impact stock shares, foot traffic in stores. That’s the human element of really, you know, how all of this started.”
No memorandum of understanding between the “Mothership Three” and Target has been signed. Bryant did mention, however, that they confirmed Target’s assertions.
“I’ll put it in hood terms,” Bryant told The Informer. “We had to check the receipts. We checked the receipts on all of the 97% of the $2 billion that was given. We called the HBCUs to verify those partnerships. We didn’t take people’s word for it at all, but we verified everything before we came to this room.”
The Movement Continues in the District
Last week, as national Target boycott leadership inched closer to their goals, D.C. Target boycott organizers met with Isaac Reyes and Rae Robinson, Target’s vice president of government affairs and external partner, respectively.
During that exchange, coalition members demanded investment into Industrial Bank, along with Howard University, University of the District of Columbia, and University of the District of Columbia Community College. As Fears recounted, they negotiated for terms that are specific, not only to local conditions, but to their need for self-determination.
“We didn’t want to have warehouse jobs,” Fears said. “We wanted to find out how we could really learn how to do business, how you could go over to University of the District of Columbia Community College and their workforce innovation and invest in that. Let’s work alongside it, and don’t just give it to the college. Give it to the coalition so we can divert the money into the community.”
Fears said that the late Hagler would’ve wanted it that way, in a manner true to the spirit of their movement.
“Those are the things that I know would be Rev. Hagler’s mission,” she added. “How could we take this and turn it into something impactful economically for the community here in Washington? Washington becomes a nice hashtag, but it doesn’t become something that really penetrates and really makes a difference in the community.”