The Target boycott didn’t need drama, but that’s what it got last week
The Target boycott, a successful ongoing action initiated shortly after President Trump's inauguration, has been subject to drama and infighting lately, writes Jenice Armstrong.
Black women have largely fueled the Target boycott, and it’s making an impact. We need to stay the course. The last thing that the movement needs right now is drama and infighting. But unfortunately, that’s what we’ve seen recently.
We’re talking dueling podcasts, back-to-back news conferences, a public apology from a prominent leader of one faction, and multiple interviews by independent journalist Roland Martin on his daily broadcast.
To try to make sense of it all, I reached out to one of the original organizers of the boycott, Nekima Levy Armstrong, who told me on Tuesday: “The National Target Boycott is indefinite. It is still on.”
She added that, not only is the boycott continuing but, “We’re asking people to double down.”
Armstrong, no relation, was among the first to announce plans to boycott Target after the giant retailer dropped its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump. Trump signed executive orders targeting DEI programs in the public and private sectors shortly after moving back into the Oval Office.
Armstrong — along with Monique Cullars-Doty of Black Lives Matter Minnesota and Jaylani Hussein of CAIR Minnesota — responded by holding a news conference outside Target’s corporate headquarters in Minneapolis on Jan. 30, 2025, and proclaiming the start of a National Target Boycott that would kick off on the first day of Black History Month 2025.
Meanwhile, high-profile national leaders such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jamal Bryant, and former Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner were doing their own strategizing about ways to get back at Target, which also contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Turner posted a flier on social media, calling for a Target boycott. Sharpton met with Brian Cornell, at that time the CEO of Target. Bryant, an Atlanta-based megachurch minister, created what he called the Target Fast, a 40-day effort to seek four concessions dealing with diversity. He timed it to coincide with Lent and end on Easter Sunday 2025. After the 40 days passed, Bryant kept it going.
But mass confusion broke out last week after he announced at a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., that the Target Fast had ended.
Many in the media and elsewhere assumed that that meant that the national Target boycott was over, as well. Social media personalities and influencers erupted with outrage, saying that Bryant didn’t speak for them and that he lacked the authority to end the boycott.
Bryant went on his Let’s Be Clear podcast to apologize and explain. “A year ago, the Target boycott started in two different places,” he said. “One in Cleveland, the other in Minneapolis, Minnesota, distinctively by two significantly strong sisters, attorney Nekima [Levy Armstrong] and former Representative Nina Turner. I watched it play out in real time, and it dawned on me that the Black church was not a part of the equation or the conversation or dealing with civic engagement. I pulled from their genius, their prowess the Target Fast to walk alongside them.”
Bryant insisted that he had not tried to hijack the movement that Armstrong and other activists started. Instead, he wanted to galvanize Black churches and get them involved with the boycott. Bryant insisted that he “had not been compensated by Target” and was sorry for “being out of touch with what the community wanted.”
It’s disappointing that things have come to this. For movements to be successful, organizers and consumers really need to band together — not compete for air time and point fingers. Bryant should have worked with Armstrong and the other grassroots organizers in Minnesota instead of creating a whole other entity with similar goals. All that did was confuse folks.
“This is what happens when you downplay and ignore the leadership of Black women,” Armstrong said. “This is what has happened historically with the Black women who led the Civil Rights Movement. We don’t know most of their names or faces or contributions to the movement, and it’s because of this systematic erasure of Black women’s leadership, labor, and stories.”
On his podcast, Bryant denied her assertion saying, he is surrounded by brilliant, beautiful African American women and would never “try to co-opt what it is that Black women are building.”
He referenced Armstrong, Turner, and activist Tamika Mallory by name and added, “I don’t want history to record that I tried to stand in the way of the leadership of warrior women.”
As for me, I haven’t set foot inside a Target store in more than a year. And given Armstrong’s words about the boycott not only continuing but doubling down, I’m not sure if I’ll ever shop there again.