Who Gets to Call Off a Boycott?

The controversy over the supposed “end” of the Target boycott

The politics around DEI have shifted a lot in the last few years, and Target is just one of the companies that’s been caught in the crossfire. While the backlash to the end of its DEI programs led to a remarkable groundswell of grassroots pushback, the boycott has uncovered some of the biggest challenges with movement-making in the modern age. Check out this piece from Natasha S. Alford, which grapples with the question of how a movement works when nobody’s “officially” in charge.

— Sharon

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When Pastor Jamal Bryant appeared to announce the end of a year-long national boycott of Target last week, it became immediately clear that much of Black America wasn’t ready to come along with him. The push for Black shoppers to boycott Target began last year, when just days after the inauguration of vocally anti-DEI President Trump, the company announced a far-reaching rollback of its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

A day later, former Ohio state senator Nina Turner posted on the instagram account for her organization, We Are Somebody, that she was calling for a national Target boycott, and she soon recruited activist Tamika Mallory to help lead. Several weeks later, Bryant, pastor of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, announced he would lead a Target “fast” — an economic withdrawal, meant to engage the faith community, that was initially meant to last 40 days (the length of Lent). Together, the three leaders became known as the “Mothership Three” who were heading up the boycott movement.

The website for Bryant’s “Target fast” laid out four goals: that Target restore DEI commitments, honor a $2 billion pledge to Black businesses, create a pipeline from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) to train up Black talent, and make a $250 million investment in Black banks. In his call to end the fast last week, Bryant said three of the four goals had been achieved (all but the bank investment), even though Target hasn’t actually made any concessions or reversals to its DEI changes.

Backlash came swiftly: critics accused him of selling out the community and not having enough to show for the collective effort, and many people wanted to know why the movement was ending now. Not even 48 hours later, Bryant responded by issuing a 20-minute-long apology-explainer on his YouTube channel.

The crux of his explanation was that he was not ending the national boycott and was instead just concluding the “fast,” which had ended up lasting more than a year — far longer than originally planned. Although he had been initially invited to join the Target boycott movement headed by Turner and Mallory, he explained, the fast was only one element.

But Turner and Mallory both said that they still wouldn’t shop at Target, so many began to wonder why Bryant was standing apart from his fellow boycott organizers. As a matter of fact, some asked, who appointed him to be a leader of the movement?

Who’s in charge?

From the very start of the Target boycott, even before Bryant got involved, there was a wide range of people involved in leading different facets of the movement. The same day Turner announced a national boycott, Minneapolis-based lawyer-activist Nikema Levy Armstrong asked what should be done about Target’s rollback, writing on Instagram, “I know that a number of you are upset or at least bothered by Target’s decision to roll back progress. But the question is, what should we do about it? Please respond with any personal action you plan to take and thoughts on what we should do collectively.” Days later, Levy Armstrong posted to her Instagram account that she’d be joining local activists Monique Cullars Doty and Jaylani Hussein in announcing a Target boycott in Minneapolis, where the company is headquartered.

Two different boycotts led by two different groups, announced within days of each other, could’ve resulted in unity or division. Unfortunately, the latter prevailed.