Megachurch Pastor Jamal Bryant and a reported 110,000 people kicked off a campaign Wednesday to boycott retail giant Target for 40 days over their decision to scale back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The boycott begins as the company announced this week that they expect a “meaningful” drop in their first quarter profits due to “ongoing consumer uncertainty,” soft sales in February and concerns about tariffs, CNBC reported. Across the retail industry, sales were down more than expected to start 2025.
“I want to pause and publicly thank you. We are up to 110,000 people in our Target fast,” Bryant told congregants at his New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, Wednesday. “I ask that you’ll hold course. We are not going back to Target no time soon.”
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The fast and boycott is expected to last through April 17. During the Wednesday gathering, an official at the church stated that participants in the fast will spend 16 hours each day consuming only water or juice. From 12 noon to 8 p.m. each day, they will be allowed to have a meal that is light and healthy.
Target’s finance chief, Jim Lee, said in a statement cited by CNBC that February sales were “soft” and “declining consumer confidence” hurt discretionary sales. He further noted that “uncharacteristically cold weather,” affected apparel sales.
“We expect to see a moderation in this trend as apparel sales respond to warmer weather around the country, and consumers turn to Target for upcoming seasonal moments such as the Easter holiday,” Lee said. “We will continue to monitor these trends and will remain appropriately cautious with our expectations for the year ahead.”
Bryant, who has also been encouraging black businesses not to work with Target, noted that some 100 black vendors had pulled their products from Target shelves.
He previously expressed disappointment over what he saw as Target’s abandonment of the company’s commitment to help advance racial equality, calling it a “spit in the face of black people.”
This includes a commitment by the company to spend more than $2 billion at black-owned businesses by 2025.
“McDonald’s, we can drive right through there. Facebook, we could log right off. I’m telling you that Ford, we can switch it over for a Chevy, but Target, how dare you insult and spit in the face of black people,” Bryant said last month, before announcing his plan to boycott the company, which he framed as spiritual warfare.
The Georgia pastor accused Target of capitulating, along with other large corporations such as Walmart, to the White House’s push to end DEI policies that he says “undermine our national unity,” among other things.
Several corporations have reevaluated their DEI policies in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling that the University of North Carolina and Harvard University’s admissions policies that use race as a factor were unconstitutional.
Among the demands are that Target: “1. Honor the 2 billion dollar pledge to the black business community through products, services, and black media buys; 2. Deposit 250 million amongst any of our 23 black banks; 3. Completely restoring the franchise commitment to DEI; 4. Pipeline community centers at 10 HBCU to teach retail business at every level.”
Organizers of the boycott said they plan to assess the impact of the boycott and seek a meeting with Target’s board before deciding on taking further action ahead of the company’s shareholders’ meeting on June 12 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
One of Target’s largest competitors in the brick-and-mortar retail space, Walmart, is also rolling back its DEI policies. As CNBC notes, the first three months of the year tend to be slow for retailers as it falls directly after the holiday shopping season.
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