Had no idea a boycott was happening.
It couldn’t come at a worse time for the company
Neither could their capitulation to Trumps bigoted rhetoric.
I got a lot of flak and eye rolls from my liberal friends a few years ago when I, as a queer woman, would criticize their Rainbow Capitalism. But Target is not an ally, they never were. They are simply a corporation that got some easy publicity in liberal spaces by showing the bare minimum decency.
Fair weather allies, aren’t.
Target is under more pressure than companies like Walmart, John Deere or Tractor Supply, because Target went further in its DEI efforts, and it has a more progressive base of customers than those competitors.
This is wild move for a company on its arse anyway.
Just to build on this. No publicly traded company is an ally to any group but its shareholders.
That’s why it’s our responsibility as consumers to align their shareholder interests to doing the right fucking thing. Boycotts and other consumer action are part of their calculations on what the shareholder interests are, so a large population of informed consumers who vote their conscience with their wallet will provide pressure to do the right thing.
So we must become the shareholders?
boycotts dont work, guys. keep trying, though! maybe try something a bit more proactive?
just an idea, maybe you could try recording a video of minecraft gameplay where a 1:1 scale recreation of the white house is destroyed in a fire?
edit: please read my other comment replies before replying, thanks!
Or maybe you could try having someone proofread your post ideas
do you genuinely think that i’m wrong? do you truly believe in your heart that a 40 day boycott of a single big box store will help people?
we’re literally watching the united states become a fascist dictatorship and you believe that this is an appropriate response?
people are suffering and dying because of us, and we’re congratulating ourselves for buying stuff on amazon instead of target for 40 days? seriously?
i don’t need a proofreader. i need people to wake up and actually do something, not waste everyone’s time and energy with performative bullshit that achieves nothing other than making us feel like we’re not doing nothing.
Why don’t you wake up and do something then if you feel so impassioned? Instead, I see you’re wasting your time complaining on an obscure reddit alternative.
i’m a union officer and rep, and i’m engaged with activism efforts in my area. sometimes i get bored at work and comment on lemmy.
it was easier for you to lash out at me than it was for you to actually seriously engage with what i wrote - that kind of reaction serves the ruling class, and sows division between the working class.
You’re a union rep discouraging boycott protests? Then you’re a bad union rep.
i’m encouraging people to find an alternative to this boycott, because it will not be effective, and it will take away energy and oxygen from other forms of activism which are much more effective. boycotts and petitions almost universally achieve nothing, and they discourage people from getting involved with real activism.
Are you saying that boycotts are necessarily performative, or just in certain cases?
i wouldn’t say they’re always performative, because there’s always nuance. but i would say that they’re probably #2 on my list of pointless bullshit that almost never actually achieves anything, right after petitions.
Slashing the profits of a $60bil company doesn’t do anything.
Lol, Lmao
yes, it does literally nothing. even if nobody shopped at target ever again it would change absolutely nothing. they’d go into administration, get bought by some other corporation, and possibly rebrand. wealthy people would likely profit from short selling the stock.
target isn’t the problem. the problem is the system. you can’t change the system by boycotting some random business. i am begging you to do literally any other form of activism. because this aint it.
luigi, now there’s a guy with bolder ideas.
But then why is Canada’s whole absolute boycott of everything American gaining traction around the world? Could it be that… when we ALL participate, it actually starts to make them worry?
…nah, couldn’t be.
Honestly I used to think like you did, but this time I think if we apply this boycott as a broad stroke to capitalism in general and ONLY shop small or legitimately supportive companies, then it’ll STACK with the other actions people take. One thing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and while it may seem small on its own, it adds up.
firstly, thank you so much for the thoughtful message. reading insightful comments like yours, where it’s clear that you’re genuinely trying your best to make the world a better place, and you actually think about what i wrote, makes all of the hate i get totally worthwhile.
in my opinion, it’s more the unity of the working class, that’s what scares them - when we work together, and when we’re organized.
that’s the biggest flaw with petitions and boycotts, they are all focused on individual action. You don’t get together and organize a picket line, you don’t get to meet like-minded people, you don’t learn about how capitalism affects anyone other than yourself.
i’ve been involved in activism efforts for a long time now and if we could get just 5% of people who signed a petition to instead get involved with a local activist group, we would have won this fight by now.
Go do something about it then bitch
If impacting the bottom line if a corporation no longer has any effect then we should just resign ourselves to extinction
If you truly believed this, you’d not be here. You’d come here in 40 days to poke fun, but you’d not bother with us because you know that the effect will be zero. That you’re here tells me that you, or much more likely your masters because you don’t have an original thought in your mind, are afraid that this will actually get momentum and affect Target’s stock price and sales figures. Thanks for the vote of confidence! Let’s get boycotting!
here’s a question - if you had a friend who was making a mistake, would you try to encourage them to reconsider?
if you think I would poke fun at you, you have absolutely the wrong idea about my motivations. i don’t want you to fail, i want you to succeed. i just know that this boycott won’t achieve anything, and all of the time and energy put into it will be completely wasted.
i want people to take all of that time and energy and put it towards something that will actually achieve something meaningful. i want people to join a union and find a local activist group, and start actually making connections, building solidarity, and taking collective action that actually will accomplish something!
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Shop at Aldi if you have one locally or Costco.
Aldi is not US based and Costco has been the least evil of the big chains. But definitely Aldi first.
Aldi did donate to the innauguration fund tho if i recall correctly
https://fortune.com/2025/01/31/aldi-scrubbed-careers-website-of-all-dei-initiatives/
Aldi did the same thing this boycott of Target is about. So no, not Aldi first.
I suspect you’re missing the wood for the trees there - are there any local vendors or farmers markets?
Yes, they are undeniably more expensive, but it is satisfying as fuck paying slightly over the going rate to poke some big company in the eye, even if it is barely felt at the individual level.
Well, I wouldn’t assume that the local vendors and farmers are less likely to be supporting Trump.
Without sounding accusatory or negative in any way, it’s important to remember that this may be coming from a position of privilege. There are folks who won’t be able to participate in this boycott. It’s for those with the means to do so.
No I appreciate being checked. It’s always good to be given multiple views on things and I appreciate your view. Thank you.
I used to do nearly all my shopping there because of the policies they got rid of. Cancelled my 360 membership, getting used to buying flour 25# at a time from Costco …
My wife told me we are boycotting, so lets do this!
I have 3 trans friends and as a super straight middle aged privileged all to hell white dad, fuck these corporate assholes.
My wife lives at Target. She’s already found other places to get the essentials.
40 days.
Fill a target online shopping cart with every day items, stuff you would buy every week or every month, and abandon it. Nothing big or expensive, standard shit.
Do that a few times.
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Are you Frank Whely and is your wife Jennifer Connelly?
No. I am SippyCup, an uncoordinated mess.
You just happened to remind me of Career Opportunities, a movie about being trapped inside a Target overnight.
Oh good I’ll continue to not shop there
Dear capitalist media… Target is being boycotted for being racist. And no, Target is not the victim.
These headlines ffs…
Wait, Target’s racist?
They canceled their black creator products and rolled back DEI because the government said to.
Some people can argue that’s not racism, but they’re likely the same people that argue that Elon wasn’t giving a Nazi salute.
It’s CNN. They’re a heavily biased pro-Israel pro-capitalist align-with-whatever-regime corpo news service. They should just be ignored by all at this point.
Shut Target down! NEVER shopping there again!
Putting a time limit on a boycott undermines the boycott.
Saw this with the Loblaw’s boycott here in Canada, it was very ineffective because they can just wait it out.
Yes, just don’t shop at Target.
It’s strange that people forget that businesses like Target getting rid of DEI also gets rid of many disability act initiatives. There should be more outrage than just a boycott.From the point of view of the boycotter, having a time limit helps mentally.
I think more people are ready to think “just buy somewhere else for a bit”. If it becomes “forever” might seem daunting.
My two cents, not sure if this is the real reason.
That’s my thought as well. A one day boycott like the “no shopping day” does literally nothing, but 40 days can reform habits. To the extent practicable, I’m doing all my shopping at Costco now. I generally eat a lot of the same things, so bulk quantities aren’t that big of a deal to manage.
Does Loblaw run a law blog by any chance?
Sadly no there is no Bob Loblaw
But why would people boycott a law blog?
Boycotting them since Jan. 1. 😎
Is that when they dropped DEI?
Because that’s when I stopped shopping there. Didn’t need to wait to be told and have no plans to end the boycott after 40 days or anytime. Not sure if bringing back DEI would change my mind. They played us.
Can we add bigger offenders like Wal-Mart and Amazon?
Right? And why not just boycott all pubkically traded companies forever? 40 days doesn’t do much
Better than these one day protests that LITERALLY do nothing. At least a 40 day boycott would hit a fiscal month, vs a single day outlier protest.
I’m definitely with you on that in spirit. I would starve if I actually practiced that across the board. I figure if we start from the top down, maybe we can get the co-ops to come back. Our neighborhood co-op grocery closed down not too long ago, and all that’s left are national chains.
Yeah co-ops are amazing, I’m always astounded when I find cities that don’t have any
I think it’s fair to commit to reducing your purchasing from these large entities significantly. By design, these companies have made it basically impossible to get certain products except from them, so do what you need to do in those cases. But you can get a lot still from alternatives.
I’m a huge advocate of what I call “soft boycotting.” You don’t have to all or nothing this stuff. If a million people reduce their spending on a company by only ten percent, that’s just as much damage as ten thousand people dropping them entirely. And it’s a lot easier to get a million people to reduce their spending by a little than it is to get ten thousand people to go cold turkey.
Remember, perfect is the enemy of good. A small action taken is worth far more than a big action only imagined.
Because if you propose that, no one is actually going to do it.
Doing something is always more impactful than shooting for everything and ending up doing nothing. This is a great example of a smartly thought out mass movement; it has a specific goal, and a clearly defined set of terms. Remember, you can always expand or extend. It’s far better to get a small thing moving than try to build a big thing that you never finish.
Further, a lot of dirt poor people literally rely on Walmart because Walmart was successful at gutting every other business out of their already dirt poor areas. That was literally Walmart’s business model to undersell the competition until they were the only game in town, it’s how they got so huge so fast. Large swathes of the South are like that. There’s a reason they teach their employees how to sign up for food stamps.
Also, 40 days is long enough that some people are going to change their shopping habits on a more permanent basis. Creating even a longer impact on Target.
I don’t get why anyone complains about fixed term boycotts anyway. You can just add another 40 days if Target doesn’t get the message. It’s not like you’re signing a contract or something. Boycotts are a negotiation, and in negotiation you always leave yourself wiggle room.
People love to get into this “Only the biggest possible action and nothing else” mindset, and then never actually take any action at all.
The one day ones are fairly pointless, but 40 is good. Give it a month and if nothing changes then you have a bit more time to try to extend it.
100%, perfect is the enemy of good. But it makes little logical sense to give any of these corporations any money or data
If you’re on the highway, need a coffee, and Starbucks is the only thing around, buy the Starbucks.
If Amazon is the only place you can buy that thing you need, buy it from Amazon.
There are plenty of times when the bad option is the only good option. If we teach people that boycotts have to be all or nothing - if we get into this mindset that a single latte means you’re an evil monster who supports genocide - we just engineer a state of despair.
But if we encourage people to reduce rather than cut out, we set an easily achievable goal. And that means it’s a goal that a lot more people will strive for.
If you want to cut out every big corporation entirely from your life, that’s an admirable personal goal, but not one that seems easy or achievable to most people.
Why they are called monopolies
That is the part that pisses me off so much about this. Yes. Target capitulated. Yes, Target needs to be told that’s not good.
BUT WALTONS FUND THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION!
This can’t be said enough, yet we can’t get a days boycott on them for fucks sake!
Looks like the Federalist Society is connected, too. It’s like the Who’s Who of Homogeny, Exclusion, and Inequity. Somebody give me an L-word so we can call them what they are.
I’m not doing the whole “Everyone I don’t agree with is a Nazi.” I mean, very specifically, this is the strategy used by unaccountable, ultrawealthy people to wield their power recklessly for an extremist movement that they’re going to lose control of. It just happens to be the best-known, contemporary archetypal, right-wing-flavor of the revolutionary bait-and-switch.
Exactly why Walmart should be PERMANENTLY BOYCOTTED!
I haven’t stepped foot inside a Walmart since I was 6.
Greatest thing of moving out of its hometown is actually having choices.
People need awareness, motivation and organization. If you can help with that, go for it.
I’ve been outcyring that Walmart has been the one of the major architects of the downfall of the working class my entire life.
But people who have choices just respond it’s cheaper…
There is supposed to be a weeklong boycott of Amazon this month, I forget the exact date.
March 7-14
Join me, I’ve been boycotting them for years.
Why are people boycotting a company that tried and took a step back due to backlash instead of supporting them when they tried?
I shopped there nearly exclusively because of what they had been doing. Now that they’re embracing fascism, I’m not.
Source on embracing fascism? I jumped from Amazon to Target because Bezos and friends were sitting together at the inauguration.
They dropped their DEI policies and their initiative to buy from black owned businesses the instant trump was elected.
You’re right to boycott Amazon too, obviously, but Target is also complicit.
The article certainly outlines a few reasons:
- Target “embraced” the idea of rolling back DEI policies more than many companies, furthering its weird cultish “belonging to the bullseye” internal culture.
- Target’s customers are more progressive than Walmart, John Deere, or Ford, so more of them actually care about what the company is doing.
- Target previous embraced DEI more than other companies. Them previously doing so and then promptly shedding it seems that their corporate culture is one of quarterly gains rather than giving a shit about anybody. While that’s true for pretty much all publicly traded corporations, see point 2.
Target throwing themselves at
Rainbow Capitalismis one pile of evidence that points at their movement being on the whim of the dollar as opposed to strong corporate ethics
Boycotting Target and Walmart.
don’t know why, don’t care, let’s do it
Capitalist media certainly isn’t going to explain it either. Poor Target!!! \s
Please stop with the time bound protests. You’re telling the companies to just wait you out. 🤦♀️
Yes, stop protesting if you aren’t willing to protest the right way. There are no steps to be taken in the right direction, you’re either perfect or worthless.
