The Target boycott is working — and now Black America must hold Dollar General accountable for failing to invest in the community.
Pastor Jamal H. Bryant, speaks onstage during TARGET FAST TownHall Meeting at Salem Bible Church on April 22, 2025 in Lithonia, Georgia. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
On the grounds of local Target stores from Georgia to California, hundreds of people knelt in prayer on May 25, the fifth anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. For 9 minutes and 29 seconds — the exact length of time former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck — faith leaders across the nation marked a spiritual and economic line in the sand.
Indeed, these prayer vigils were declarations that the economically exploitative relationship in which the Black Community spent an average of $12 million a day in Target stores is over.
“Who stood with us 10 toes down on Sunday, outside of Target in prayer, asking God to shift some things and remove some things and bring down whatever is an obstacle to our progress and to our assignment in the earth?” Rev. Dr. Jamal Harrison-Bryant asked in a video clip posted on Instagram.
And then, Bryant, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia, announced that the boycott of Target, which began on Ash Wednesday as a modern-day fast during Lent, has now escalated into a full cancellation of the big-box retailer.
“Effective, immediately. Target is canceled,” he said. The company doesn’t “value who it is that we are. You don’t honor what it is that we bring to the table. You don’t respect our dollars.”
#RetailJustice #CommunityImpact #JamalBryant
