Had no idea a boycott was happening.
Please stop with the time bound protests. You’re telling the companies to just wait you out. 🤦♀️
Dear capitalist media… Target is being boycotted for being racist. And no, Target is not the victim.
These headlines ffs…
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.
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.
Remember there are bots even on Lemmy to push the narrative that we have no power. Billionaires aren’t scared of a couple less dollars, but they are TERRIFIED of us figuring out we can organize. Let’s not fight each other let’s fight the oligarchy!
these short boycotts won’t fuck them on dollars, but there is a potential benefit: just in time economics and these long slow prediction-powered supply chains cannot handle this shit.
Also, I’ve heard a rumor about Target trying to stuff as much as they can into their warehouses and stock rooms in advance of Trump’s tariffs.
that’s so cool! yeah, fuck them if they want to try to play both sides here. they want to bow, they can suffer the king’s horrible policies.
We only have power when a large enough group of us does something. Anything else is publicity.
I agree with Botanicals. Whether you truly have an impact or not…I guess we’re arguing semantics…but simply vote with your wallet. 🙂 There is little excuse when options abound! If someone engages in behavior you really don’t like, boycott their ass. Don’t buy their product or service. If they didn’t make money, they’d quit their shit or go bankrupt. “No raindrop is responsible for the flood.”
Look at the Bud Light boycott. Granted, enough of the people doing the boycott were uninformed consumers that bought something else owned by ABInBev, and still gave the same company their money. But others went all the way. The campaign itself was still effective, as Bud Light sales TANKED. Product went BAD. The company lost LOTS OF MONEY. They lost prominent shelf space that they will probably never get back, but who knows, never is a big word.
You have power, little raindrop. You do.
I quit eating meat because I care about animals, I limit my driving to as little as possible to lessen my impact, I use open source software exclusively, I only buy repairable tech… I’m doing what I can to lessen the suffering I, an individual, inflicts and it’s made no difference. Animals still being killed, Earth still dying, corpos still raking in record profits, people still losing their homes, jobs, lives… I understand the need to feel like you and your choices matter. That’s how people cope with all this. I’m m not like that. I see things as they are and not as I hope they might be one day if we can just not shop at Target.
What a great example!
I urge you to see beyond that. Of course there are people (influencers likely?) you’re thinking about that jump on band wagons, but every movement does and they play an important part even if you don’t like them. Free advertising!
Easiest. Boycott. Ever.
Target sells cheaply manufactured goods at high prices. I haven’t shopped there in years already for that reason.
I like to go there to buy thermos. They have a clearance section that sells them for like $5. Big good ones too.
Oh and their cheap $1 aisle that sells seasonal stuff. I like going there for Christmas time and buying cheap Christmas decorations for the workplace lol.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Yeah co-ops are amazing, I’m always astounded when I find cities that don’t have any
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.
Join me, I’ve been boycotting them for years.
There is supposed to be a weeklong boycott of Amazon this month, I forget the exact date.
March 7-14
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Does Loblaw run a law blog by any chance?
Sadly no there is no Bob Loblaw
But why would people boycott a law blog?
Using gift cards is OK if you’re boycotting a place, right? I mean, Target already has the money and you’d just be helping them out if you didn’t buy anything with them.
I’m a school bus driver and I always get a lot of tips (Christmas and end of year) in the form of Target gift cards. BTW yes, I agree that tipping school bus drivers is fucking weird. We already get paid and it’s not like we’re going to drive the kids into a tree if we don’t get tipped.
Those are Christmas gifts. The parents are just showing appreciation for you already not driving their kids into a tree, not bribing you lol.
No, it’s definitely bribes lol
Not really. The explanation is somewhat complex.
Although target already has the money once a gift card has been purchased, they will not recognise the money as revenue until you use the card.
Suppose my lawn mowing guy charges $50 each time he mows my lawn, and he comes 12 times a year. In January I just transfer him $600 because I don’t want to muck around with smaller payments all the time.
When he calculates his “revenue” for January, should he include the whole $600? It would be more accurate to set aside the $550 he hadn’t really earned yet, and recognise that once he actually does the work.
There’s more geaky accounting stuff I could say, but in summary if you want to send a message to Target management, refrain from using gift cards during the boycott.
They don’t get to record it as revenue, but they do get to sit on the cash, earning interest etc on it. Companies loooove gift cards. It’s free money.
For a company health perspective, it’s better to use it so they’re at least put the cost-of-goods. Best option would be to sell the gift cards to someone who was going to shop there anyways.
In my old community the bus driver was part of our community, we knew her and she was amazing. She knew the kids, she welcomed them by name every morning and she made sure they got to school safe AND ok.
The last bit is the most important part. She deserved a “tip” but in reality as someone who was part of my extended “raise my kid family” she “earned” her card and Starbucks gift card (mostly cuz she drank 7-11 coffee and I liked razzing her)
Our current bus driver is a contractor who couldn’t give a fuck about anything except when he has to be at the stop and when he is allowed to leave, exactly where the “nah you’re too far away from the bus stop fuck you’d kid” line is.”
It’s not always weird, but can be.
I’ll allow it.
I used to pretty regularly shop at target. When they rolled back DEI proactively for trump, I stopped.
Target near me made their employees stay inside/keep working while it was evacuated for a bomb threat during that period of stochastic terrorism.
I had heard about the boycott, but didn’t realize this was the reason. Target’s on the other side of town from me so I don’t shop there anyway, but yeah definitely not going there at all now. Fuck them.
It’s “funny” how capitalist media will talk about the boycott and cry agonized tears for Target…
But never mention the “why”, especially not in headlines.
There’s a boycott? I just don’t shop there because it’s the same crap as everywhere else for more money and a worse experience.
I know right I can just buy it on Amazon /s
Unsarcastically but sadly, yes. It’s the same items, with the same supply chain and the same issues. But it’s at a lower cost to me. Frankly, as things get tight, we’ll all need to make decisions between our ideals and our bank accounts. I assume that most of us will lean toward preserving the bank account and reckon with our ideals later.
Yeah unfortunately I know exactly what you mean. You do what you have to do to make it.
Nah Amazon is cheaper and a better experience. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of reasons not to shop at Amazon, but price and shopping experience are above Target.
Every time I’ve gone into a target in the last 5 years, they legit looked like they were closing down. Idk why people are boycotting them in particular when Walmart and Amazon are way worse.
Every Target I go to is nicer than Walmart and has a more curated feel of products. I agree on the last part but it’s because Target was advertising itself as being more in touch with things such as DEI and then backtracked, where Walmart and Amazon never positioned themselves as much.
Target’s thing has always been to be “Walmart but fancy”. Fun fact, the last “T” is actually silent, and you’re supposed the pronounce it “Tar-jay”
you’re supposed the pronounce it “Tar-jay”
Lmao, no you’re not, that’s just something people started doing to literally make fun of the “Walmart but fancy” image they cultivated for themselves.
and it’s funny, so I choose to keep it as part of the canon.
Same, I get major K-Mart in its final days vibes: lots of empty shelves, stuff in dented and torn packaging, hostile and surly employees etc. etc.
Browsing through the Target grocery section has always mystified me. Not great selection and everything costs about 50% more than the local grocery stores. I have never understood why anybody would shop there for groceries.
Yeah, Kmart vibes is accurate.
There was a time when Target had a middle class demo they…targeted. But that demo is too small now. They’re either going to need to shrink and market to the top 10%, competing with Whole Foods, or lower their standards and compete with Amazon. Oof, gotta love monopolies. Starting to think this boycott was Bezos’ idea.
The Rite Aid near us actually was 3/4 empty all through the pandemic. They put up a sign saying they were remodeling, but closed a few months ago.
Drug stores are so fucking weird. It’s a business model that apparently supports a store on every corner, yet they often go out of business too. And it’s always Rite Aids going out of business, although I couldn’t say what the difference is between those and the other chains.
there’s only a couple of companies that run every drug store in the us. both cvs and walgreens each own over a dozen other names that they operate as depending on where in the country you are.
same thing with grocery stores. Kroger and Safeway also both own over a dozen names that they operate under.
I believe rite aid is owned by walgreens.
A long time ago, i woked at a savers (thrift store), which also operated as a dozen other names depending on region. Makes me think that maybe someone could make a bot that could identify a person’s geographic location based on the brands mentioned in their comments.
Our Target is in pretty good shape, always busy. Wonder what the difference is…locale? Management?
you don’t have to go in my wife orders in the app and they text when it’s ready and bring it out to the car. usually the order is ready within a few minutes.
we are both autistic and do much of our shopping this way it’s soooo much easier I dunno why anyone would go in.
I go in the store to browse. But I’m also NT so it doesn’t stress me out to be in a store. My wife is ND and has to psych herself up for in-store things.
I mean besides the time that doesn’t seem much different from the other 2. Walmart I’ll place my grocery pickup order, select a time (usually right when I’m coming home from work so I know I won’t be doing anything else) and they’ll bring it out to me. Amazon obviously delivers right to my front door. Walmart means I need to order maybe 12 hours in advance and Amazon a couple days, but otherwise is there a difference?
Already been boycotting target
My partner and I had our first children (twins) about a year ago. They’re great.
Before then, I rarely if ever went to this type of store. We don’t have a local Target but we have K-Mart which I think is comparable in Australia.
Honestly I think we’ve done pretty well at buying most of what we need second hand, and then selling it on once it’s no longer required. We also get toys from a local toy library which is amazing.
That said, I’ve sadly become a semi-regular K-Mart shopper because I require some of the cheap plastic junk they sell. A good example is shoes, I can buy a pair of shoes for the kids for less than the cost of a cup of coffee.
The thing is, everything about the store is repulsive. It’s basically a plastic shop. They sell plastic. Even the clothing and shoes is polyester and nylon and plasticised rubber. Also, since we’re here, if I’m really honest about it I would have to assume that the person who made my kids shoes is probably being exploited. That sucks.
Anyhow, I don’t really have a point, just having a whinge and acknowledging that target / kmart is definitely the worst part of having a child.
Similar here. We used to be great at avoiding the corporate stores until we had a kid. Convenience and selection wins when you’re overstressed and sleep deprived.
I think we’ve done great at rolling back to local-only shopping this year. No Amazon, no target. Costco still gets out visits, but overall we’re being much more thoughtful about who gets our money and we’re spending significantly less also.
Instead if 40 days, let’s try 40 months.
Let’s make them the next kmart
well that’s easy, I haven’t shopped there in years. They’re inconvenient, overpriced, low quality, rarely have what I’m looking for. Why would I shop there?
