On Thursday morning, Rev Al Sharpton met with Brian Cornell, the CEO of Target, to discuss the company’s decision earlier this year to scale back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. The meeting took place at Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) headquarters in New York and included NAN national board chair Dr W Franklyn Richardson and NAN senior adviser Carra Wallace.
In January, activists in Minnesota initiated a boycott of Target after the company decided to eliminate its DEI programs. Although Sharpton, a leading civil-rights activist in the US, did not directly call for a Target boycott, he supported others’ efforts to do so and indicated before the meeting that he might consider calling for such action depending on the outcome of the discussion.
Recently, Americans have boycotted several companies following their decisions to reduce DEI efforts. Corporations like Amazon, Walmart, and McDonald’s are also facing boycotts due to abandoning corporate pledges. A March poll revealed that one in five Americans plan to permanently boycott companies that altered their policies to align with the Trump administration.
Sharpton described the meeting with Cornell as “very constructive and candid” in a statement posted on his Instagram on Thursday afternoon. No additional details were provided, and NAN did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Following the meeting, Sharpton stated that he would inform Rev Dr Jamal Bryant, an Atlanta-based pastor who called for a 40-day Target boycott during Lent, of his “feelings” and that they “will go from there.” Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of the activists who initiated the Target boycott, questioned why Target’s CEO would meet with Sharpton given his lack of involvement in the boycott.
— new from The Guardian