CHICAGO—The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s third-largest union, became the first big union to join the national Target boycott—a boycott which has already cost the retailer huge prestige and at least $500 million in sales.
Union President Randi Weingarten was very forthright in announcing the decision, which AFT’s Executive Council approved on August 25: Target, kowtowing to racist GOP President Donald Trump, abandoned—and more—its five-year-old diversity, equity, and inclusiveness policy and initiatives.
So the union’s 1.8 million “public school educators, school-related personnel, higher education faculty and staff, healthcare workers and government employees should spend their money elsewhere until Target reverses its stance,” AFT said.
Weingarten discussed the decision as a lead speaker for Chicago’s September 1 “Workers Over Billionaires” Labor Day march and rally, starting at the Chicago Teachers Union headquarters on the Northwest Side and heading to the Loop.
“We rarely engage in this type of action, but we’re doing so here because Target betrayed promises to communities of color throughout the United States,” said Weingarten, a New York City civics teacher.
“Target rolled back promises to help the people who have been loyal customers, because of a president who is trying to roll back history and ignore the struggle for freedom and justice. Those customers, who have helped Target’s bottom line, now feel set aside, ignored, and dismissed.
“This movement comes at a crucial moment, when American workers find themselves at the whim of billionaires and boardrooms more invested in money over people.
“We want this resolution, and the full weight of our nearly two million members, to be a reminder to Target there are consequences to dismissing the will of the American worker.”
African-Americans spend—or spent, before the boycott began–$12 million daily in Target stores and those “resources must not be taken for granted or used to fund institutions complicit in racial and economic harm,” the resolution says.
Using boycotts as economic leverage for social change has a long and distinguished history inside and outside the union movement, particularly since the start of the modern civil rights era.
Examples include the Montgomery (Ala.) bus boycott in 1955-56, the grape boycott led by the United Farm Workers and the union-civil rights effort that led to an international boycott of apartheid South Africa.
The Chicago Teachers Union also passed its own pro-boycott resolution, President Stacy Davis Gates, a social studies teacher, announced at the Labor Day ceremonies.
The boycott has already hit the chain’s bottom line. African-Americans, among the retailer’s most loyal customers for years, started abandoning Target in droves.
“Every day, Black and brown working-class families walk into Target to spend $100 and leave spending $300,” Gates explained.
“Their hard-earned dollars are fueling Target’s record profits and executive bonuses—even as their schools remain underfunded and their communities underserved.
“So when Target retreats from its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, it’s not just cowardice—it’s complicity with white supremacy. It sends a dangerous signal to those who want to erase the dignity and safety of our students, our families and our classrooms.” Chicago and its school system have large majorities of people of color.
AFT’s resolution explained that joining the Target boycott covers far more than protesting the firm’s abandonment of diversity, equity and inclusion.
“In 2024-25, Target began quietly rolling back many of its commitments—disbanding its internal racial equity action and change teams, withdrawing from equity-related benchmarking such as the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, shifting engagement with Black and other minority-owned suppliers, and significantly reducing its public engagement with marginalized communities.”
Those moves are “moves widely seen as corporate retreat under political and public pressure,” the union’s board said.
“Abandonment of these commitments is a betrayal of trust to the Black, female, LGBTQIA+ working-class people, and other historically marginalized groups that have long fueled Target’s profits, and reflects a broader pattern of corporate backlash against equity efforts across the country,” the union’s resolution adds.
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