(NEXSTAR) – As peak holiday shopping season kicks off next week, an activist group is asking its supporters to stop shopping at three major U.S. chains for five days.
We Ain’t Buying It is calling on people to stop shopping at Target, Home Depot and Amazon between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday, a time when stores typically offer discounts to draw in buyers. Instead, organizers encourage people to shop locally, or at minority-owned businesses.
Each company is being targeted for a different reason, according to the group: “This action is taking direct aim at Target, for caving to this administration’s biased attacks on DEI; Home Depot, for allowing and colluding with ICE to kidnap our neighbors on their properties; and Amazon, for funding this administration to secure their own corporate tax cuts.”
Target has been the subject of repeated boycotts since late January, when it joined a number of other American brands in scaling back its corporate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Following the 2020 murder of George Floyd, the Minneapolis-based company had previously pledged to increase its Black workforce and invest billions in Black-owned businesses.
“We feel betrayed in a very intimate way,” said boycott lead Rev. Jamal Harrison Bryant in an interview with CNN.
Target stock is down 43% over the past year, and the retailer said Wednesday it expects its sales slump to extend through the critical holiday shopping season.
Home Depot, for its part, has said in the past that the company is not notified ahead of time of the immigration raids that take place on store property. The company told NPR it instructs employees to not get involved for their own safety.
“In many cases, we don’t know that arrests have taken place until after they’re over. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate,” Home Depot said in August.
Amazon, no stranger to boycotts driven by various causes, is facing renewed criticism from progressives after the company was listed among the donors to President Trump’s $300 million ballroom renovation.
Trump was once highly critical of company founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, but has been much less so lately. Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, an event attended by Bezos. Its video streaming service paid $40 million to license a documentary about first lady Melania Trump. Its cloud-based computing operation, Amazon Web Services, is a major government contractor.
Nexstar reached out to Target, Home Depot and Amazon for comment on the boycott and will update this story as we hear back.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.