A major teachers’ union is calling for its members to skip Target when buying back-to-school supplies, the latest twist in a series of boycotts that have targeted the big-box retailer as its turnaround shows signs of life, CNBC has learned.

The AFT, or American Federation of Teachers, passed a resolution Thursday that calls on its 1.8 million members and others to shop at local stores and not at Target, saying the company did not respond adequately to the surge of federal immigration enforcement in the retailer’s hometown of Minneapolis this winter. Federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during the operation.

The labor union, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO, plans to urge a similar resolution at AFL-CIO’s convention in Minneapolis this summer and at conventions held by other organizations, including the NAACP and LULAC, AFT President Randi Weingarten said.

Target declined to comment.

Target’s annual sales have declined for the past three years in a row, but the company’s new CEO Michael Fiddelke laid out an ambitious plan earlier this month to refresh its stores, add more enticing merchandise and return to sales growth. The retailer said it expects net sales to rise about 2% this fiscal year compared with the prior year and anticipates sales will grow every quarter.

It is unclear if and how much the AFT’s call for a back-to-school boycott could hurt Target, which is trying to win back customers. Earlier this month, Atlanta area pastor Jamal Harrison Bryant announced the end of a yearlong boycott of the company, called Target Fast, which had started because of the company’s rollback of major diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. At a press conference, Bryant said Target has demonstrated its commitment to the Black community with investments in Black businesses and donations to Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Yet other activists leading a separate boycott, including former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, have said they continue to call for shoppers to steer clear of Target.

The retailer has attributed some of its sales losses to backlash to its DEI decision, along with other factors including company missteps with merchandise, a weaker store experience and softer discretionary spending.

At an investor meeting in Minneapolis in early March, Fiddelke stressed that it’s “a new chapter for Target.” He said the company is “doing the work to build connection with new guests, deepen relationships with existing guests and earn back trust with guests we’ve disappointed.”

In a separate email to Target employees earlier this month, Fiddelke highlighted how the retailer is putting its strategy into action, including through its move to cut prices on more than 3,000 items and the opening of its 2,000th store. He said Target has made progress with winning back trust, too, noting the end of the Target Fast boycott.

He said Target has had “ongoing conversations with the organizers” of the boycott, who have “acknowledged the meaningful contributions Target has made, and will continue to make, to the Black community.”

In an interview with CNBC, Weingarten said the AFT’s boycott is focused on what she called Target’s lack of response to the surge of aggressive and violent immigration enforcement in its own backyard. Weingarten said the AFT sent a letter to Target and met with Target staff to encourage them to speak up before the union moved to pass the resolution.

“Target was negotiating with our colleagues in the civil rights community for weeks and weeks and weeks,” she said. “They could have very easily dealt with both [concerns about DEI and immigration enforcement] and they chose not to.”

She said Target is “more worried about standing with the Trump administration than the communities that made them a profitable company.”

Fiddelke joined dozens of executives from Minnesota-based corporations in co-signing a letter in late January calling for an “immediate de-escalation” in the state after the fatal shooting of Pretti. However, the letter did not name the shooting victims Pretti or Good or call out the president, his immigration policies or federal agents.

Fiddelke also shared a video message with employees that more directly acknowledged current events, but stopped short of calling for ICE agents to leave the city or for accountability in the two shooting deaths.

Weingarten described the CEOs’ letter as “insulting” and said it “basically blamed both sides.”

She said the union, which includes many teachers, can have the greatest financial impact during the back-to-school shopping season this summer and fall. By passing the resolution now, she said, the AFT can get the word out to members and “give Target enough time to come back to its senses.”

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R.F. Kuang, the bestselling novelist behind Katabasis, Yellowface, and Babel, is taking a stand with the BDS movement.

Citing a call from the organizers of the Palestinian BDS (or, Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) National Committee, the popular author withdrew from a slated appearance at the upcoming Emirates Airline Festival of Literature yesterday.

Though she’d planned to appear in person this January, Kuang backed out of LitFest with apologies to the organizers and her Emirati fans. She broke the news to all readers via Insta last night, saying she will “no longer be able to travel to Dubai” for the festival, due to the UAE’s implication with ongoing atrocities in Sudan.

The UN has accused the UAE of supplying weapons to the Rapid Supports Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group behind the unfolding violence. And while the UAE government continues to deny such allegations—or attempt to mitigate them, with robust humanitarian aid—the BDS movement has called on its affiliates to express solidarity with affected “kindred people in Sudan.”

Kuang, who has previously explored colonial violence in her beloved Poppy Wars trilogy, told followers that she has “always respected organized calls for cultural boycotts against genocide from communities directly affected and in particular, guidelines set forth by the BDS movement.”

Prolific as she is principled, Kuang is meanwhile at work on four more books. Taipei Story, her next, will follow a college freshman as she comes into age and identity while processing deep grief.

The Emirates Airline Festival of Literature kicked of 15 years ago. Supported by the Emirates Literary Foundation, the fest represents “the Arab World’s largest celebration of the written and spoken word,” and ideally features international and regional writers, poets, thinkers, and speakers from all over the world.

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Over 300 writers, scholars, and public intellectuals have pledged to not contribute to the New York Times’ Opinion section until three demands have been met. The demands address the anti-Palestinian bias in the paper’s op-ed pages, which have been a frequent target of criticism during Israel’s genocide and war. The writers are withholding their labor until the Opinion pages take “accountability for its biased coverage and commits to truthfully and ethically reporting on the U.S.-Israeli war on Gaza.”

The group of “writers of conscience” include Rima Hassan, Rashida Tlaib, Kaveh Akbar, Sally Rooney, Tareq Baconi, Viet Thanh Nguyenm, Greta Thunberg, Elia Suleiman, Plestia Alaqad, Hannah Einbinder, Andreas Malm, Isabella Hammad, Mohammed El-Kurd, Rupi Kaur, Jia Tolentino, Alana Hadidm, China Miéville, Ghassan Abu-Sittah, and many more.

Lit Hub’s Jonny Diamond and Dan Sheehan are among those who signed this collective commitment as well.

Almost 150 past Times contributors have signed the pledge, and the coalition also includes a number of Palestinian solidarity groups like Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG), the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), and the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC).

The pledge condemns the “paper’s decades-long practice of acting as a bullhorn for the Israeli government and military,” its “anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian biases,” and makes three demands:

1. The newsroom must conduct a review of anti-Palestinian bias and produce new editorial standards for Palestine coverage.

2. The newsroom must retract the widely debunked investigation “Screams Without Words.”

3. The Editorial Board must call for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel.

There is more detail in the group’s longer statement. 

For Palestinians, the consequences of Western media bias can be lethal. The pledge’s statement opens with a quote from Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat, who wrote, “Language makes genocide justifiable. A reason why we are still being bombed after 243 days is because of The New York Times and most Western media.” Shabat was assassinated by Israel months after writing this.

“We owe it to the journalists and writers of Palestine to refuse complicity with the Times,” the statement concludes, “and to demand that the paper account for its failures, such that it can never again manufacture consent for mass slaughter, torture, and displacement.”

The full statement and list of signatories are on boycottdivestunsubscribe.com.

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Hashtags like #BoycottDisney and #BoycottABCNetwork trended on X and Bluesky, where users posted screenshots canceling Disney+ subscriptions, citing Kimmel’s removal as the reason.

“Boycott everything affiliated with ABC and Disney. Pass it on,” the Democrat-aligned political commentator known by the X handle “JoJoFromJerz” urged her 1 million followers.

ABC’s suspension of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” after the host’s remarks about slain activist Charlie Kirk has triggered calls for boycotts of Disney and ABC. Getty Images

Writer Wajahat Ali demanded a “collective boycott” until Kimmel is reinstated.

“Marvel movies need to shutdown. Ditto the sitcoms,” he wrote.

“Corporations love money more than anything, & this will really harm them and force them to do the right thing,” Ali wrote on X. His post racked up over 1.3 million views.

Never, ever forgive ABC for what they did. We must fully and completely, 100%, boycott. If their journalists have any integrity, they will walk off the job. Right now is zero hour for bold action. We are in a dark midnight for free speech, for our country, for our future. pic.twitter.com/Gv3cT7Mz5U

— John Jackson (@hissgoescobra) September 18, 2025

Boycott everything affiliated with ABC and Disney.

Pass it on.

— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) September 17, 2025

Every major talent that works for ABC and Disney should refuse to show up for work until Jimmy Kimmel is reinstated.

Marvel movies need to shutdown. Ditto the sitcoms.

Collective boycott.

Corporations love money more than anything, & this will really harm them and force them…

— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) September 17, 2025

BOYCOTT ALERT!

Disney/ABC just caved & pulled Jimmy Kimmel for political reasons.
Nexstar — which owns The CW + 200+ local ABC, NBC, CBS & FOX stations — is part of the same machine.

Boycott Disney. Boycott Nexstar. Boycott their advertisers.

Hit them where it hurts: the… pic.twitter.com/3Ui2rzwdxw

— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) September 18, 2025

Activist Brian Krassenstein blasted Disney and ABC for caving “for political reasons” and urged boycotts of Nexstar, Sinclair and their advertisers.

“Hit them where it hurts: the $$$,” he wrote.

Nexstar and Sinclair each own dozens of ABC television affiliates nationwide.

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Sinclair on Wednesday said that it would not allow Kimmel’s show back on the air until the host apologizes personally to Kirk’s widow and donates money to both the family and Turning Point USA, the college campus activist group that Kirk led.

ABC, the Disney-owned network, abruptly pulled the late-night program on Wednesday after Kimmel mocked conservatives during a monologue on Monday about the assassination of Kirk.

Kimmel accused the “MAGA gang” of exploiting Kirk’s death for political gain, sparking outrage from conservative leaders and federal regulators.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, publicly pressured ABC to act.

Kimmel accused the “MAGA gang” of exploiting Charlie Kirk’s death for political gain, sparking outrage from conservative leaders and federal regulators. via REUTERS

“Change needs to happen on Kimmel,” Carr told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson, warning that local affiliates could face additional regulatory scrutiny if the show continued to air.

The decision by ABC blindsided Kimmel’s Los Angeles staff, who learned of the move hours before taping.

Guests booked for upcoming episodes were notified mid-travel that their appearances had been canceled.

ABC’s decision has sparked boycott calls against parent company Disney and its other properties. JHVEPhoto – stock.adobe.com

Kimmel, 57, was spotted leaving the El Capitan Theatre that evening but declined to comment.

Sources told The Post he is “absolutely f–king livid” and exploring legal options to break from ABC.

President Donald Trump hailed the suspension as “Great News for America,” blasting Kimmel as talentless and celebrating ABC’s decision to act.

“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The Post has sought comment from Disney and ABC.

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The meeting, which was initiated by Target, follows recent decisions by the retailer to scale back DEI initiatives — a move that prompted backlash from civil rights organizations.

Though Sharpton himself has not yet called for an official boycott, he openly supports the consumer movements urging shoppers to avoid Target.

Target CEO Brian Cornell (pictured) is set to meet civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton this week in New York. Andrew Schwartz / SplashNews.com

“You can’t have an election come and all of a sudden, change your old positions,” Sharpton told CNBC.

“If an election determines your commitment to fairness then fine, you have a right to withdraw from us, but then we have a right to withdraw from you.”

Sharpton stated he is open to initiating a formal boycott if Target does not reaffirm its support and investment in the black community and black-owned businesses.

“I said, ‘If [Cornell] wants to have a candid meeting, we’ll meet,’” Sharpton said. “I want to first hear what he has to say.”

Target confirmed the planned meeting between Cornell and Sharpton but declined further comment.

Sharpton is supporting boycotts of Target — though he himself has not explicitly endorsed a boycott. Matthew McDermott

The controversy arose when Target announced in January it would terminate its three-year DEI targets and cease providing company reports to external groups such as the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equity Index.

The company also ended certain measures aimed at increasing shelf space for products from Black and minority-owned businesses.

Following these announcements, Target experienced declining store visits for 10 consecutive weeks starting in late January, as recorded by data firm Placer.ai.

Before this period, store traffic had shown consistent year-over-year increases. Analysts have warned, however, that the drop in the number of shoppers could also be related to larger macroeconomic trends such as high inflation.

While this metric does not directly reflect overall sales, the decline coincided with public outcry over the company’s decision.

Rev. Jamal Bryant, an Atlanta-based pastor, has been another vocal critic of Target’s DEI policy shift.

Bryant initiated a “fast” from shopping at Target during Lent as a demonstration of black consumer influence, signaling plans to announce further actions related to the boycott soon.

Target’s policy changes mirror broader corporate caution around DEI programs, as companies including Walmart, McDonald’s and Tractor Supply have similarly scaled back their initiatives — partly due to pressures from conservative activists and politicians.

The meeting, which was initiated by Target, follows recent decisions by the retailer to scale back DEI initiatives. Christopher Sadowski

In contrast, Costco notably maintained its DEI initiatives, successfully resisting conservative shareholder proposals aimed at weakening these policies.

Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) recently engaged with other corporations facing similar scrutiny.

He met PepsiCo executives after the beverage giant ended its DEI targets.

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Though details of commitments from PepsiCo remain unclear, Sharpton acknowledged the significance of CEO Ramon Laguarta personally attending the discussions.

Sharpton’s meetings represent a significant counter-effort against conservative activists, like Robby Starbuck, who have aggressively targeted corporate DEI policies.

Starbuck’s campaigns have notably succeeded in pressuring several major corporations into reconsidering or eliminating diversity initiatives.

Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN) recently met with PepsiCo executives over the company’s withdrawal of its DEI initiatives. REUTERS

During their upcoming meeting, Sharpton plans to question Cornell on Target’s reversal from commitments made following George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, Target’s hometown.

Cornell previously expressed deep personal and corporate commitment in the wake of Floyd’s killing, saying it profoundly impacted him.

“That could have been one of my Target team members,” he remarked in 2021.

Sharpton stressed the necessity of accountability from companies that pledged support during critical moments of civil unrest.

“You made commitments based on the George Floyd movement… what changed?” he asked.

“Are you trying to say everything’s fine now because the election changed? That’s insulting to us.”

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March 6, 2025, 2:31pm

As reported by Richie Assaly in the Toronto Star yesterday, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre—the largest queer theater company in the world—is among 18 theater and performing arts organizations that have joined a “cultural and academic boycott” of Israel:

On Wednesday, Buddies—the world’s largest queer theatre company—and other organizations including Theatre Centre, Aluna Theatre and New Harlem Productions, said that they had collectively joined the international Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel (PACBI). As part of the boycott, the organizations said they won’t accept funding from the Israeli state or any institutions that they say are complicit in the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories or other violations of international law.

The endorsement was organized by Theatre Artists for Palestinian Voices (TAPV).

In an email to the Star, ted witzel, the artistic director of Buddies since 2023, said: “(The violence in Gaza) has affected many members of our team deeply. We’ve tried to make Buddies a space for conversations and solidarity. We want to be part of a larger conversation about the way that art and cultural production are never apolitical.”

Witzel said that the decision to endorse the cultural boycott of Israel comes as the organization revises its values.

“Liberation means liberation for all,” witzel said. “There is no queer liberation without the liberation of Palestine.”

Launched in 2004 by a group of Palestinian academics, PACBI is the cultural arm of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), an international, non-violent movement that demands Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories, full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.

This collective boycott by Canadian theater companies marks another significant development in the Canadian literary sector’s ongoing response to the war on Gaza.

Last October, Canadian authors Miriam Towes, Rupi Kaur, and Dionne Brand were among thousands of writers and publishing professionals who signed an open letter pledging to boycott complicit Israeli cultural institutions.

In February of this year, the Giller Prize ended its decades-long partnership with Scotiabank, following months of sustained pressure from protesters, authors and publishers who pledged to boycott Canada’s most prestigious literary prize over its ties to Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.

The pressure on the Giller Prize is likely to continue, however, as the Giller Foundation has yet to cut ties with Indigo Books (Canada’s largest book retailer, whose owners, Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman, fund scholarships for foreign soldiers with the Israel Defense Forces) or the Azrieli Foundation (the charitable counterpart to Israeli real estate company The Azrieli Group, which has investments in West Bank settlements deemed illegal under international law).

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