Minneapolis, MN
Last week mass arrests by police happened at Target stores across the country as activists converged for a day of protest at the retail stores. The protests were over the corporations collusion with ICE.
Target, a Minnesota based corporation, has been allowing ICE officers to use their stores and parking lot as a staging area for raids. Last month ICE violently detained two employees in Minneapolis.
Unlike many other local Minneapolis businesses that have posted signs warning ICE that they are not welcome, or have at least not complied with allowing the officers to stage attacks from their property, Target has welcomed it.
It’s not the first time within the last year that Target has taken the knee to the Trump administration. Target, who donated a million dollars to the Trump Inaugural also quickly killed their diversity programs. That caused boycotts and a drop in foot traffic in stores. Costco, pushed back against the Trump administration demands for a whiter workforce and has seen increases in profits.
For some reason the C-Suite at Target has decided to go against it’s consumer base of more progressive buyers and embrace the white supremacy of the Trump administration. In response, Fortune Magazine reports that “For the first time in 24 years, Target has not been named in Fortune Magazine’s World’s Most Admired Companies All-Star list.” Foot traffic is down, a CEO was fired, profits are down 19% and investors lost billions.
The boycotts from more progressive customers seem to be having an effect on the bottom line, but Target, a company that embraced diversity in its advertising seems to have decided to move far away from its more progressive goals
In Minneapolis last week there were multiple protests that saw local activists arrested. Police arrived preemptively to protect that national corporation. According to the Minneapolis Police officer that I spoke to at the East Lake location last Wednesday they were aware of the protests that were happening and made sure to be present without the need for the company to call. When I asked if they offered the same support to local Somali businesses that were threatened after right wing agitators descended on the city months ago the officer suddenly couldn’t comment.
The East Lake Target location has murals all along the the front of the building that reference equality and past protests like the George Floyd resistance. When I asked Jake, the store manager that was outside the building to prevent and threaten the singing protesters with trespass if he saw the irony of these threats when there was a Black Lives Matter fist on the wall of the building… he claimed he didn’t see the connection.
