WASHINGTON—Hundreds of D.C. residents and allies came out on the weekend of the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Target boycott to stand against the company’s support for Trump’s racist policies around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and immigration.
Organizers of the Jan. 23 Minnesota General Strike called for nationwide actions on Jan. 31 at Target stores while they staged a sit-in at the company’s outlets in the Twin Cities. They wnt company executives and incoming CEO Michael Fiddelke to affirm Target as a 4th Amendment business to stop ICE raids in their stores and to join the call for an end to the ICE “surge” in Minnesota. Fiddelke started in his new role Feb. 1.
The Boycott Target D.C. Coalition, alongside Free D.C., called for a morning informational picket in front of the four Target stores in the District (a fifth had closed last summer in the Cleveland Park neighborhood) in solidarity with the call from Minnesota.
The Columbia Heights Target store, which has been the site of a regular informational picket out front for nearly a year, saw the largest number of community members participating Jan. 31, with over 200 showing up. The sidewalks outside the mall where the store mall is located were largely covered in ice from the winter storm that hit the city the weekend prior.
Picketers brought their families (including their pets) and held signs saying, “No playing nice with ICE!” and “Target let ICE steal their employees.” That slogan refers to two Latino Target workers detained by ICE agents in Richfield, Minn., while they were on the job in January.
Dozens of community members and neighbors also showed up to picket in front of the Shepherd Park Target on Georgia Ave., the Tenleytown Target on Wisconsin Ave., and the Ivy City Target on New York Ave. All these stores sit on busy roads with a lot of vehicular traffic. Dozens of cars honked in support of the action.
For some who passed by or showed up, this was the first time they engaged in the boycott movement against Target. Many expressed their excitement to be engaged in the fightback against Trump and his racist agenda.
Organizers with the Protect Families Not Feds Coalition, which has been advocating District officials end the collaboration between federal and local law enforcement, led the action in front of the Georgia Ave. store and made clear the connections between the ICE occupation of the Twin Cities and the federal occupation of D.C. since August 2025.
Feb. 1 marked the one-year of the U.S.-wide boycott against Target, which was called by local organizers in Minneapolis and national leaders. Target, headquartered in Minneapolis a few blocks from where George Floyd was murdered in 2020, donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and reversed its DEI commitments when he returned to office. A year later, it is seen as one of the companies backing Trump’s fascist immigration program.
March 2026 will complete one year of the “boots-on-the-ground” effort led by Black clergy in D.C. in response to the “Target Fast” movement led by Rev. Jamal Bryant. The Boycott Target D.C. Coalition has been picketing and leafleting in front of the Columbia Heights Target store every Saturday, encouraging shoppers to not support a big business that doesn’t support them or their community. The coalition and campaign against Target are now expanding as a central effort against businesses upholding Trump’s racist policies.
On Monday, Feb. 2, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which endorsed the boycott last summer, urged the new Target CEO to demand ICE out of Minnesota. AFT President Randi Weingarten threatened that the investments in Target held by the union members’ pension funds could be pulled, further jeopardizing its brand.
Weingarten additionally requested an in-person meeting to “discuss Target’s silence on ICE’s continuing operations in Minneapolis following ICE and Border Patrol agents’ murders of two Minneapolis residents.”
Trump and the MAGA Republicans are attempting to divide people using DEI as a smokescreen to pull away civil rights protections. Immigration enforcement and the deployment of ICE as a domestic paramilitary are combining to enforce an illegal rollback of constitutional rights and terrorize Black and brown people.
The alliance between the movements against ICE, for the defense of DEI and affirmative action programs, and against federal occupations around the country are building a mass movement against fascism and for real democracy. The boycott of Target represents a movement that bridges all of these campaigns to contribute to the building of a strong united front against MAGA fascism.
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