Two Minnesota-based Black women activists who claim to have started the ongoing National Target Boycott more than a year ago are accusing megachurch pastor Jamal Bryant, former Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner, and Until Freedom activist Tamika Mallory of deliberately co-opting their economic protest and creating confusion over whether it has ended.
To be clear, the Target boycott isn’t over.
Two of Bryant’s biggest critics have been Racial Justice Network leader Nekima Levy Armstrong and Black Lives Matter Minnesota chapter leader Monique Cullars-Doty, who partnered with CAIR Minnesota executive director Jaylani Hussein to co-found the National Target Boycott in early February 2025 in the Minneapolis hometown of the bullseye brand’s world headquarters.
The boycott came in response to Target’s January 2025 walk back of its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump, who opposes DEI initiatives. Levy Armstrong issued her call for a Target boycott during a Jan. 30 press conference outside the retailer’s headquarters.
Bryant, who officially started the Target Fast more than a month later on March 5, has faced widespread criticism from Black folks on social media for declaring an end to the protest last week, confusion for which he apologized on Friday.
Levy Armstrong is the prominent civil rights attorney and activist who has been at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement in the Twin Cities region since the 2015 police killing of Jamar Clark. She was arrested in January in the aftermath of Renee Good’s killing in Minneapolis after demonstrating during a local church service due to the pastor’s work as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.
She said she had phone conversations with Bryant, Mallory, and Turner roughly a year ago and allege that the trio deliberately hijacked their protest, an accusation Bryant, Mallory, and Turner have denied.
Levy Armstrong compared the situation to what happened to Black women activists during the Civil Rights Movement, when Black men were put at the forefront and sometimes credited for the work of their female counterparts.
“When there is a man in the picture, particularly who is seen as a celebrity, our words get erased,” Levy Armstrong told Capital B Atlanta. “This is about correcting the historical record and being honest about the origins of this boycott. And also, how we got here, where there is manufactured confusion.”
Levy Armstrong and Cullars-Doty pointed out that Target’s strong stance in support of DEI in 2020 came, in large part, because it is headquartered in the city where George Floyd was murdered that year. They and other local activists have spent years doing social justice work in the Twin Cities region.
Cullars-Doty said she and Levy Armstrong started a conversation on Facebook Jan. 25 in response to Target’s DEI rollback. On Jan. 28, Levy Armstrong shared a press release on Facebook announcing a nationwide boycott. She said the trouble began when a local activist and friend named Leslie Redmond shared the release with Turner and Mallory.
“[Mallory and Turner] wanted to meet with Nakima to get more clarification about this,” Cullars-Doty said. “Nakima got on a meeting and Jamal Bryant was also on that meeting. And there were other people on there. So what happened as a result of that? Tamika Mallory, Nina Turner, and Jamal Bryant co-opted the Target boycott.”
Turner, the former Ohio state Senator, maintains that she called for a Target boycott before Levy Armstrong. She and Mallory pointed to an Instagram post Turner made days before Levy Armstrong’s Jan. 30 press conference on the same subject.
“I am the national boycott founder,” Turner wrote in a text message before a Monday afternoon interview with Capital B Atlanta. “It’s curious to me that people are platforming [Levy Armstrong], knowing that she is trying to destroy [the boycott] all because she wants credit.”
Bryant made an attempt to credit Levy Armstrong for the Target Boycott movement work she started in Minneapolis during a press conference with Mallory and Turner in Washington last Wednesday. He mistakenly referred to Levy Armstrong as “Nekima Williams.”
“We are not in competition,” Bryant said. “We’re all fighting towards the same goal. And so I just wanted, in this historic moment, to invoke her name.”
He apologized for his actions during a Friday episode of his Let’s Be Clear podcast, saying the Target Fast “was just a strategy and a tactic of the Target boycott” that was “not meant to take its place.”
Bryant clarified that he was focused on Target allegedly meeting three of the four demands he set for the Target Fast and making progress toward the fourth.
“I made assumptions that were not true and I wanted to apologize to you for being a leader that was out of touch with what it is that the community wanted and sensed what it is that the community were demanding,” Bryant said. “I’ve heard you overwhelmingly so. And [for] not having a good read of the room, I take full responsibility.”
Levy Armstrong, Cullars-Doty and Turner all stressed that they will continue not shopping at Target. The two Minneapolis-based activists encouraged boycott supporters to hold the line.
“We can say, ‘You know what? Our dollars matter,’” Cullars-Doty said. “We don’t have to shop anywhere where we’re not respected and appreciated.”
This story has been updated.
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