List of Stores Being Boycotted in June
The nonpartisan People's Union USA has pushed economic boycotts of some of the country's biggest companies since February, vowing to protect the American working class from "the greed and corruption that's kept us divided, distracted, and struggling for decades."
Companies like Target have reversed policies on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to the chagrin of The People's Union, which has called such corporate decisions "backward, regressive and dangerous."
Newsweek reached out to its founder, John Schwarz, for comment.
The "Economic Blackout Tour" rolls on, dissuading Americans from financially supporting Target between June 3 and 9; and McDonald's from June 24 to 30.
Newsweek reached out to both companies for comment.
The broad effort is not meant to repudiate Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Joe Biden or any other politician, The People's Union says on its website. The group is unaffiliated with any political party or ideological persuasion.
"We don't play party games," the website reads. "We don't care who's wearing the suit. What we care about is truth, the people, and the power we hold when we stand together. ... This isn't about personalities, it's about the system.
"Both parties have failed us. Billionaires and corporations have bought the government and weaponized the economy. We are not here to argue about figureheads; we're here to dismantle the rigged structure that's been crushing the working class for decades. We don't take sides, we take action."
Other boycotts since February 28 have targetedAmazon, Nestle, Walmart and General Mills.
Schwarz, who has more than 436,000 Instagram followers, took to the platform on Memorial Day to post a video invigorating like-minded individuals on what the group has already accomplished and what remains on its agenda.
The video, titled "Time to Shut Down Target," encourages people "to hold the lines."
"We already know Target is being boycotted, but they're not doing anything," Schwarz said. "They've had their chance. So, what we are doing between June 3 and June 9, we will be calling for the permanent boycott of Target. Shop anywhere else but Target, and I literally mean that.
"If you got to shop at Walmart or Amazon, places we boycott, do it. Target needs to be shut down; this corporation needs to feel the full power of the people. All thsoe other corporations out there manipulating us will feel the full power. Stand in solidarity, the only thing we have is each other."
Black individuals have also boycotted Target for their DEI policies and claimed lack of financial investment in their communities.
Reverend Jamal Bryant, pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta, initially led a Target boycott during the Lenten season coined "Target Fast" in response to the company's elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles and lack of investment in Black-owned banks, businesses and education.
"It's been absolutely phenomenal," Bryant told Newsweek on May 29. "It is the largest boycott by black people since the Montgomery bus boycott in its effectiveness. Over 200,000 people signed the [Target Fast] petition.
"[It's great] to see over 2,000 churches to fall in alignment. To see the stock drop, to see the valuation drop, to see the CEO salary chopped, to see their foot traffic has dropped says that we've got amazing momentum and the wind to our back, and I really believe that a real civil rights movement is on the horizon."
Bryant said Target Fast was borne out of Target's rescinding of DEI policies and the "reneging of their covenant to of the George Floyd family."
"When we look at the bottom line of Black people spending $12 million a day in Target, we really felt that it was a betrayal," he said. "They made a covenant after George Floyd's murder, with no prompting, no rally, no protest and no pressure under their own devices. The CEO, Brian [Cornell] said that George Floyd could have been one of his employees.
"For them to backpedal in such a speedy way, we thought that was a betrayal that could not be overlooked."
He and supporters are now electronically boycotting Dollar General, aiming to overwhelm their systems with calls and emails, along with a social media campaign.
Bryant said the brand, even with its 20,500-plus stores in 48 states and $40.6 billion in sales, is "swimming under the radar."
"They have three times the stores of Target and Walmart combined, at about 21,000 around the country," he said. "They are in primarily impoverished communities. They're in rural areas of 20,000 or less. We ask for electronic in those rural areas because regrettably, for a lot of communities, that's their only option for groceries. There's no Publix, there's no Giant.
"They've taken up that land space and $40 billion in profit, and Dollar General has never given to a Black institution; never given to a Black college; never given to a Black organization. They have no relationship with the Black Farmers Association. You can't just take our dollars and take our dignity at the same time."
Target told Newsweek in May: "We are absolutely dedicated to fostering inclusivity for everyone—our team members, our guests and our supply partners. To do that, we're focusing on what we do best: providing the best retail experience for the more than 2,000 communities we're proud to serve."
Walmart told Newsweek in May: "As one of the largest corporate taxpayers in the country, not only do we pay our fair share, we are an economic force multiplier strengthening communities nationwide through job creation, supplier growth, and over $1.7 billion in cash and in-kind donations last year...We remain dedicated to earning the business of all Americans and giving our time and resources to causes that uplift and unite communities who rely on us every day."
John Schwarz, in an Instagram post during the first Amazon boycott: "Every boycott, every blackout, every stand we take together is shaking their foundation. This moment isn't just about resistance, it's about reclaiming what's ours. Hold the line. Stay strong. The future is in our hands."
Future efforts by The People's Union include an Independence Day boycott. It says more boycotts are being planned, with details to follow.
Bryant said that boycott efforts across Black communities is an endeavor that escalated on Memorial Day and will at least for now continue until Labor Day, describing it as "the summer of our discontent." He is meeting with other community leaders to identify whether additional companies and brands should be boycotted as well.
"We're we're hoping that before the summer ends that we'll have some resolve," he said.
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USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Trump's golf trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
BALMEDIE, Scotland − Long before talk of hush-money payments, election subversion or mishandling classified documents, before his executive orders were the subject of U.S. Supreme Court challenges, before he was the 45th and then the 47th president: on a wild and windswept stretch of beach in northeast Scotland, Donald Trump the businessman was accused of being a bad neighbor. "This place will never, ever belong to Trump," Michael Forbes, 73, a retired quarry worker and salmon fisherman, said this week as he took a break from fixing a roof on his farm near Aberdeen. The land he owns is surrounded, though disguised in places by trees and hedges, by a golf resort owned by Trump's family business in Scotland, Trump International Scotland. For nearly 20 years, Forbes and several other families who live in Balmedie have resisted what they describe as bullying efforts by Trump to buy their land. (He has denied the allegations.) They and others also say he's failed to deliver on his promises to bring thousands of jobs to the area. Those old wounds are being reopened as Trump returns to Scotland for a four-day visit beginning July 25. It's the country where his mother was born. He appears to have great affection for it. Trump is visiting his golf resorts at Turnberry, on the west coast about 50 miles from Glasgow, and at Balmedie, where Forbes' 23 acres of jumbled, tractor-strewn land, which he shares with roaming chickens and three Highland cows, abut Trump's glossy and manicured golf resort. On July 28, Trump will briefly meet in Balmedie with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to "refine" a recent U.S.-U.K. trade deal, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Golf, a little diplomacy: Trump heads to Scotland In Scotland, where estimates from the National Library of Scotland suggest that as many as 34 out of the 45 American presidents have Scottish ancestry, opinions hew toward the he's-ill-suited-for-the-job, according to surveys. "Trump? He just doesn't know how to treat people," said Forbes, who refuses to sell. What Trump's teed up in Scotland Part of the Balmedie community's grievances relate to Trump's failure to deliver on his promises. According to planning documents, public accounts and his own statements, Trump promised, beginning in 2006, to inject $1.5 billion into his golf project six miles north of Aberdeen. He has spent about $120 million. Approval for the development, he vowed, came with more than 1,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 construction gigs attached. Instead, there were 84, meaning fewer than the 100 jobs that already existed when the land he bought was a shooting range. Instead of a 450-room luxury hotel and hundreds of homes that Trump pledged to build for the broader community, there is a 19-room boutique hotel and a small clubhouse with a restaurant and shop that sells Trump-branded whisky, leather hip flasks and golf paraphernalia. Financial filings show that his course on the Menie Estate in Balmedie lost $1.9 million in 2023 − its 11th consecutive financial loss since he acquired the 1,400-acre grounds in 2006. Residents who live and work near the course say that most days, even in the height of summer, the fairway appears to be less than half full. Representatives for Trump International say the plan all along has been to gradually phase in the development at Balmedie and that it is not realistic or fair to expect everything to be built overnight. There's also support for Trump from some residents who live nearby, and in the wider Aberdeen business community. One Balmedie resident who lives in the shadow of Trump's course said that before Trump the area was nothing but featureless sand dunes and that his development, carved between those dunes, made the entire landscape look more attractive. Fergus Mutch, a policy advisor for the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, said Trump's golf resort has become a "key bit of the tourism offer" that attracts "significant spenders" to a region gripped by economic turmoil, steep job cuts and a prolonged downturn in its North Sea oil and gas industry. Trump in Scotland: Liked or loathed? Still, recent surveys show that 70% of Scots hold an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Despite his familial ties and deepening investments in Scotland, Trump is more unpopular among Scots than with the British public overall, according to an Ipsos survey from March. It shows 57% of people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't view Trump positively. King Charles invites Trump: American president snags another UK state visit While in Balmedie this time, Trump will open a new 18-hole golf course on his property dedicated to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was a native of Lewis, in Scotland's Western Isles. He is likely to be met with a wave of protests around the resort, as well as the one in Turnberry. The Stop Trump Coalition, a group of campaigners who oppose most of Trump's domestic and foreign policies and the way he conducts his private and business affairs, is organizing a protest in Aberdeen and outside the U.S. consulate in Edinburgh. During Trump's initial visit to Scotland as president, in his first term, thousands of protesters sought to disrupt his visit, lining key routes and booing him. One protester even flew a powered paraglider into the restricted airspace over his Turnberry resort that bore a banner that read, "Trump: well below par #resist." 'Terrific guy': The Trump-Epstein party boy friendship lasted a decade, ended badly Trump's course in Turnberry has triggered less uproar than his Balmedie one because locals say that he's invested millions of dollars to restore the glamour of its 101-year-old hotel and three golf courses after he bought the site in 2014. Trump versus the families Three families still live directly on or adjacent to Trump's Balmedie golf resort. They say that long before the world had any clue about what type of president a billionaire New York real estate mogul and reality-TV star would become, they had a pretty good idea. Forbes is one of them. He said that shortly after Trump first tried to persuade him and his late wife to sell him their farm, workers he hired deliberately sabotaged an underground water pipe that left the Forbes – and his mother, then in her 90s, lived in her own nearby house – without clean drinking water for five years. Trump International declined to provide a fresh comment on those allegations, but a spokesperson previously told USA TODAY it "vigorously refutes" them. It said that when workers unintentionally disrupted a pipe that ran into an "antiquated" makeshift "well" jointly owned by the Forbeses on Trump's land, it was repaired immediately. Trump has previously called Forbes a "disgrace" who "lives like a pig." 'I don't have a big enough flagpole' David Milne, 61, another of Trump's seething Balmedie neighbors, lives in a converted coast guard station with views overlooking Trump's course and of the dunes and the North Sea beyond. In 2009, Trump offered him and his wife about $260,000 for his house and its one-fifth acre of land, Milne said. Trump was caught on camera saying he wanted to remove it because it was "ugly." Trump, he said, "threw in some jewelry," a golf club membership (Milne doesn't play), use of a spa (not yet built) and the right to buy, at cost, a house in a related development (not yet constructed). Milne valued the offer at about half the market rate. When Milne refused that offer, he said that landscapers working for Trump partially blocked the views from his house by planting a row of trees and sent Milne a $3,500 bill for a fence they'd built around his garden. Milne refused to pay. Over the years, Milne has pushed back. He flew a Mexican flag at his house for most of 2016, after Trump vowed to build a wall on the southern American border and make Mexico pay for it. Milne, a health and safety consultant in the energy industry, has hosted scores of journalists and TV crews at his home, where he has patiently explained the pros and cons − mostly cons, in his view, notwithstanding his own personal stake in the matter − of Trump's development for the local area. Milne said that because of his public feud with Trump, he's a little worried a freelance MAGA supporter could target him or his home. He has asked police to provide protection for him and his wife at his home while Trump is in the area. He also said he won't be flying any flags this time, apart from the Saltire, Scotland's national flag. "I don't have a big enough flagpole. I would need one from Mexico, Canada, Palestine. I would need Greenland, Denmark − you name it," he said, running through some of the places toward which Trump has adopted what critics view as aggressive and adversarial policies. Dunes of great natural importance Martin Ford was the local Aberdeen government official who originally oversaw Trump's planning application to build the Balmedie resort in 2006. He was part of a planning committee that rejected it over environmental concerns because the course would be built between sand dunes that were designated what the UK calls a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the way they shift over time. The Scottish government swiftly overturned that ruling on the grounds that Trump's investment in the area would bring a much-needed economic boost. Neil Hobday, who was the project director for Trump's course in Balmedie, last year told the BBC he was "hoodwinked" by Trump over his claim that he would spend more than a billion dollars on it. Hobday said he felt "ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it. We all fell for it." The dunes lost their special status in 2020, according to Nature Scot, the agency that oversees such designations. It concluded that their special features had been "partially destroyed" by Trump's resort. Trump International disputes that finding, saying the issue became "highly politicized." For years, Trump also fought to block the installation of a wind farm off his resort's coast. He lost that fight. The first one was built in 2018. There are now 11 turbines. Ford has since retired but stands by his belief that allowing approval for the Trump resort was a mistake. "I feel cheated out of a very important natural habitat, which we said we would protect and we haven't," he said. "Trump came here and made a lot of promises that haven't materialized. In return, he was allowed to effectively destroy a nature site of great conservation value. It's not the proper behavior of a decent person." Forbes, the former quarry worker and fisherman, said he viewed Trump in similar terms. He said that Trump "will never ever get his hands on his farm." He said that wasn't just idle talk. He said he's put his land in a trust that specified that when he dies, it can't be sold for at least 125 years.


San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
North Bay Nissan dealership closes amid automaker's financial struggles
As its parent company struggles financially, a North Bay Nissan dealership has permanently closed. A note by the Petaluma dealership's employees on their website Friday afternoon announced the closure, which follows several others in the Bay Area in recent years. 'As of 3 pm on July 25th, we have officially concluded our operations as North Bay Nissan,' the statement said. 'It has been a true honor serving the Petaluma and North Bay communities and we are deeply grateful for your loyalty over the years.' More details were not immediately available Saturday morning. The closure comes as North Bay Nissan's parent company, Nissan Motor Co., has weathered significant losses in recent years, leading to factory closures and thousands of job cuts. The company entered the American market in the late 1950s and by the 1970s as one of the world's largest exporters of automobiles. But the automotive giant ran into serious trouble over the past decade after its former CEO was jailed for underreporting his income to Japanese financial authorities and scandal engulfed the company. Over the past five years, the company has laid off thousands of employees, cut production and closed factories. Last November, Nissan announced a plan to cut thousands more employees, and one executive reportedly warned that without a major turnaround, the company would cease to exist in '12 to 14 months.' Nissan's troubles only grew this year, when the carmaker posted its worst financial results in 25 years and after President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs on imported vehicles, which make up a significant portion of the company's U.S. sales. Several other Nissan dealerships have also closed in recent years, including showrooms in Burlingame, Fresno and Antioch.


Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
A Kennedy toils in Mississippi, tracing his grandfather's path
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Kennedy nodded to the history. 'I know a bit about my grandfather's visit to the Delta back in the '60s, and how it changed and outraged him to see this in the richest country in the world,' he said. 'I'm proud that my family has spent a lot of their years in office advocating for these people.' Advertisement Kennedy is on a mission to continue the legacy of an American political family that has in recent years lost some of its liberal luster. It angers him that his uncle Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, is a key figure in an administration that is overturning core values of his family. Advertisement The health secretary has defended work requirements for Medicaid recipients, 'which do not work,' the younger Kennedy said. 'The only thing they succeed at is kicking people off Medicaid who need it.' On the elder Kennedy's efforts to ban food dyes, his nephew dismissively replied, 'It's not the dyes that are making people obese.' Still, he shares with his uncle the belief that Democrats are increasingly captive to an urban elite. 'I think the Democratic Party has lost touch with this reality,' he said, staring out at the Delta landscape. Joe Kennedy III and his wife, Lauren Anne Birchfield, arrived at the JFK Library, Sunday, May 4, 2025, in Boston. Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press Kennedy's response is not to run for president as his grandfather did and his uncle might, or at least not yet. Instead he has formed the Groundwork Project, a nonprofit that seeks to develop a network of grassroots resistance in four deep-red states -- Mississippi, Alabama, Oklahoma and West Virginia -- that have received little attention from left-leaning organizations. Without any meaningful opposition, Kennedy said, those states have become havens for right-wing initiatives, ranging from the evisceration of the Clean Air Act in West Virginia to legislation in Mississippi that banned abortions after 15 weeks and led to the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade. 'The only way to change the power structures in those states is to organize people,' Kennedy said. 'That's not a short fix. But what else can you do?' The slow grind of organization-building in hostile territory that Kennedy envisions has been done before, mostly by conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, which was formed in 2004, operates in 35 states and has an annual operating budget of more than $186 million. In contrast, the Groundwork Project operates on a relatively modest $2.8 million a year, much of it disbursed as $25,000 annual grants to about 40 local groups that have fought uphill battles in areas like environmental justice and reproductive rights. Advertisement But the famous name helps. During a three-day trip to Mississippi to observe the efforts that Groundwork Project is helping to underwrite, locals sometimes referred to its founder in awed tones as 'a Kennedy.' During one gathering of local officials, at a diner in Yazoo City, Kennedy addressed the subject of health care by invoking his lineage, saying, 'My family has focused on this for a long time.' In the next breath, Kennedy pointedly brought up another relative: 'My uncle is now part of an administration that is cutting Medicaid.' Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy of the centrist Democratic organization Third Way, speculated about the political subtext of Kennedy's criticisms of his uncle. 'It's all but certain that Bobby Jr. is going to run for president as a Republican in 2028,' Kessler said. 'Maybe part of what the younger Kennedy is doing is reclaiming the family legacy as a way to remind people, 'This is who we really are.'' Joseph P. Kennedy III spoke at Atlantic Technical University in Letterkenny, Donegal, Ireland on Oct. 2. Conor Doherty The Oral History of Family Lore Kennedy was not yet born when Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's quest for the presidency was cut short by an assassin's bullet in California in June 1968. The 42-year-old candidate left behind his widow, Ethel, and their 11 children, among them Robert Jr. and Joseph, Joe Kennedy III's father, who would go on to serve in Congress from 1987 to 1999. Kennedy said that he has never read a book about his grandfather, since from infancy he marinated in the oral history of family lore. Inculcated in him were RFK adages such as, 'The gross national product can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.' Advertisement His own trajectory followed the meticulously laid Kennedy path of public service merging with political advancement. He spent his childhood in Boston before attending Stanford University and subsequently serving two years in the Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer. He returned home to Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard Law School and then worked as an assistant district attorney in Middlesex County. It came as little surprise in February 2012 when he announced his desire to fill the congressional seat soon to be vacated by Rep. Barney Frank. Kennedy -- an earnest and energetic 31-year-old scion with a genetically distinctive aquiline nose, a toothy grin and wavy red hair that deviated from the family's physical template -- coasted to victory without serious opposition. The freshman won over many colleagues in the House, several of whom said in interviews that they had been braced for an entitled brat and instead encountered someone who was thoughtful and unpretentious. He set out to lead on mental health issues as his cousin, Patrick Kennedy, had done before retiring from Congress in 2011. But Kennedy said he grew dismayed by the chamber's partisan divisions and inexplicable lethargy, recalling, 'Even in the majority, I couldn't move my own bills.' By Kennedy's fourth term, restlessness had gotten the better of him. In September 2019, he announced his candidacy for the Senate, a body in which three Kennedy legends -- his grandfather; his great-uncle, the former president; and his great-uncle Ted -- had previously served. He garnered the support of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat who was then the minority leader. Advertisement But the 73-year-old Democratic incumbent, Sen. Edward J. Markey, outfoxed his younger opponent by recasting himself as a rabble-rousing progressive in the manner of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who endorsed Markey. Kennedy, whose tendency is to speak in carefully constructed paragraphs, struggled to come up with his own pithy pitch to voters. Markey won the September 2020 primary by 11 points, and Kennedy became the first in his family to be defeated in a senatorial contest. President Donald Trump gloated on Twitter, 'Pelosi strongly backed the loser!' Being spurned and disparaged by liberal activists was unfamiliar terrain for a Kennedy, and he spent the remainder of 2020 contemplating his options. 'Losing sucks,' Kennedy said. 'But I made the decision to try to build something that keeps you engaged and energized. And if something comes up, perhaps you take it, but you're not sitting around waiting for that to happen.' Joe Kennedy delivered his election-night in Watertown on Sept. 1, 2020, in his unsuccessful Senate race against Ed Markey John Tlumacki/Globe Staff 'You Democrats Think We Don't Know How to Work?' Rejected by progressive activists, Kennedy turned to forgotten agrarian lands like the Mississippi Delta, which has only one major city (Jackson), and is therefore difficult to organize. It's 'what I call a hard-to-fight state,' said Charles Taylor, the executive director of Mississippi's NAACP chapter. Similar impediments exist in Oklahoma, where Republican legislators have passed severe restrictions on abortion and on what can be taught in public school classrooms about racism. Alabama, a third Groundwork Project state, benefits from a more urban population than Oklahoma or Mississippi. But Democratic get-out-the-vote organizers have been reluctant to operate in a state where there is no in-person early voting and where absentee ballots must be signed by a notary or two voting-age witnesses. Advertisement West Virginia is by far the most challenging for Kennedy. Its overwhelmingly rural and white population was long Democratic, but the collapse of the coal and steel industries in the state have spawned a profound distrust of party elites, Kennedy said. He recalled a visit to West Virginia just after he founded the Groundwork Project, when a bearded young man asked him, 'How come you Democrats think we don't know how to work?' To every such question, Kennedy's implicit answer was to organize. 'I think Mississippi has so much to teach our nation about resilience, never losing focus and not giving up when your government is actively working against you,' he said at an event in Indianola. Kennedy is applying the same calm resolve to his own political future. He and his wife, Lauren Birchfield Kennedy, an attorney and children's advocate, have a 6-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter. Kennedy laments having missed so much of their infancy while serving in Washington. 'The question is, is what I would get out of going back into elective office worth the sacrifice that I asked my family to go through again?' For now, Kennedy is content to leave the question unanswered. 'I'm 44,' he said. 'And at some point down the road, I wouldn't necessarily rule anything out.' This article originally appeared in