‘We Ain’t Buying it’: Grassroots groups mobilize to boycott Target, Home Depot, and Amazon

Organizers are asking Americans to boycott retailers for allying with or failing to stand up to the Trump administration. 

A new coalition of grassroots organizations this month launched the ‘We Ain’t Buying It’ campaign, calling on consumers in North Carolina and across the United States to boycott three of the nation’s largest companies over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

The effort—targeting Amazon, Home Depot, and Target—is urging consumers to avoid buying anything from these companies from Thanksgiving on Nov. 27 through Cyber Monday on Dec. 1 due to what organizers say is their collaboration with and capitulation to the Trump administration. 

“This action is taking direct aim at Target, for caving to this administration’s biased attacks on DEI; Home Depot, for allowing and colluding with ICE to kidnap our neighbors on their properties; and Amazon, for funding this administration to secure their own corporate tax cuts,” the campaign’s website reads. 

Organizers are targeting the companies over the holiday shopping season in the hopes of making  them pay for those decisions.

“This week, we’ll send a clear message: stop complying with this lawless, vicious, bigoted agenda,” said Leah Greenberg, Co-Executive Director of Indivisible. “Stand up for American democracy, civil rights and our communities. Our dollars will go to people who share our values.”

Indivisible Charlotte founder and Executive Director Carolyn Erberly told Cardinal & Pine that her organization is encouraging people to support small businesses as part of a local corporate boycott.

“When you’re talking about the big box and the corporation, that removes yourself from your community. And you see directly, when you have the small businesses, how you support each other,” Erberly said. “It’s really important that we spend our dollars there so these businesses can stay afloat, so that we have those options and that we have built that community.” 

Amazon, whose founder Jeff Bezos stood with fellow tech billionaires at President Trump’s inauguration in January, is one of dozens of corporate donors funding Trump’s $300 million ballroom being constructed where the former East Wing of the White House once stood.

In addition to Bezos’ support of Trump, organizers cite Amazon’s record on workers’ rights and union busting as why it’s being boycotted.

In North Carolina, Amazon ran a full-court press against a unionization effort by workers at RDU1, a fulfillment center located in the Raleigh suburb of Garner. Amazon supervisors gave impassioned speeches accompanied by DJs, encouraging employees to vote against unionization. The company also installed additional surveillance cameras in the workplace, making workers feel intimidated.

Workers at the plant voted against unionization by a margin of 2,447 to 829.

Home Depot and mass deportations

Since taking office, Trump has scaled up a mass deportation system that has terrorized immigrant communities across the US.

In May, Stephen Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security advisor, allegedly ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target day laborers shopping at Home Depot stores to drive up deportation numbers.

In the weeks after Miller’s alleged remarks, Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone lavished praise on Trump.

“I am sold on Trump … I think he’s got a good shot at going down in history as one of our best presidents ever,” Langone said in an interview with CNBC.“What I’m seeing happening is absolutely nothing short of a great thing.”

Across the country, ICE has repeatedly targeted laborers outside Home Depot storefronts, drawing widespread scrutiny. Many of these raids have gone viral on social media, including an incident earlier this month where a father and daughter were separated during a raid at a Home Depot.

“We ain’t buying that families can be torn apart and people kidnapped off the streets by masked ICE agents,” said LaTosha Brown, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a group supporting the boycott.

Target: capitulating to Trump’s anti-DEI policies

For years, mega-retailer Target was subject to right-wing attacks over policies that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts, including the creation of minority hiring goals, and pledging $2 billion in support of Black-owned businesses in the US by the end of this year.

Two days after returning to the White House, President Trump signed an executive order banning DEI policies within the federal government. Following Trump’s order in January, Target, along with Meta, McDonalds, and other corporations, ended their DEI policies. The Trump administration has also threatened to go after corporations that continue enacting DEI policies.

Target was also the focus of a 2023 boycott, pushed by right-wing influencers over its decision to sell LGBTQ items during Pride Month, something the company had been doing for years. The activists pushed Target to remove items related to Pride from their shelves, and stores in five states faced bomb threats.

Target relented and removed certain Pride-related items from all stores. And some Target locations opted to move Pride merchandise to the back of their stores.

Brown argued in her statement that it was cowardly for companies like Target to make commitments to improve minority hiring practices and support Black-owned businesses only to give up on those initiatives when it becomes politically inconvenient.

“We ain’t buying that DEI and racial justice commitments can be tossed aside at the whims of political convenience. And we ain’t buying that corporations are powerless in all of this,” she said. 

For those participating in and pushing for the boycott, the message is simple: companies like Amazon, Home Depot, and Target could push back against the administration’s most harmful policies. 

Locally, Erberly is focused on Indivisible Charlotte’s smaller-scale boycott: “Local Need over Corporate Greed.” The effort is calling on the community to support local businesses.

“Every dollar that is spent is power. We can choose to put that power into our communities, and not into corporations,” Erberly said.