Hey Target! An Apology is Not an Amends!

Yestereve, I was having dinner with my dear friend Shelly Horn at Spice in Chelsea, when I checked my Facebook page via my phone. An ally/comrade/acquaintance of mine in Minneapolis had posted a link to a story from the Minneapolis Star Tribune in which Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel offers an apology for the corporate donation to Minnesota Forward and pledges to establish a review committee for any future political contributions to ensure that the money does not go to candidates that are going to piss off the Target employees and shoppers in the future (paraphrasing is all mine). This friend of mine from back home had posted this article on my wall saying, "In your face Brandon Lacy Campos, boycotts are effective."

Now. I am going to say this for the last damn time. Never in ANY of my writing on this subject have I ever said that boycotts are ineffective, and least of all in my blog Why Not To Boycott Target. I have, indeed, reference successful boycotts in order to illustrate WHY they were successful and HOW they were organized. Disorganized boycotts with no concrete organization or political goals, such as the call for a Target Boycott, hurt workers without doing anything to engage them or empower them to be a part of the solution. The grape boycott was exactly the opposite, it included the farm workers who helped strategize the boycott. They had an understanding that immediate personal economic loss would lead to higher wages and better working conditions.

I have been very clear to keep my analysis to this particular circumstance and suggest strategies that would get us to where we need to go and build stronger coalitions along the way. And, for the last time, I have offered unconditional support to any individual that chooses to not shop at Target because of the MN Forward donation. That is the last I will say on that subject.

But, what disturbs me most about the statement, "In your face Brandon Lacy Campos, boycotts are effective,:" is not that there seems to be some "gotcha game" being played between people that are allies, nor is it that instead of seeing the suggestions for action as disagreement about strategies and a political dialogue but instead as an opportunity to silence or deride folks in the same community, it is the fact that anyone could read that piece of crap apology in the Star Tribune and think to themselves, "WE WON!"

Nowhere in the article did Target agree to withdraw their donation. Target did not agree to lead by example and remove itself from future political contributions, thereby recognizing that the Citizens United ruling was foolish and bad for democracy, nor did the company even give lip service to justice by offering an offsetting donation to an LGBT rights organization. All that was offered was a lukewarm "I'm sorry," that sounded more like an apology that some employees and some people in the community were angered by the donation instead of a sincere regret at the damage done to the community of workers at Target and the community at large. The difference between an apology and an amends is this: An apology is meant to make the apologizer feel better, an amends is meant to fix the damage done and put things right with the aggrieved.

This was an apology and not an amends, and, therefore, I reject it.

I was debating whether or not to write about the apology today, but no sooner did I have that thought, that a friend of mine from college posted a note on my wall saying that he thought he heard that Target apologized. It helped me realize that Steinhafel was playing a smart media game. It is easy for anyone that hasn't actually read the newspaper article to assume that along with the apology came a remedy. And the way that the grapevine works, that apology, without analysis, will, indeed, take some of the pressure off of Target.

Thankfully our community is full to the brim of smart folks that saw it, read it, and then kept right on planning actions against Target.

I maintain that boycotting Target is the wrong approach to this situation. I will be checking in today with a friend of mine that met with the LGBT employee group at Target a couple of days ago, and I am anxious to hear how that went.

And let me be clear, I do support direct actions at Target Stores, and in that vein, if you are in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, there will be a peaceful demonstration tomorrow at the Southdale Mall Target Store at 7000 York Avenue from 11am-1pm.

Let's keep the pressure up, but let's also keep eye ours on justice and not just us.

The End of Dissent or When the FB Target Boycotters Went Neo-Con

Over the last few days, I believe I have offered proactive solutions that would help build a stronger justice movement through organizing around the Target (and Best Buy) donations to Minnesota Forward. While many folks have expressed appreciation and support of the points I have offered in the three blogs that I have posted about the Target Boycott and the Citizens United ruling there are many that have disagreed. Overwhelmingly, people that hold that a boycott is the right strategy have disagreed respectfully and expressed their reasons why they believe that it is a good response. A large few, but still the minority, have had various levels of virulent response from dismissal to outright hostility and shaming tactics. That all comes with the territory.

Over the last few days I have, and other folks have, posted some of my blogs on the Facebook page "Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics." In fact, I wasn't aware of the group until my partner, after posting my initial blog "Why Not to Boycott Target," to the group brought the group to my attention. Since then, I have posted my last three essays to the group, and I have engaged in respectful yet dissenting conversation with several of the members of the group, including the gentleman that founded the group.

Today, I went back to the site and saw that there was a conversation going on around the political donation by Target and its connection to the Citizens United v FEC decision, which I wrote about yesterday. I thought it would be appropriate to post a link to yesterday's essay in the context of the conversation taking place. It was then that I discovered that my right to post links to the site had been revoked by the site administrator.

At first I thought, or hoped, that it was a glitch with the system. So I tried posting the link, instead of within an existing conversation thread, as its own stand alone link. I was, once again, told that I was not allowed to take that action.

For the first time in this dialogue around strategy I shifted from disappointed to very angry.

Restricting or eliminating dissent, quieting opposition, and removing the ability of individuals to participate in community dialogues are tools of the Right and not the Left. Or, better to say, those are tools of the far right fascists and the far left Stalinist/Maoist communists. In community dialogues, where there are feelings and offerings of multiple strategies, as long as the dialogue stays respectful, the community can only come out stronger on the other side of the work to hear, synthesize, and craft a measured and intelligent response or proactive engagement with a justice issue. Utilizing ones personal power to silence someone with whom you disagree for the simple fact that you disagree with that person is shameful.

When I served as the chair of the National Lavender Green Caucus of the Green Party of the United States, there was a member of the caucus that, on a regular basis, posted ridiculous, harmful, and rabid emails to our list serve concerning his belief, and the pseudo-science behind it, that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. As an HIV positive person I was deeply offended. His postings, which also included personal attacks on positive people that held the belief that HIV does, indeed, cause AIDS callws us deluded at best and stupid at worst. Yet, after reprimanding this individual for the tone of his emails and the ad hominem attacks, I took no further action on his ability to participate in dialogues as long as decorum was maintained. Though I HATED the things he was saying, and though I felt viscerally that they were wrong and hurtful, and though I had the power to remove him from the dialogue altogether, I didn't. That is the measure of how committed one is to building community and not directing it. It takes more courage to listen to ideas with which you don't agree then to remove those ideas from the conversation.

In the end, I understand that there are those that feel so strongly about the Steinhafel donation to Minnesota Forward that they are unable or unwilling to consider the collateral damage, strategic damage, and human damage of a boycott. If those same people are unable or unwilling to see this as a PRIME organizing opportunity to build, sustain, and strengthen cross community and multi-issue organizing, then perhaps posting anything to a group occupied by those folks is a fruitless enterprise.

We demand as a community the right to exercise the First Amendment, and, yet, too often we don't apply that right to those around us. Sad sad day.

Citizens United and the Target Boycott

In 2006, I was named by the Minneapolis Star and Tribune as one of the top policy wonks to watch under 30. For most people, the idea of analyzing public policy and attempting to apply newly passed legislation to the operation of daily life sounds about as fun as giving oneself a circumcision with a dull, rusty plastic spork. I was born with an odd ball gene that sends internally produced opiates directly to my favorite pleasure centers whenever a Supreme Court ruling comes down.

I am pretty sure that is covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In a previous job, I served as the Associate Director and Democratizing Elections Fellow at the Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution. In my late 20s, when many of my queer contemporaries were planning their next mimosa brunch, I was working with a cadre of like-minded lefties trying to figure out how to make the American democracy into an actual democracy. Three years ago, with leadership from Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap from Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County (DUHC) and former Green Party presidential nominee and DUHC staffer David Cobb, Liberty Tree was already engaged with trying to figure out how to fight back against a string of Supreme Court rulings over the last hundred years that established the idea of "corporate personhood." Before January 2010, there were actual limits on the abilities of corporations and unions to participate in the electoral process. Indeed, the McCain-Feingold law of 2002 had established some of the more stringent restrictions on campaign finance and corporate spending in elections in several decades.

In January 2010, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 split decision, gutted almost a century of legislation and judicial precedence by removing any and all barriers to the participation of corporations in the electoral process, establishing definitively that a corporation (and unions), which are basically no more and no less than a conglomeration of special interests with a particular economic goal in mind, has, indeed, all the rights (and sometimes more) than living, breathing, voting individuals.

When that decision came down, wonk heads like me had multiple heart palpitations and started chewing Roll-Aids as if they were Flintstone vitamins, and many of my friends began discreet inquiries into the immigration requirements for Canada. For most people, they understood vaguely that something not so fun had happened, but Joe the Plumber and the everyday person, gripped in the deadly claws of this ridiculous Great Recession, were too worried about how to pay their bills to puzzle through an 183 page ruling that, in the end, used a lot of paper to say, "Demcoracy....SCREW YOU!"

But, when Target CEO Greg Steinhafel choose to direct $150,000 to Minnesota Forward, which then gave the cash to rabidly anti-queer GOP candidate for governor of Minnesota Tom Emmer, the reality of the Citizens United decision came crashing home.

While the community should be angry at Target and should address their concerns and utilize strategies to hit Steinhafel where it hurts, we should all recognize that this is but the first salvo in a new cultural and corporate war that, unless an amendment to the Constitution is passed, or unless the balance of the Supreme Court shifts to the left, we are looking at a long, slow war of attrition in which not only the people but democracy itself will be the losers. Though the ruling was nigh on 200 pages long, the short of it is that the Supreme Court removed any restrictions on the amount of money that corporations can provide to political action committees during elections. PACs, then, can use that money to support the candidate of his or her choice. As Target's CEO said in a very lame (pardon the ableism here) statement, "As you know, Target has a history of supporting organizations and candidates, on both sides of the aisle, who seek to advance policies aligned with our business objectives, such as job creation and economic growth." Let me translate, that statement says, "While we happily extract the maximum effectiveness, creativity, and commitment from our queer employees, we could really give a shit about you as long as we can maximize our profits. Love you. Mean it."

While I encourage direct action that will result in a change in the way that Target makes decisions around political contributions, I warn you all that this is simply the first such strike by a major corporation during a significant election year. God help us come the 2012 presidential election. It is time that we all get behind organizations such as Move To Amend and demand from any of our political candidates that are asking for our support in upcoming elections to sign onto a Constitutional amendment that will revoke corporate personhood and once again limit the ability of corporate collectives from dominating and marginalizing our democracy.

Working Class and Working Class Queers v Target Boycotters

When I published my blog "Why Not To Boycott Target," I had no idea the response that it would receive. I have been blogging since 2005, and in a single day more people read that blog entry than any other entry in the last five years.

And, as usual, not everyone agreed with it. I think one of the most beautiful aspects of my blog is that they often generate strong feelings and visceral discussions, and when it does, I know that I have done my work well.

This time however, I have found myself highly disappointed by our LGBT community (again). I posted my blog on the "Boycott Target" page on Facebook, and, understandably, the reactions were all negative. I expected that. What I didn't expect was the blindness and the willingness to disregard and screw over the working class people at Target. Indeed, one gentleman insisted that by not shopping at Target and shopping at their competitors, the movement isn't hurting the economy just supporting other sectors of it. My number one gripe about all the economic talk in this country is that people talk in markets and sectors instead of talking about the real working class people that are impacted by economic decisions. Indeed, the fact that Congress allowed unemployment benefits to expire for almost two months because Republicans wanted to play politics with peoples lives, is the ultimate example of how the privileged choose to engage with the economy.

And, to be clear, this isn't by accident.

In most of the rest of the world, the real divisions that exist in societies are based in class as opposed to race. The progressive dialogue, while including discussions of racism, is focused, and rightly so, on class stratification. In the U.S., the dialogue has focused on race, and largely because for most of our history race was a key factor (and still is) in economic stratification. But it is even more insidious than that...there was and continues to be cultural wars perpetuated by those in power (without regard to political label) that started during slavery, initially, to keep poor whites and slaves from understanding their joint economic reality. Both poor whites and slaves had similar existences for much of our early history, and there was an intentional dialogue as skin colored based slavery was developed that created a cultural gulf between blacks and poor whites. This was to keep them from combining their strength and working for real progressive change (If you want a great discussion about this, read What's the Matter with Kansas). As the U.S. has matured and its systems of oppression have developed, the one tried and true way to keep communities divided against themselves is to create a barrier between the working class/working poor and the middle and upper class sections of their own communities.

The call for a boycott of Target exemplifies this inner community class struggle perfectly. Many queers of means are willing to throw working class queers under the bus and then back up on top of them to make sure that they don't get back up. To me the logic is simple, if Gregg Steinhafel, Target CEO, is the one that is the source of the problem and the one with the power to make it right, why are we not using tactics that would Target him and instead targeting our working class brothers and sisters? How callous has our community become that we are unwilling to add in a class analysis in our decision making?

For me the answer is simple, the knee jerk reactions of a broad segment of our community is directly related to the fact that our movement (and the progressive moment in general) mobilizes but rarely organizes. The Civil Rights Movement understood that marches, boycotts, strikes, and other forms of civil disobedience were TACTICS that helped get the movement to a specific end point. Each civil disobedience or economic disobedience was never seen as an end in and of itself. The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a strategic action with a specific end goal in mind and the action was predicated on the outcome. They understood, for example that a letter writing campaign to the local paper wouldn't result in desegregation of the bus system. They had to base their actions on a target that would result in their demands being met. Our movement has forgotten how to do that. When Martin Luther King marched on Washington, which was planned and executed by queer civil rights hero and labor organizer Bayard Rustin, the march wasn't his end goal. The end goal was the passage of the Civil Rights Act and, a year later, it was signed into law. Today, we march for marching's sake, and we boycott without any strategy around how to turn these isolated actions into change. And our community has so bought in to the corporate oligarchy that runs this country that we slap corporate logos on our pride events, and we fail to understand that corporations, no matter how benign, have no interest besides making money, while we expect that they have our best interest at heart.

Wake up people.

How powerful would it be to actually organize WITH the Target store workers? What would it look like to build intentional connections with the wage workers to craft a response that will get us to our end goal AND leave us stronger as a community? We need to strategize not only how to win but also how to come out of the win more organized and with stronger alliances. THAT is what creates sustainable long term change.

Thankfully, there are amazing people such as Kenyon Farrow of Queers for Economic Justice, Mervyn Marcano of the Center for Media Justice, Kim Ford of AALUSC, and so many other leaders of our justice movements that get the connections. If only the rest of the community could put its indignation on hold long enough to have a real conversation about social change and how to get to justice without sacrificing anyone along the way.