Putting his marching boots aside for now, St. Sabina’s pastor, Father Michael Pfleger, announced his first plan of resistance to Trump’s ending of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) program. He called for a nationwide boycott of Target stores because they were the first to sign into the cancellation.
Saying he would never “bow down” to Trump, Pfleger announced the boycott at the end of his Sunday, February 9 worship service. He gave an example of why he had called for the Target boycott.
In July 2018, Pfleger called on supporters to help shut down the Dan Ryan Expressway after then-Governor Bruce Rauner refused to meet with his youth leaders. The youth leaders were demanding the passage of common-sense gun laws, more community resources, jobs, better schools, and economic development.
Reverend Jesse Jackson joined Pfleger for nearly an hour on 76th Street when the Illinois Department of Transportation blocked protesters from two left lanes, preventing cars from passing.
Faced with threats of arrest, Pfleger and Jackson convinced them to shut down the northbound lanes, allowing the march to resume.
Governor Rauner had told reporters he gave permission for the protesters to only march on the expressway shoulders, which Pfleger said was “a lie.”
“We came to shut down the Dan Ryan,” he said.
Pfleger explained that the march’s purpose was “to make them inconvenient.” The protesters exited the Dan Ryan Expressway at 67th Street, and no one was arrested.
With the Target boycott, Pfleger said that is what they are doing, making it inconvenient, to get their message across that ending the DEI program is “unacceptable.”
Pfleger then asked one of his Black members to stand with him in the middle of the aisle facing the Internet, visually demonstrating to the audience the importance and impact of the DEI program.
Standing beside a Black member, Pfleger said if two people show up for a job, one white and the other Black, who are equally qualified, stepped forward, said without the DEI program in place, the white person gets the job.
Turning towards the Internet, he spoke to the whites who religiously watch his live worship service, many of whom constantly complain about the “Blackness” of his Catholic service, telling them, “White women get the biggest share of the DEI contracts and of the people of color, Blacks, get less.”
Pfleger said, “We are not going to roll over,” and let Trump and Elon Musk, whom he called the “co-Presidents,” take away gained civil rights.
“We will fight back,” Pfleger bellowed, asking his members to repeat the protest mantra repeatedly.
Just a few hours later, Pfleger posted the first Target boycott on his Facebook page, that of a woman at a Target store watching the cashier ring up the items she had chosen.
She then said, without disrespect to the cashier, that she was not going to pay for the items because Target had joined Trump in being the first to end its DEI program.
The St. Sabina member then told the cashier perhaps Target’s board members or stakeholders could come and put the items back on the shelves. She then walked out of the store. “Yes, we may have inconvenienced them,” Pfleger said, “but they got the message. We are going to fight back.”
Pfleger promised there would be more acts of resistance against the flurry of executive orders Trump keeps signing, designed to take away the gained civil rights of Blacks. “It’s fight-back time,” he told his cheering members.
Emails sent to Target media representatives were not returned by press time.
