Bryant said that the current generation does not see how the Black church is relevant and that many Black people do not go to church. “So I wanted to drive the church to be in the center,” he explained.
The Target Fast “was just a strategy and a tactic of the Target boycott,” said Bryant. “It was not to take its place.”
RELATED: Pastor Jamal Bryant Declares End of ‘Target Fast’ After Nearly 400 Days
After summarizing the four demands the Target Fast made of the company, Bryant said, “I’ve heard your emphatic outcry, that it wasn’t just about those four but [that] Target, in the community’s estimation, was a prime candidate for cancellation, saying no matter what happened, you are not going back.”
Referencing his mother, sister, and wife, the pastor said, “I am surrounded by brilliant, beautiful Black women. And so in no ounce of my bones or blood would I ever try to co-opt what it is that Black women are building.”
“I have heralded out loud the remarkable leadership of Attorney Nekima, Rep. Nina, and sister-soldier Tamika Mallory,” said Bryant. “I think that they are incredible leaders, and I don’t want history to record that I tried to stand in the way of the leadership of warrior women.”
The pastor said that confusion about the movement has arisen in part because “we have interchangeably used the Target Fast with the Target boycott.” Those are “two different things, two different entities,” he said, “but it is a train connected to the same wagon. Our intention was just to go 40 days. And so when I made the declaration that the Target Fast was over, it was mingled with the Target boycott at large. I should have lent greater clarity to that.”
Bryant said that Target ought to share the changes the company has made because of the Target Fast. He also stated that neither he nor his church has a financial relationship with Target or receives any compensation from the company.
“I am grieved that because of the pain and the trauma and the triggers of leadership of days gone by, it was an immediate presumption that we have been bought off or that I have been bought off,” he said. “And I wanted to tell you, as God is my witness, I have not and I would not. I am grateful to be free to know that what it is that I do is because [of] a charge I keep…a God to glorify.”
Bryant said that a key factor in what the movement has accomplished so far with Target has to do with the new CEO being open to the campaign’s concerns.
The pastor said he has done a lot of “soul-searching” over the past 72 hours to “figure out where it is that we are, what it is that we’ve done, and what missteps were made.”
