By Dominic Boston

As a young Black man, this topic is personal to me.

When people discuss mental health, they usually don’t picture someone who looks like me. Instead, Black men are often seen as strong, tough, or able to handle anything life throws at us.

Growing up, I was taught exactly that.

My elders always told me to be strong. If I got hurt, I was told to get back up. If I was upset, I was told not to cry. Showing emotion wasn’t encouraged. It was seen as a weakness.

Looking back now, I realize I wasn’t just being taught how to be a man. I was being conditioned to hide my emotions. I was taught to believe that strength meant staying silent, no matter how much pain I was carrying.

I know my family wasn’t trying to hurt me. They wanted me to survive in a world that has never been easy for Black men. They wanted me to be prepared for life’s challenges.

But somewhere along the way, being strong became confused with pretending everything was okay.

Instead of talking about our feelings, we learned how to bury them. Instead of asking for help, we learned how to deal with everything on our own.

The problem is that emotions don’t disappear just because you ignore them. They stay with you, and eventually, they find another way to come out.

I believe that is the reality for many young Black men today.

We’re expected to carry the weight of our families, our communities, our schools, our work, and our lives without ever breaking down. People admire our strength, but they rarely ask how much it costs to always be strong.

The truth is, many of us are hurting in silence because we’ve spent our entire lives believing that is what real men are supposed to do.

For many Black boys, those lessons start early.

Some grow up in neighborhoods where hearing gunshots or seeing police lights is normal. Others lose friends or family members before they are even old enough to understand why. Some are raised in communities where violence, poverty, and limited opportunities are part of everyday life.

When you’re constantly worried about making it home safely or helping your family make ends meet, you don’t always have time to process your emotions.

You focus on surviving.

Then there is the way society sees us.

Before some people even hear us speak, they have already made assumptions. Many Black men know what it feels like to be watched while shopping, stereotyped because of the clothes they wear, or judged simply because they are Black.

On top of that, many of us grow up having conversations with our parents about how to act if we are ever stopped by the police.

We aren’t taught those lessons because our parents don’t trust us. We are taught them because our parents are afraid of what could happen if someone else doesn’t see our humanity.

Living with that kind of pressure affects your mental health, whether people realize it or not.

Constantly feeling like you have to prove you are not a threat is exhausting. Always feeling like you have to be perfect just to be treated fairly takes a toll.

Those experiences create anxiety, fear, and stress that many young Black men carry every single day, even if they never talk about it.

I also think these experiences help explain why some young Black men feel disconnected from politics and voting.

If you have spent your whole life watching your community struggle no matter who is in office, it is easy to believe that your vote won’t change anything.

You see schools that need more resources, neighborhoods that deserve more investment, and communities asking for change year after year. After a while, some people stop believing anyone is listening.

But I also believe that is exactly why voting matters.

The people we elect make decisions about education, mental health funding, affordable housing, community programs, healthcare, and criminal justice. Those decisions directly affect neighborhoods like mine and families like mine.

If we want things to change, we can’t sit back and expect someone else to make those choices for us.

Our voices matter, and our votes do too.

One of the biggest changes that needs to happen is the way we talk about mental health.

We have to stop teaching young Black boys that crying makes them weak. We have to stop acting like asking for help is something to be embarrassed about.

Real strength isn’t pretending you’re okay when you’re not.

Real strength is being honest enough to say you’re struggling and courageous enough to ask for help.

As I continue growing into the man I want to become, I’m learning that strength and vulnerability can exist at the same time.

I can be determined, hardworking and resilient while still being honest about my emotions. I don’t have to carry everything by myself, and neither does the next generation of young Black men.

It’s time we change the conversation.

Instead of only telling young Black boys to be strong, we should also tell them it’s okay to cry.

It’s okay to talk.

It’s okay to heal.

Because when we create a generation of men who feel safe expressing themselves, we aren’t making them weaker. We are giving them a better chance to live healthier, happier lives.

And that is the kind of strength our communities have needed all along.

By Stephen Oduntan

When George Ray “Bogard” Thomas first encountered Black August in 1987, he wasn’t at a rally, a university lecture or a community commemoration. He was entering California’s prison system.

Thomas had grown up in Watts’ Imperial Courts housing projects, one of five children raised in a single-parent household. His father sold drugs, he has said, and his mother relied on public assistance. By 13, Thomas was cycling through the juvenile justice system. He later became a co-founder of the Eastside Crips, part of a street organization he says initially drew inspiration from the community-protection politics of the Black Panther Party. A previous profile of Thomas in The Wave chronicled that journey from the streets of Watts through prison, cancer and eventually youth mentorship.

He would return to prison years later. A 2010 drug case led to a sentence of 31 years to life. The case grew out of a traffic stop in the Palmdale-Lancaster area in which sheriff’s deputies found cocaine base during a search of his person. Thomas later challenged aspects of that search, arguing that the search of his buttocks exceeded the consent he had given and that its manner and location were unreasonable. A suppression motion filed by his attorney was denied.

Thomas continued fighting his conviction through the courts. When his appeal reached California’s Second District Court of Appeal, Kamala Harris was the state’s attorney general. The 2013 opinion lists Harris and attorneys from her office as counsel for the state; it does not indicate that Harris personally participated in Thomas’s prosecution or appeal. The appellate court affirmed the judgment with modifications.

Nearly four decades after he first encountered Black August, prison remains written on his body.

Thomas speaks by pressing an electronic device against his throat, the result of stage 4 cancer and surgery that took his natural voice. He spent years in solitary confinement. Thomas says he endured sexual abuse in custody, lived amid mold and poor ventilation and received medical treatment he came to distrust. He believes conditions inside contributed to his illness.

“You ain’t alive to nobody out there because nobody don’t even care,” Thomas said of serving life in prison. “You a dead man walking.”

Yet Thomas said prison never broke his spirit.

He studied law behind bars, working through legal books and filing motions. Another incarcerated man offered to show him how to fight his case but made one thing clear: Thomas would have to do the work himself.

He did.

Thomas still keeps one of the legal books he studied—a book containing the same laws he says had helped put him behind bars.

“It’s the same book that got me out,” he said.

For Thomas, one of the central disciplines associated with Black August—study—is anything but theoretical. Knowledge became an instrument of survival.

Since emerging from California’s prisons more than four decades ago, Black August has traveled far beyond the walls that produced it. Its roots, however, lie in a prison movement that confronted racial violence, isolation and the treatment of incarcerated Black people—conditions organizers believed the outside world too easily ignored.

Now, as Black August enters its final days, longtime practitioners and formerly incarcerated people say the more important question is what happens when the month ends: Has the tradition spread faster than its meaning—and what remains when August is over?

Thandisizwe Chimurenga has been considering those questions for decades.

An author, multimedia journalist and activist who co-founded Black August Los Angeles, Chimurenga has observed Black August with other members of the group since the 1990s. She sees something encouraging in its growing visibility.

“What I’m seeing differently is more of an acknowledgment of Black August’s origins,” Chimurenga said.

Those origins matter, she said, because many of the men who developed the tradition were already incarcerated, organizing under conditions that gave prison officials enormous control over communication, discipline and daily life.

Its purpose was never celebration.

“It’s commemorating,” Chimurenga said. “It’s remembering, it’s honoring, and it’s recommitment.”

Even the increasingly common greeting “Happy Black August,” she said, misses some of that solemnity.

“It’s not a happy time,” Chimurenga said. “It’s a very heavy time. A solemn time.”

The exchange she learned is simpler. One person says, “Black August.”

The response: “Resistance.”

For veteran organizer Kalonji Changa, preserving that meaning requires more than knowing the history.

“Black August is not just a month,” Changa said. “It is a lifestyle. It’s a way of life.”

Changa, founder of Black Power Media and the FTP Movement, has spent August leading a study of George Jackson’s Blood in My Eye, examining Jackson’s ideas about state power, political consciousness, and organizing.

But Changa worries that revolutionary politics can become easier to display than to practice. A Jackson quotation can be shared. Someone can fast. Neither necessarily requires sacrifice.

“Revolution is not a sexy thing,” Changa said. “Revolution is not cute. It’s not about being seen.”

Chimurenga is less pessimistic about Black August entering music, social media, and popular culture. Greater visibility, she believes, can lead people toward history they might otherwise never encounter.

The question is what they do once they find it.

Black August emphasizes four principles—study, fast, train, and fight. Someone who fasts without studying political prisoners, prison conditions or Black liberation movements, Chimurenga said, is “just not eating.”

Political prisoners remain central to that study.

Chimurenga cited Geronimo Ji-Jaga, Leonard Peltier, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Sundiata Acoli and Assata Shakur while discussing figures whose names became widely known in part because supporters outside prison kept their cases in public view.

But she is equally concerned about the names people don’t know.

She pointed to Khatari Gaulden and Shaka At-Thinnin, incarcerated organizers associated with the history from which Black August emerged. They represent what Chimurenga called the “nameless, faceless” brothers whose organizing behind prison walls never generated the public profiles of better-known figures.

That invisibility has another dimension: California places unusual restrictions on journalists seeking formal interviews with specific incarcerated people. Reporters may write to prisoners, receive calls from them or apply to visit them during regular visiting hours. Journalists on approved media visits may also conduct random interviews with consenting prisoners. But CDCR—California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation cannot arrange a one-on-one media interview with a specific incarcerated person, and ordinary visits cannot be recorded.

The restrictions have survived repeated attempts to change them. Between 1998 and 2012, California lawmakers passed nine bills seeking to restore greater media access to prisons. All nine were vetoed across four successive gubernatorial administrations—those of Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown.

The effort continued under Gov. Gavin Newsom. In 2024, lawmakers passed Senate Bill 254, which would have required CDCR to permit prearranged interviews with specific incarcerated people, allowed journalists to document prison conditions and prohibited retaliation against prisoners for communicating with the media. Newsom vetoed it, citing concerns that included costs and the resources CDCR would need to safely accommodate increased media access.

For a tradition rooted in remembering people behind prison walls, the restrictions raise a larger question: Who gets to tell the public what happens inside when the people living there cannot easily speak directly to reporters?

Thomas understands what it means to become invisible that way.

He remembers Black August being widely understood among Black prisoners when he entered the system in the 1980s. Correctional officers understood its significance, too, he said.

Asked whether the tradition gave incarcerated Black men an identity or source of power that the institution could not entirely control, Thomas did not hesitate.

“Exactly,” he said. “Exactly right.”

Changa has seen why outside attention matters. He has worked on campaigns involving political prisoners, including Leonard Peltier, and said sustained contact and advocacy can make prison officials aware that someone outside is watching.

Thomas now tries to keep young people from following him behind the walls.

He works through the Tony Bogard Foundation, named for his late younger brother, Tony “Bogard” Thomas, a prominent Watts figure who helped sustain the 1992 gang truce between Bloods and Crips before being shot and killed in Imperial Courts in 1994.

George Thomas now teaches young people about Jackson and the history that produced Black August.

“Learn your history so you won’t never have to be incarcerated,” Thomas said. “You gotta look behind you to see what’s in front of you.”

That idea of looking backward also animates Changa’s view of the present. Technology has transformed surveillance, communication, and organizing, but he sees continuity in the systems Jackson wrote about.

“Nothing changed but the timestamp,” Changa said.

And so another Black August approaches its end.

The fast will end. Events will conclude. Social media will move on.

But incarceration will not.

For Chimurenga, August 31 has never represented a finish line. The history carries almost immediately into the 1971 Attica prison uprising, which began on Sept. 9, less than three weeks after Jackson was killed at San Quentin. The connection reinforces what she sees as a history that cannot be neatly contained within a single commemorative month.

So when August ends, she doesn’t.

“I just ride it through,” Chimurenga said.

Then she put it more simply.

“It doesn’t really end for me.”

By James Farr | OPINION CONTRIBUTOR

You Gonna Let My Good Air Out?

By late afternoon in August, the west-facing wall of the house in Oak Park has been collecting sun for three hours. The glass holds it. The drywall holds it. The air inside stops moving around two o’clock and doesn’t start again. Shades pulled. Fan running. The house baking anyway.

Outside, somebody pulled two chairs off the porch into whatever patch of shade the eave still throws. That is where the fellowshipping happens. A fire survivor who relocated from Altadena to Sacramento described it this way, now living through their second Central Valley summer: conversation flows, somebody goes in for something cold, a screen door opens, somebody hollers—where are those fans? The screen door closes. The only thing hotter than an Oak Park August afternoon is the grease at Fixins Soul Kitchen, about a mile up the road. Southern California Edison records another profitable quarter.

The Governor’s Mansion sits a few minutes north on H Street. The Capitol dome rises just beyond that. In every Black house, in every Black neighborhood, in every Black community around the way from both of them, somebody is telling somebody, you are going to let my good air out.

Summer in California’s inland communities carries a specific weight for Black households. It is an economic event. Groceries up. Gas up. Elders on fixed incomes are holding the weight of everybody around them on a cost of living that stopped making sense years ago. People with the smallest margins pay the premium the hardest.

In August, California’s governor is moving to make it worse.

Nineteen Dead. One Profitable Quarter.

On Jan. 7, 2025, a transmission tower owned and operated by Southern California Edison ignited what became the Eaton Fire. The tower was out of service. SCE had performed no maintenance. The Los Angeles County Fire Department confirmed SCE equipment as the cause.

Nineteen people died. More than 9,400 structures burned—approximately 6,900 of them homes—across Altadena and Pasadena. Altadena carries one of the largest concentrations of Black homeownership in Los Angeles County and in the country. Generational wealth built across decades, gone in a single night. Photographs. Deeds. The furniture somebody’s grandmother brought from the South. Gone.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison, received $16.5 million in compensation in the year that followed. Edison International profits rose. The utilities are not struggling. They arrived in Sacramento profitable, compensated, and asking for more.

Into that same Sacramento, Gov. Gavin Newsom moves to give it to them.

No Bill. No Hearing. No Shame.

No bill exists in print. No bill number to look up. No public hearing to attend. No formal text to read.

What exists are discussions between the governor’s office, investor-owned utility companies, and sympathetic legislators—moving through the final 30 days of session. The proposals would cap what insurance companies can recover from utilities after paying survivor claims, eliminate or gut non-economic damages, and place broader limits on wildfire liability overall. Non-economic damages cover recovery for pain, trauma, lost photographs, and the destruction of irreplaceable generational wealth. The proposals make that pathway harder to walk.

State Sen. Sasha Perez represents the 25th District, which includes Altadena. Her second day in office was the day the Eaton Fire started. She spoke on Conversation Live: Altadena Forward, hosted by James Farr on KBLA Talk 1580. When the Los Angeles Times reported that utility companies threatened to cut California state programs unless the Legislature complied, Perez named what she saw.

“What I found particularly disgusting is over the last two days, the LA Times released an article with the utility company saying that if the Legislature was not to take action around these proposals, that they are going to cut California state programs so that they could give more profits to shareholders instead of trying to improve the lives of Californians and trying to make their equipment more safe,” Perez said. “It is utterly unacceptable. All they care about is their bottom line, which is giving profits to their shareholders.”

Newsom holds the pen. The clock runs regardless.

The System Behind the System

Chris Holden spent years in the California State Assembly and served as mayor of Pasadena. He now leads LA Fire Justice. His interview with Tavis Smiley on KBLA Talk 1580 was identified on air as editorial content independent of that sponsorship relationship. What Holden describes is not complicated. Utilities profit from infrastructure they bury underground and bill ratepayers for. Equipment they own outright and must maintain themselves generates nothing. The incentive runs one direction. The out-of-service SCE tower that started the Eaton Fire lived in the second category. SCE owned it. SCE neglected it. Nineteen people died inside that neglect.

California’s three investor-owned utilities—SCE, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E)—serve roughly 75 to 80 percent of the state’s electricity customers, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. Municipal utilities, including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), Pasadena Water and Power, and Sacramento Municipal Utility District, serve the rest. Municipal utilities have not burned down communities. Holden raises restructuring the investor-owned utility model as a serious legislative option. Sacramento has not explored it.

Meanwhile, Perez launched a year-long investigation into State Farm after Altadena and Palisades residents flooded her office with complaints about delayed and denied claims—violations of existing California law confirmed by the California Department of Insurance. She introduced legislation to impose interest penalties on late-paying insurers and require timely loss estimates for survivors. “These are bills that should have been passed years ago,” Perez said. “The fact that the industry has gotten away with this for so long is pretty shocking.”

Utilities and insurers share no formal agreement. They share something more durable—a mandate to protect shareholder profit and a lobbying apparatus powerful enough to keep Sacramento from making that mandate inconvenient. Newsom controls the pen. The math is not complicated.

This Is Not a California Story

The template taking shape in Sacramento does not stay in Sacramento. Cap liability. Restrict insurer recourse—gut non-economic damages. Draft the legislation without public participation and move it through in the final weeks of session before opposition can organize. The utility industry operates nationally. Its lobbying apparatus operates nationally. What it tests in California it deploys everywhere else.

Gas prices hit Black households in Chicago the same way they hit Black households in Riverside. Groceries that haven’t flattened cost the same in Atlanta as they do in Stockton. The people absorbing the cost of this model live everywhere this readership lives.

In East Los Angeles, a warehouse operated by Lineage Logistics—one of the world’s largest temperature-controlled supply chain companies—caught fire and burned for multiple days in the Boyle Heights neighborhood. The facility released ammonia, the chemical refrigerant stored in large quantities in cold storage operations at that industrial scale, along with thick, toxic smoke that hung over the surrounding area long after the flames died down. Boyle Heights residents sheltered in place. Burning eyes. Respiratory irritation. The particular helplessness of watching a corporation’s building poison your air while you wait for someone in authority to tell you how bad it actually is. The stench reached Altadena, twelve to fifteen miles north, where fire survivors already carrying heightened environmental sensitivity said they smelled it for days. Lineage Logistics owned the building. The neighborhood did not store the ammonia. The neighborhood did not choose the location. The neighborhood absorbed the cost—and that connection runs from Boyle Heights to Altadena to Oak Park to every community in this country where industry gets placed close enough to profit and far enough from accountability.

When corporations cause harm, who pays? The man who wants to answer that question from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. holds the pen in Sacramento right now.

The Pen. The Whiteout. The White House.

Perez took office Jan. 6, 2025. The fire started the next morning. Since then she has fought secret utility legislation, investigated State Farm’s violations of existing law, introduced accountability measures the insurance industry blocked for years, and represented a community absorbing the worst loss it has ever known—all before completing her second year in office. She does it inside a Capitol where utilities hold financial leverage over the legislators who regulate them.

Gavin Newsom calls his political brand Forward. He has built his governorship, his national profile, and his argument to the country around that word. Forward assumes momentum. It assumes progress. It assumes the people in its path are moving with it.

The survivors in Altadena are still rebuilding. Ratepayers across inland California still pay bills that rise. The man who controls accountability for those bills reaches for a bigger pen in a bigger house. Newsom holds the whiteout. He decides what gets erased from the record of who caused this harm and what survivors can recover. That is a leadership story. And the country he wants to lead deserves to read it before he gets there.

Disclosure: Chris Holden leads LA Fire Justice, which sponsors programming on KBLA Talk 1580. His interview with Tavis Smiley, conducted on that platform, was identified on air as editorial content independent of that relationship.

By Jame Farr

“What you about to witness is my thoughts. Just my thoughts, man—right or wrong. Just by what I was feelin’ at the time” ~Jay-Z

Can He Live?

Not long ago, I found myself asking a different question.

Can Shawn Carter live?

I wasn’t asking whether Jay-Z could still sell out stadiums or build another billion-dollar business. I was asking whether a Black man could reach extraordinary success without every business decision becoming a referendum on whether he’s still “for the culture.”

That question stayed with me after I wrote about the 30th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt. Part of that conversation centered on Target. The exclusive Reasonable Doubt vinyl release through Target reignited criticism already surrounding the retailer’s retreat from diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments. The record wasn’t the issue. The symbolism was.

I left that column still thinking. Not because I had the answer. Because I wasn’t convinced we were asking the right questions.

This column isn’t about Jay-Z. It’s about what happened after one of America’s largest retailers announced changes to its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on Jan. 24, 2025. It’s about the boycott movement that followed, the people who organized it, and the competing public narratives about who started it, who led it, and who, if anyone, could declare it over. Those questions deserve reporting.

Target announced it was ending several long-standing diversity initiatives, including its three-year diversity goals and the Racial Equity Action and Change (REACH) program. The company also announced changes affecting supplier initiatives and participation in outside diversity-focused evaluations, describing the decision as part of a broader business strategy responding to a changing political and business environment. Reuters and the Associated Press reported that Target had joined a growing list of major corporations reassessing diversity initiatives amid shifting political and legal pressures, placing the retailer alongside Walmart, Amazon, and Meta.

The reaction was immediate. Outside Target’s Minneapolis headquarters, consumers, community leaders, and civil rights advocates challenged the company’s decision. Demonstrations began within days as questions surfaced about whether commitments made after George Floyd’s murder were quietly being abandoned. What began as a dispute over corporate policy quickly became something larger. It became a question of trust.

Who Called It?

“I’m good on any MLK Boulevard.”

That’s the shorthand for what Target once represented to many Black consumers. A retailer that showed up where we live, invested in what we build, and treated Black spending power as something worth respecting—not just extracting. The company built a reputation for investing in Black-owned brands, Black designers, and Black entrepreneurs. Those relationships mattered because they created opportunities beyond shelf space. Target’s January 2025 announcement prompted many consumers to ask whether those commitments had changed—or only the language surrounding them.

The reporting does not support a single origin story. Instead, it documents multiple organizing efforts that emerge over time, led by different organizations, clergy, and community advocates, responding to the same corporate decision through different strategies. Too much of the public conversation compressed separate efforts into a single storyline. The reporting tells a more complicated story. That’s where this investigation begins.

Within days of Target’s Jan. 24, 2025, announcement, the conversation moved beyond disappointment into organized consumer action. The Associated Press documented that civil rights leaders gathered outside Target’s Minneapolis headquarters on Jan. 30 to announce a boycott beginning Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month. That reporting identified Nekima Levy Armstrong and Jaylani Hussein among the organizers and described a strategy that encouraged consumers not simply to avoid Target but to redirect their spending toward Black-owned businesses. That distinction matters.

As the months unfolded, another campaign entered the national conversation. Rev. Jamal Bryant launched what became known as the Target Fast, calling on participants to refrain from shopping at Target during the 40 days of Lent while intentionally supporting Black-owned businesses. The Associated Press documented both the religious framework and the campaign’s publicly stated objectives. Faith leaders, grassroots organizers, and civil rights advocates were all organizing—sometimes in parallel, sometimes overlapping, never quite the same movement.

That distinction later became one of the most important findings in this reporting. More than a year later, Capital B Atlanta reported that Levy Armstrong, Monique Cullars-Doty, and Hussein publicly maintained that the boycott they helped organize after Target’s January 2025 announcement was separate from Bryant’s later Target Fast. According to that reporting, Bryant’s decision to conclude the Target Fast did not end the independently organized boycott they believed remained active. Bryant publicly announced the conclusion of the Target Fast in March 2026, pointing to negotiations and commitments that, in his view, represented meaningful progress. The Minnesota organizers publicly viewed the matter differently.

This column does not choose between those positions. It is preserving them. That is the difference between opinion and reporting.

Who Ate?

Perhaps that’s where the public conversation drifted furthest from the reporting. A movement involving multiple organizers became, in many discussions, a story about a single face. A layered chronology became a simplified narrative.

As organizers continued pressing their respective strategies, another question quietly emerged beneath the headlines. Was any of it working?

That question proved far more difficult to answer than social media often suggested. Target continued reporting quarterly earnings. Investors watched comparable sales, customer traffic, and future guidance. Supporters of the boycott pointed to declining performance as evidence that consumer pressure was making a difference. Others argued inflation, changing shopping habits, and broader retail conditions made it impossible to attribute those results to any single factor. The reporting does not settle that debate. It documents that the debate exists. And sometimes that is the more honest place for journalism to stand.

Target maintained that its decisions reflected an evolving business strategy. By April 2026, the company reported fulfilling its previously announced commitment to invest $2 billion with Black-owned businesses—a claim independently corroborated by Word in Black, which reported that Dr. Jamal Harrison Bryant, Tamika Mallory, and Nina Turner briefed reporters at the National Press Club on March 11, 2026, with Bryant stating, “We asked for four things more than a year ago; we got three of them.” Black Dollar Index analysis, however, raised a significant counter-question: Tier 2 supplier spend – where many smaller and Black-owned firms operate—collapsed 66% over two years, with Tier 1 spend also declining. That data complicates what “fulfillment” means in practice and serves as a reminder that the public conversation continued compressing a more complicated story.

Throughout 2025 and into 2026, analysts, investors, and consumers closely watched quarterly earnings, comparable sales, and customer traffic. Reporting cited declining sales during portions of that period while also pointing to broader pressures, including inflation, changing consumer spending, and increased retail competition.

One consistent theme across the reporting was the call to redirect spending toward Black-owned businesses. That objective appeared across multiple organizing efforts, even when organizers differed over strategy, leadership or duration. The aspiration was clear. What the reporting did not consistently provide was comprehensive data measuring the long-term economic impact of redirected consumer spending or documenting how much of that economic activity remained within Black-owned enterprises. It reflects the limits of what could be independently verified.

The conversation itself was changing. What began as a discussion about Target’s diversity commitments increasingly became a discussion about expectations. What should Black consumers expect from corporations that publicly invest in Black communities? What obligations do corporations assume after embracing diversity initiatives? The reporting supports a more measured conclusion. Multiple leaders, organizations and campaigns emerged in response to the same corporate decision. Some efforts overlapped. Others diverged. Even after one highly visible campaign concluded, other organizers publicly maintained that their work continued. That is not a contradiction. It is the reporting.

The Family

The story became larger than Target. Larger than a boycott. Larger than any one organizer.

Target’s Jan. 24, 2025, announcement sparked a national conversation about corporate diversity commitments, Black consumer purchasing power, and corporate accountability. That conversation produced multiple organizing efforts, overlapping campaigns, and differing public accounts concerning leadership, strategy, and duration. The reporting preserves those distinctions. It does not support reducing a complex movement to a single organizer, a single campaign, or a single ending.

Consumers reconsidered where they spent their money. Community leaders debated strategy. Civil rights advocates organized. Faith leaders mobilized. Black-owned media documented perspectives that often differed from national business coverage. Financial analysts tracked earnings and consumer trends. Together, those reporting streams tell a broader story than quarterly earnings or corporate statements alone—documenting the intersection of corporate policy, consumer activism, and Black economic participation.

Some questions remain. How should corporate commitments to diversity be measured over time? What standards should determine whether those commitments have been fulfilled? What lasting economic impact did redirected consumer spending have on Black-owned businesses? The reporting assembled for this investigation identifies those questions. It does not fully answer them.

Journalism carries an obligation to distinguish between what can be verified and what remains unresolved. Credibility lives in that distinction. It is established by acknowledging where the verified reporting ends, not by filling gaps with assumptions.

That is where this reporting concludes.

Nobody wins when the family feuds.

by Rev. Peter Johnson

I grew up in Plaquemine, Louisiana, where the older folks could tell you it was going to rain before there was a cloud in the sky. As a little boy, I would hear one of them say, “A storm is coming.” I would run outside, look up at a bright blue sky, and come back convinced they were wrong. “There’s not a cloud out there,” I would say.

They would smile and answer, “Baby, you haven’t lived long enough yet.” Before the day was over, the wind would shift. The air would get heavy. Dark clouds would gather, and the rain would come pouring down. Back then, I thought they had some kind of magic.

Now I understand. They had experience. They had survived enough storms to recognize the signs before anyone else could.

Well, I am one of the older people now, and I feel a storm coming. It is gathering around something called election integrity.

Let me be clear. I believe elections should be secure. Every lawful vote should be protected, every voting system should be trustworthy, and every American should have confidence in the process. But Black folks have heard the language of “election integrity” before.

We have heard words like “order,” “protection,” and “security” used to justify poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, and exclusion. We know that sometimes the words sound reasonable while the results fall hardest on our communities.

That is why we must pay attention not only to what is being said, but to what is being done.

President Donald Trump says he wants stronger election security. But at the same time, his administration has taken actions that critics say weaken independent election oversight, reduce confidence in federal election institutions and place greater pressure on the systems that help protect fair elections.

That contradiction should trouble us. You cannot claim to strengthen the roof while removing the beams that hold it up.

The bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission was created after the disputed 2000 presidential election to help states improve election administration, certify voting systems and assist local officials. When the leadership of such an agency is weakened, every citizen should ask whether public confidence is being protected or endangered.

Black Americans, especially, cannot afford to be casual about that question. Our people did not stumble into the voting booth. We marched there. We prayed there. We bled there. We buried people on the road there.

I remember men and women standing in courthouse lines knowing they could lose their jobs, be threatened, humiliated, or turned away. Some dressed in their Sunday clothes because they believed registering to vote was sacred work.

They were not only fighting for the right to cast a ballot. They were fighting for the right to trust that the ballot would count. That trust is fragile.

Once people lose faith in elections, every defeat becomes fraud, every victory becomes suspicious, and every political opponent becomes an enemy. Democracy cannot survive long under those conditions.

As a minister, I learned that accountability strengthens trust. Pastors should not count the offering alone. Finance committees review the books. Trustees examine expenditures. Auditors ask hard questions. That does not weaken the church. It protects the church.

The same is true for elections. Independent oversight is not the enemy of election integrity. It is part of election integrity.

Black voters should also be cautious when politicians raise fears about widespread voter fraud without producing evidence that matches the alarm. History tells us that imaginary threats have often been used to create very real barriers.

We have seen laws presented as neutral that made it harder for elderly people, students, working families and communities of color to vote. That is why this moment requires wisdom, not panic.

We should register. We should verify our registration. We should learn the laws. We should vote early when possible. We should help our elders reach the polls. We should watch local election boards, state legislatures, and federal agencies. Most of all, we should refuse to surrender our trust blindly to any politician or political party.

The old folks in Plaquemine taught me to pay attention before the rain started. They noticed the wind. They felt the pressure change. They recognized what others ignored.

I hope I am wrong about this storm. I pray that our elections remain free, fair and trusted. But I have lived long enough to know that rights can be weakened while people are distracted, and institutions can be damaged while leaders insist they are being protected.

Black America must not be caught without an umbrella. Our ancestors paid too much for the ballot. Our children have too much at stake. This is the hour to stay awake, stay informed, stay organized, and keep voting.

The clouds may not be visible yet. But the wind is already changing. There’s a storm coming.

We Resist Fascism Every Day

By Monifa Bandele

“..the definition of fascism is: a police state wherein the political ascendancy is tied into and protects the interests of the upper class—characterized by militarism, racism, and imperialism…” ~ George Jackson

Federal troops on the streets of Washington DC and throughout the United States. Relentless attacks on Black political power. Public education dismantled. Attacks on organized labor. Books banned. Black history erased. Healthcare pulled from millions of people. Criminalizing protestors. Record high numbers of people killed by police. ICE raids. George Jackson stated it clearly 54 years ago, “…fascism is here…”

Black people in America have to tell our own history, especially now, as the entire project of telling the truth is under attack. The radical right-wing forces in the United States government are determined to crush our movements, criminalize our leaders, gut our hard-won voting rights protections, eliminate the holidays and commemorations we fought hard for, and edit our history right out of the textbooks. We refused to be erased. We will fight to protect and expand the days and months dedicated to naming and celebrating all Black history. 

Black August is a month that commemorates and recommits our communities to radical resistance. It honors the life, leadership, and legacy of George Jackson, murdered by prison guards in August of 1971. It also demands that we free our political prisoners and celebrate our freedom fighters often erased from the pages of mainstream media and dialogue about Black history. Founded 46 years ago by Khatari Goulden and other activists held prisoner in California’s prison system, the month is a time to reflect and learn about the legacies of Black revolutionaries and rededicate ourselves to the protracted struggles against white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. In 1979, the Black August Organizing Committee, through revolutionary leaders like Mama Ayanna Mashana, brought Black August to communities beyond the prison walls to commemorate how we resist oppression every day as part of a continuum of freedom fighting.

This year’s Black August will serve as an anchor for the coming months, which will inevitably require our resistance. In August, we will host a lecture series called Black August Sessions that will eventually become a permanent educational and cultural resource. The objective is not simply to document Black August but to create a living archive that continues advancing the work of the movement throughout the year.

Black people know fascism. We are the descendants of generations of people whose lives and movements were controlled by violent, ruthless, state-sanctioned institutions. We had no legal authority over our own bodies. By law, we could not vote, protest, learn, have families, or live free. We did not have the basic rights afforded human beings. Through military agents of the government and white slavers backed by the laws of the nation, any opposition to our oppression, attempts to end our enslavement, or organized political dissent to white supremacists’ rule over our bodies was violently and brutally suppressed. We remember that even post-chattel slavery, after we defeated the old systems, new institutions sprang up to continue the project of our forced labor, subjugation, and mass incarceration. We remember because our parents and grandparents lived through it. We remember because 1965 wasn’t that long ago. And, we remember because the fights continue as the institutions that force or exploit our labor continue. We remember because the state is still killing us.

Black people fight fascism. Black August tells the story of those freedom fighters who used every tool available. It celebrates the births of Mutulu Shakur (August 1950) and Marcus Garvey (August 1887). It tells the story of the Nat Turner Rebellions (August 1831) and the Haitian Revolution (August 1791) to the Watts Uprisings (1965) and the beginnings of the Attica Rebellion at the Manhattan House of Detention (August 1971). It acknowledges the Ferguson Rebellion (2014), salutes the Montgomery Boat Brawl (August 2023), and tells the story of a people who refuse oppression and demand freedom by any means necessary.

Black people refuse to concede the future. We just witnessed widespread racist gerrymandering and the politically motivated and unconstitutional gutting of the Voting Rights Act, which Black people made possible to secure our political participation. Now is not the time to give up or give in to these attacks on our rights. Black people have always carried the fight for human rights, social and racial justice, and freedom while being under constant attack. Whether it is the FBI’s COINTELPRO campaign of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, where Black leaders and organizations were identified as threats to America and targeted for death and distraction, or last month’s “Cuba Report” by Marco Rubio, where Black-led organizations, authors, and leaders are being criminalized as domestic terrorists, we fight on. We affirm our right to vote, self-defense, and collective self-determination. Our movement is multi-issue. Our movement is rooted in local organizing and international solidarity. Our movement knows that electoral justice demands accountability, interventions, dismantling, and building something new. Our movement is made for this moment because we keep our eyes on the future.

 Black people survived fascism. We are here because we are vigilant about protecting our voices, physical movement, political activism, communities, and families. We are here because we fight for our very existence every single day. The Harriet Tubman Combahee River Raid, the Black Panther Party, the Deacons for Self Defense, the Republic of New Afrika, Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Black Liberation Army, and so many more organizations and actions that refused subjugation. Through generational trauma, we remember fascism. And every day, through generational power, we survived because we resisted.

 Black August is a revolutionary, unapologetic love letter to our freedom fighters and a reminder that Black people, since our arrival in America, have resisted fascism every day. In 2026, it is a call to resist. Each day that we fight back against fascism’s encroachment on our rights, each day of August, and each day beyond, is an action in the legacy of Black August.

Monifa Bandele

Monifa Bandele is on the leadership team for the Policy Table for the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), where she represents the ecosystem member, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Over the past decade, she led campaigns to free U.S.-held political prisoners and the launch of two historic and successful legal cases against police misconduct (Daniels v. NYC and Floyd v. NYC). As a member of the steering committee for the New York-based Coalition for Police Reform (CPR), Monifa worked to successfully pass landmark police accountability and transparency legislation, including the Community Safety Act, the Right to Know Act, the Repeal CRL 50-a bill, the Special Prosecutor, and the New York STAT Act. Monifa was a contributing writer to M4BL’s Vision for Black Lives and the BREATHE Act. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BlackPressUSA.com or the National Newspaper Publishers Association.