NEW: Last year, activists began blowing the whistle on Target Corporation’s unprecedented partnership with police, laying blame with the retail giant for #GeorgeFloyd’s death after years of funding racialized surveillance & draconian law enforcement. unicornriot.ninja/2021/activists…
As covered through the 21st Century Jim Crow series, Target created the SafeZone/Safe City program in 2004 as a massive surveillance dragnet to aid local authorities in hard-line police enforcement, particularly against Black youth & homeless populations. unicornriot.ninja/21st-century-j…
The Target Foundation has sponsored police departments around the country; providing services like access to its state of the art forensics labs & police training, to donations of high-tech surveillance equipment like mobile command posts, & enhanced cell phone tracking systems. 
Target's paid for data mining software by Palantir Technologies Inc, a spy tech firm started from the CIA’s venture capital wing, In-Q-Tel.
All of this & more has been going on for decades, yet it is hardly known to the general public due to the gap in corporate media coverage.
All of this & more has been going on for decades, yet it is hardly known to the general public due to the gap in corporate media coverage.
#Thread 🧵- However, after the murder of #GeorgeFloyd, some activists set their sights on Target. As mentioned in Part 4 of this series, a group of police abolitionists created a petition demanding Target cease all funding to law enforcement. unicornriot.ninja/2021/targeted-…
Petition creators, Concerned Shipt Shoppers, accused Target of funding police: “Through its public safety grants program, Target donates to police foundations that acquire equipment for police departments through private funding channels, allowing them to bypass public oversight”
Dr. Aren Aizura, assistant professor in race and gender studies at the University of Minnesota, wrote last year during the #GeorgeFloyd uprising that “The focus on Target as a source of rage feels especially important.”
https://twitter.com/newinquiry/status/1266805711125659649
This Summer, Twin Cities based activist and socialist commentator Adnan Ahmed wrote that Target used empty antiracist gestures, a “woke mural,” and Black dolls in efforts to “hide its role in violent racist policing."
https://twitter.com/left_voice/status/1413237705228525568
Mpls. based activist & host of the ‘Money. Power. Land. Solidarity’ podcast, GP Jacob, dedicated a show responding to Unicorn Riot’s coverage of Target’s racialized surveillance dragnet in which the author of the series, Marjaan Sirdar, spoke at length. moneypowerlandsolidarity.libsyn.com/bullseye-with-…
Other than the online petition which only generated a few thousand signatures & protests previously mentioned in this series, there has been no major organizing efforts to hold Target accountable for the damage they’ve done. Full story by @peoplepowerpod1: unicornriot.ninja/2021/activists…
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