Sharpton announces boycott of companies ending DEI

Rev. Al Sharpton on Monday announced a boycott of companies eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, saying the effort will be in the spirit of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Speaking from the Metropolitan AME Church, Sharpton said his organization, the National Action Network, is calling upon all Americans, regardless of their race or gender, to boycott companies that will no longer support DEI. 

“Why do we have DEI? We have DEI because you denied us diversity, you denied us equity, you denied us inclusion. DEI was a remedy to the racial institutionalized bigotry practice in academia and in these corporations. Now, if you want to put us back in the back of the bus, we gonna do the Dr. King-Rosa Parks on you,” Sharpton said as those gathered cheered. 

“You must have forgot who we are,” Sharpton added. “We are the ones that you took everything and we still here.” 

According to Sharpton, a council will engage in a 90-day study of what companies have given up on DEI and what their margins of profit are. After that, two companies will specifically be targeted in the boycott. 

Meanwhile, Sharpton added, he’ll be supporting companies that have doubled down on DEI, like Costco.

Sharpton’s announcement was part of a larger ceremony at the church honoring the slain civil rights leader on the same day President Trump was sworn into office. The church – where abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s funeral was held and Rosa Parks’s casket was brought – was packed with supporters. 

Trump intends to end DEI practices in the federal government through an executive order on his first day office, incoming White House officials said.

The order will ask the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management to coordinate with agencies to terminate what it deems as “all discriminatory programs” in the agencies, those officials said.

Sharpton in his remarks also painted a stark difference between those gathered at the church and those gathered to support Trump on Monday. 

“We want people to see the tale of two cities in one district,” said Sharpton. “On this side of town, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his life to open up America for everybody: Blacks, whites, gays, straights, it didn’t matter. We are with Dr. King.”

But Trump, Sharpton said, was on the side of violence. He pointed to Trump’s promise to pardon Jan. 6, 2021 insurrectionists. 

“How are you Mr. Trump, on Martin Luther King Day, going to pardon folks that beat up police officers? How are you Mr. Trump on a federal holiday of a prince of peace and nonviolence going to excuse those that caused the death of a Capitol police officer in the nation’s capital?”

Monday was only the third time in history that Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Inauguration Day collided. 

In 1997, former President Clinton took the oath for the second time on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and in 2013 former President Obama did the same. 

But with Trump’s history of racially charged comments, the Kings say this year’s MLK Day feels different. 

“As we observe the inauguration, the hope is that the climate can be created so that the President will do things that bring us closer together,” Martin Luther King III told The Switch Up podcast. 

“He obviously does not have a history of doing that, and that kind of leadership is needed now more than ever because of the tremendous division in our nation … if we continue to go down the road of division, hostility and what appears to be hatred, that is not sustainable.”