Latest news with #JamalBryant
Fox News
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Jasmine Crockett claims most people vote the 'wrong way' due to a lack of education
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, suggested in a new interview that most people don't vote the way she thinks they should because they are not properly informed. "Most people voted the wrong way because they were uneducated," Crockett said on The Jamal Bryant Podcast "Let's Be Clear," released on Thursday. "And that's not to call them dumb," Crockett clarified, explaining that real life gets in the way. "You're trying to keep a roof over your head, keep food on the table, trying to make sure that your kids have what they need. And so you're not tuned in." During the interview with Bryant, a Georgia-based preacher, they discussed the state's upcoming U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races in 2026, saying, "I need y'all to understand that it's not going to be good enough that you go out and vote. You got to make sure you're educating people." "Educate, educate, educate, kick, drag, scream, do whatever you have to do, because we say every election is a matter of life and death," Crockett said. She also admitted that people are often right in thinking that most politicians are "crooks" and "liars." "So, one of the things that I tell people all the time is that most people don't really want to hear from a politician," she said. "They don't trust us. A lot of people think that we are crooks, and frankly, a lot of them are. A lot of them think that they are liars and, frankly, a lot of them are." She also encouraged fellow Democrats to continue fighting. "What I will say is that, don't let people make you feel powerless," Crockett said. "That is one of the things that I keep hearing from people is, like, 'I feel powerless,' right? Like, don't feel powerless because the moment that you give in and say that you're powerless, they win. That's what they want you to do." Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., is up for re-election next year in what will be one of the most hotly contested Senate races in the country, while the governor's seat will be open with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp being term-limited.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Pastor Jamal Bryant comes to Cardi B ‘full of love' to confront her shopping at Target
'I hope you will…walk alongside us,' Pastor Jamal Bryant publicly invites the rap superstar to join boycott after seeing her post in Target. Pastor Jamal Bryant is very serious about mobilizing communities, especially Black communities, to join his national boycott against Target. Today, the religious leader took to Instagram to kindly call out rapper Cardi B, who recently snapped a photo of herself in Target with her children. 'Dear @iamcardib, Grace and Peace to you! I come to you with a chest full of love,' he wrote, explaining the reason for the ongoing boycott. 'When I saw you post a picture of you and your beautiful family in the store, I felt certain that with your demanding schedule, you were probably unaware. Having 163 million [people] following you is a great deal of influence, and many follow your lead. I hope you will visit and walk alongside us.' Bryant continued: 'I'm fully aware that you identify as Latino and that you have children that represent both communities, and to that end, you should know the movement has support as well as buy-in from the Latino community and more specifically, workers. Your presence to be a part of the most effective boycott in 70 years since the Montgomery bus boycott! In the words of Martin Luther King, a person who doesn't stand for something will fall for anything.' Since the beginning of this year, civil rights activists and community leaders like Bryant have been calling for consumers to boycott Target after the retailer decided to back away from its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in compliance with the Trump administration's continuous efforts to roll back DEI. As Bryant noted in his message to Cardi B: 'There has been a national boycott against @target because they have betrayed our community by dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion. African Americans have spent 12 million dollars a day, and yet they don't see us as a viable partner. We've asked them to invest in black banks, black colleges, and black communities, and under pressure from the administration, they haven't felt compelled to even respond. Our unified movement of churches and grassroots organizations has led to a drop in their stock, a reduction of foot traffic, a reduction of their valuation, and a slashing of the CEO's salary. Last, we collectively have cancelled Target because we don't think patronizing them is best for our community.' While Bryant may have had good intentions with his message to the New York rapper, social media users have had mixed reactions about his choice to call her out publicly. 'A DM would've sufficed,' one user noted. 'Yeah you prob should have reached out to her directly that way you share more information and gain an ally in this. You basically opened her up for attack as evidenced in the comments,' another user commented. 'This is not productive and causes a distraction we don't need. Cardi has been clear in how she stands on a lot of issues. More so than many others who are quiet. I hope you will reconsider your method here.' Others defended and applauded Bryant's approach, tagging the rapper to join them in their boycott efforts. 'I love this approach. I think you missed the spirit of his message. He came with love, not judgment — and offered insight, not indictment. It wasn't an attack, it was an invitation,' an Instagram user argued in the comments. 'We can acknowledge Cardi's impact and still hold space for strategic awareness around where our dollars go. That's how we move forward — with both truth and respect.' Cardi B, who has previously been vocal about her political advocacy, has yet to publicly respond to Bryant's message. More must-reads: Global LGBTQ+ advocates gather 'on Trump's doorstep' at World Pride despite travel anxiety 'Sinners' puts 'truth on screen' for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians NBA Finals: Haliburton caps huge rally with winning jumper as Pacers stun Thunder 111-110 in Game 1
The Guardian
11-06-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Pastor Jamal Harrison Bryant on Target boycott ‘victory' and the Black dollar's power: ‘They've awakened a sleeping giant'
On 5 February, a month before lent, Jamal Harrison Bryant stepped up to the pulpit of his Atlanta area megachurch. Wearing a sweater bearing Muhammad Ali's likeness and standing behind a lectern branded with a Black power fist clutching a cross, the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church railed against companies that rolled back their DEI initiatives to appease Donald Trump. Explicitly, Bryant, 54, singled out Target – which, among other things, had pledged to invest $2bn in Black-owned businesses by the end of 2025 as corporate reparations after the murder of George Floyd – for going back on its word. He urged the 'conscientious Christian community' to link arms with his 10,000 church members and commit to a 40-day 'fast' from the company starting on Ash Wednesday. A month earlier, a number of activists and civil rights leaders had protested in front of Target's Minneapolis headquarters, calling for a nationwide boycott. But Bryant's clarion call cut through, perhaps because it invoked a history that Trump has also placed in the crosshairs. 'What we learned from the Montgomery bus boycott is that racist America doesn't respond to speeches, it responds to dollars,' Bryant intoned, urging parishioners to liquidate their Target stock while acknowledging the risk he was taking in fomenting this protest as Trump was embracing authoritarianism. 'I'm saying this before they got a new FBI chief that calls us a terrorist organization. We doing it in decency and in order. Target, you got 40 days to pull it together.' When those 40 days passed and Target followed through on its DEI rollback, Bryant upped the ante on Ash Wednesday and called for the #TargetFast to shift to a 'full-out boycott'. He challenged Black Americans in particular, who are among the big box chain's most loyal customers, to hold the line. 'We are engaged in this battle because you don't get to walk away from your public commitments to Black people and think there will not be consequences and repercussions,' Bryant said at a town hall meeting in April. 'Somebody is going to accept the price, and we don't accept layaway in 2025.' Fueled by the strength of 200,000 petition signers and Black business leaders and activists such as the Rev Al Sharpton, New Birth's Target boycott has rivaled the global backlash against Tesla in its political urgency. It's also cost the retailer significant sales and foot traffic. ('We're not satisfied with these results,' CEO Brian Cornell said in a call with reporters last month.) Throughout the boycott, Bryant has not hesitated to call out Cardi B and other would-be allies for betraying the cause. It's quite an achievement for a pastor's kid and preacher-influencer who has long maintained an interest in serving the greater good. Ten years ago, Bryant thought about running for the congressional seat held by civil rights hero Elijah Cummings after Freddie Gray's killing rocked his Baltimore home town, before taking over as the senior pastor of New Birth in 2019. He's also reinvented himself as a podcast host and has become an incidental guest star on the Real Housewives of Potomac. (Gizelle Bryant, a lead cast member, is his ex-wife.) Days after Bryant announced the next phase of New Birth's consumer challenge, a nationwide fast from Dollar General, he talked to the Guardian about his boycott demands, the Black entrepreneurs who find themselves caught in the middle, and backing the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture over the Juneteenth holiday. You have pointed out how much Black Americans spend at Target – $12m a day, by your reckoning. By calling for a boycott, you're challenging them to make a drastic change in their behavior. Were you challenging yourself, too? I'm a #GirlDad to four, including three who are in college, so I had to absorb them protesting: 'Please, don't take it away! We go in every week at least for lip gloss.' But when I began to walk it to the disservice that Target is doing to the community, it became a no-brainer. They become some of my greatest disciples on college campuses. That's been really infectious to a lot of people in the community who didn't understand that we were not looking for charity or a favor from Target. We're looking for a partner – even though Black people love Target so much that we've already invited them to the cookout and given them a nickname: 'Targét'. What specific demands does the #TargetFast have? We asked for four things. The first is because we spend $12m a day, we want them to invest $250m into Black banks so people can have access to capital for home ownership and entrepreneurship. Second, we asked that they would adopt six HBCUs that have business programs so that young entrepreneurs can learn how to scale and build big box businesses. The reality is we're 70 years from the Montgomery bus boycott and still have no national chain owned by Black people. Third, we've asked in no uncertain terms, that they would honor their commitment to George Floyd's family, that they would invest $2bn into entrepreneurs so that their businesses might be able to thrive. So far, that's the only thing that Target has agreed to. Lastly, we gave them a blank canvas and said: 'Reimagine DEI, even if it has a different name or definition.' I understand the pressure and the weight of this Trump administration, so if you have to pivot and package it differently, I'm amenable. But I'm also mindful that the top beneficiaries are white women. Even though Black people lag behind, we have demonstrated, through our largesse and altruism historically, a willingness to serve the greater good. There's been a fair bit of skepticism within the Black community about singling out Target instead of including Walmart, Amazon and other major retailers. How sensitive were you to that criticism and did it factor into the decision to go after Dollar General next? So this is the 15th week of the Target boycott. I announced Dollar General in the 13th week. I was of the mind that we had not done organized or unified targeted spending in 70 years, that we really would not be able to see the full brunt of our impact if we went after 14 companies at once. The African proverb says you eat an elephant one bite at a time. Now we have momentum: 50,000 people signed our covenant not to go into Target. We have a directory of more than 150,000 Black businesses we made with help from the US Black Chamber of Commerce that we've shared with more than 250,000 email supporters. We just had to start small in order to get real traction. And also you have to be mindful that this boycott wasn't called by a historic civil rights organization – not the NAACP, the National Urban League, Rainbow Push or the National Action Network. It wasn't called by a Black church denomination. It was a singular church: New Birth. In its first quarter earnings report, Target reported over a half-billion-dollar loss in year-over-year sales and a sharp decline in foot traffic. Do you take any encouragement from that, and does this suggest that they may be ready to listen to New Birth's demands? We take it as a victory. I'm grateful that the Kwanzaa principle of cooperative economics is seeing itself in the 21st century. It's because we're organized, unified and singular in our focus. Has Target CEO Brian Cornell reached out to negotiate a detente at least? Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion Cornell and I had one meeting the Thursday before Easter, with the Rev Al Sharpton in New York. Then the Tuesday after Easter he was summoned to meet with the president at the White House. We had not heard anything since, which is why we moved to the 'canceling' of Target. For as much buy-in as you've gotten from the Black community for the Target boycott, you also have Tabitha Brown – the actor and healthy living influencer who has a lucrative brand partnership with Target – urging would-be boycotters to consider the effect their actions have on entrepreneurs like her. What do you say to that? I'm disappointed in her. Tabitha didn't build her brand from Target. She built it from social media. We love Tabitha, but it's not true that the only way we can support her is in Target. You can open up a drop-ship, and we'll buy from you online right now. People can still support Black brands outside of big box establishments. I want to see Tabitha thrive. I just want to see us move in a different direction. Why did Dollar General make sense as the next retailer to go after? People don't realize Dollar General has roughly three times as many stores as Walmart and Target combined. Seventy-five percent of Americans nationwide live within five miles of a Dollar General. They hire part-time staff so they don't have to pay out benefits. They inundate impoverished communities and rural areas with 20,000 or fewer residents, fancying themselves as a stopgap solution in food deserts. But most of the food they sell is processed. Those issues combined with the preponderance of Black and brown people who shop at Dollar General and the fact that minorities comprise just very little of their executive leadership are why they came next in the pecking order. What do you say to shoppers who live in food deserts who figure to be vastly more affected by a Dollar General boycott than boycotting Target? For those in rural areas or food deserts, we've asked them to do an electronic protest, where we give you a sample script to email or deliver over the phone. They can use the #TargetFast hashtag on social. We by no means want to starve families and seniors. If that's their only option, we're asking them to take full advantage. But those who have options, we're asking to pivot. Has Dollar General responded? We understand they released a report suggesting they expect business to beat last quarter's projections. Good morning, Vietnam. Who's next? Walmart? Amazon? We're focused on the two we have now, but I don't want this to just be a boycott movement. Between book bans, funding cuts to schools that teach Black history and threats to pull support from HBCUs, there's so much more at stake. There's also the immigration issue that also affects many Caribbean and African transplants as well Hispanic Americans. On Juneteenth Sunday, we're challenging 2,000 churches to raise an offering to support the National Museum of African American History, which is also in the administration's crosshairs. I'm hoping that what happens with Target and Dollar General will be a wake-up call for AT&T, Disney, Levi's and other companies that have initiated DEI rollbacks to re-evaluate their positions. How can allies in the Black diaspora and beyond get involved with this movement? I was recently in Paris, and people were stopping in the streets to say: 'I'm not going to Target.' Great, but y'all don't even have one! It just shows you the global reach of what it is that we're endeavoring to do. Why do you think Target and other companies are so inclined to underestimate the power of the Black dollar? Again, they've not seen us move like this in 70 years, and they don't know that they've awakened a sleeping giant. Black people are now alert, mobilized and conscientious about what's taking place. And we're not going to spend our dollars with companies that don't treat us with dignity. Interview edited for length and clarity
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
First Target, now Dollar General: Why Dr. Jamal Bryant is asking for people to boycott the company
After he announced a consumer boycott of all Target stores, New Birth Cathedral Pastor, Dr. Jamal Bryant, has now started a new boycott against discount store giant Dollar General. Bryant started the Target boycott earlier this year after the retail giant rolled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in step with an executive order by President Donald Trump. Now, he is asking people to boycott Dollar General because they have done away with their DEI programs as well. 'What is your ask?' Channel 2's Audrey Washington asked Bryant on Friday. 'We're asking several things. One is a revisitation of diversity, equity, and inclusion. That they will be in partnership with Black farmers and vendors, and that there will be an investment into the Black community,' Bryant said. Bryant said he hopes the Dollar General boycott will pressure executives and shareholders to change course. TRENDING STORIES: 'The Wire' actor says his son was 'thrown 300 feet' from their home in Henry County tornado A trip to a GA Burger King's drive-thru led to a high school graduate's dream he never saw coming Grandfather dies saving twin granddaughters from falling tree limb in Dacula 'This is what we are calling the summer of discontent,' Bryant said. 'We're asking people to call, and email, and post on social media if that is their only option. If they are in other areas, we are asking them to walk away.' Washington emailed the Dollar General corporation about the boycott. A spokesperson sent her a statement, saying: 'Our mission is not 'Serving Some Others' – it is simply 'Serving Others.' We are proud to serve millions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life in our 20,500+ stores, offering everyday necessities at affordable prices, often in areas that other retailers have chosen not to serve. Likewise, we are proud to offer our employees respect and opportunity in a work environment built on the dignity and differences of each unique individual. We continuously evolve our programs in support of the long-term interests of our customers, employees, and shareholders.' 'Only 2% of their executives are people of color. They get somewhere in the orbit of $40 billion a year in profit, yet they have never given to a HBCU or an organization or given to a Black movement,' Bryant said. The boycott is slated to run from Memorial Day to Labor Day.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Truck carrying hazardous materials overturns, evacuation ordered in Douglas County
The Douglas County government issued an evacuation notice after a semi-truck carrying hazardous materials overturned on Wilson Road. Officials said the area between Highway 5 and Tyree Road is closed in both directions and emergency response crews are already on the scene. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Anyone within a half-mile of the location is being ordered to evacuate immediately for their safety, both residents and businesses. The county has opened a temporary evacuation location at the Dog River Library at 6100 Highway 5. County officials urge residents and drivers to avoid the area and follow directions from emergency personnel and do not try to come back until an official all-clear is given. TRENDING STORIES: 'The Wire' actor says his son was 'thrown 300 feet' from their home in Henry County tornado A trip to a GA Burger King's drive-thru led to a high school graduate's dream he never saw coming New Birth Pastor Jamal Bryant calls for boycott against Dollar General [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
