WBLS talent and founder of the National Action Network (NAN), Rev. Al Sharpton is urging the public to boycott companies that are cutting their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
As The Hill reports, on Monday (Jan 20) Sharpton announced to the crowd at the Metropolitan AME Church, that all Americans should boycott these companies. He shared that the effort will be in the spirit of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. .
“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.”
Sharpton said a council will hold a 90-day study of what companies have abandoned DEI and their margins of profit. Following the study, two companies will be specifically targeted in the boycott.
The reverend said he would be supporting companies that have doubled down on their DEI practices, like Costco, amid the boycott.
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.