The Dictatorship
Why a new nationwide boycott of McDonald’s feels like just deserts
Of all the companies to announce a rollback to their DEI policies, McDonald’s January announcement may count as the biggest betrayal. Those swearing off Big Macs, Quarter Pounders and McCafé lattes during a weeklong national boycott of the Golden Arches scheduled to end Monday may be withholding their money not just because Mickey D’s disavowal of DEI policies is upsetting by itself. They may also be doing so because for so long McDonald’s portrayed itself as one of Black people’s day ones — a company that’s always had Black people’s back.
For so long McDonald’s portrayed itself as a company that’s always had Black people’s back.
The group organizing this boycott, The People’s Union, has already helped organize recent boycotts of other major companies that have retracted their DEI policies. “This is a show of strength, solidarity, and people-powered change,” the group’s founder, John Schwarz, wrote in an Instagram post. “Let them feel it. Let them hear us. Let this be just the beginning.”
As for the boycott, McDonald’s isn’t lovin’ it. “As a brand that serves millions of people every day,” the company said in a statement, “McDonald’s opens our doors to everyone, and our commitment to inclusion remains steadfast.” Even so, the company announced in January that it is “retiring setting aspirational representation goals,” “pausing external surveys,” “retiring Supply Chain’s Mutual Commitment to DEI pledge in favor of a more integrated discussion with suppliers about inclusion” and “evolving how we refer to our diversity team, which will now be the Global Inclusion Team.”
In this political climate — one perhaps best described as a great white backlash to the 20th-century freedom movements, if not to the Civil War itself — we’ve seen some companies quickly wave the white flag as President Donald Trump has vowed to come after their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. And we’ve seen others put up a fight.
We might have expected McDonald’s to be one of the ones fighting back the hardest. After all, in 2009, the fast-food chain created the now-defunct 365black.com — because “we believe that African-American culture and achievement should be celebrated 365 days a year.” The site insisted that the company was “deeply rooted” in the Black community and that like “the unique African Baobab tree, which nourishes its community with its leaves and fruit, McDonald’s has branched out to the African-American community nourishing it with valuable programs and opportunities.”
I don’t know about all that. McDonald’s as nourishment is as absurd metaphorically as it is literally. Even so, the chain’s legendary — and mockable — “Calvin ads,” its erstwhile promotion of Black entrepreneurship, its sponsorship of major African American cultural events and its funding for scholarships for students at historically Black colleges and universities did give the company a cachet in the Black community that few companies its size could match.
Then suddenly in January, citing “the shifting legal landscape,” the company announced a new “‘Golden Rule’ — treating everyone with dignity, fairness and respect, always.” Beneath the PR speak, McDonald’s let us know that at least some of its DEI commitments were, much like the McRib, limited time only.
It’s important to acknowledge that boycott fatigue is real. I can’t think of a time in my life life as a consumer when I wasn’t being asked to, or didn’t naturally feel inspired to, boycott something. A restaurant chain that eventually settled for $54 million after Black customers alleged routine discrimination; an oil company that eventually settled for $15.5 million after accusations it participated in human rights abuses in Nigeria; another oil company that eventually shelled out $21 billion after despoiling the Gulf of Mexico; a small grocery chain whose owner was photographed at President Donald Trump’s rally at the Elipse on Jan. 6, 2021; the whole state of Florida — first for its “stand your ground” law and later because of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ attacks on what he terms “wokeness.” It can feel like at times like you shouldn’t buy anything anywhere.
It can feel like at times like you tshouldn’ buy anything anywhere.
McDonald’s, though, is a different case — much like Target, which has been hammered by boycotts since its own DEI rollback. Both companies enjoyed a kind of favored status among Black consumers (in Target’s case due in large part to partnerships with Black entrepreneurs). And both companies’ moves away from DEI policies have been felt acutely as a betrayal. And their executives seemed not to have understood that because they’re associated with fast food and impulse buys, consumers might actually feel virtuous not spending with them.
For whatever reason, the first quarter of this year was McDonald’s worst since the height of the pandemic in 2020. Target’s foot traffic has been falling most of the year.
After McDonald’s January announcement, Marcia Chatelain, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” explained in a column for BLN that the chain’s history of trying to court Black Americans goes back at least as far 1968, in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. In addition McDonald’s efforts recruiting Black franchise owners, choosing Black celebrities for commercials and spending heavily with Black media companies, Chatelain pointed out that:
The McDonald’s logo appeared on material heralding contributions to civil rights organizations, historically Black colleges and universities and cultural initiatives. Many of those actions were initiated and funded by its growing network of Black franchise owners, who tried to hold McDonald’s accountable for contributing to a loyal and critical part of their consumer market.
If nothing else, the moves of corporations like McDonald’s have signaled to Black consumers that they shouldn’t expect their loyalty to any company to get them any loyalty in return. Who knows how many of these boycotts seeking to punish companies for abandoning DEI will be successful? But in too many cases, companies that once aggressively courted black consumers now take those same consumers for granted. And that feeling of being taken for granted is understandably making some portion of people proud not to have any McDonald’s money.
Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for BLN Daily. He was previously editor-in-chief at the Louisiana Illuminator and a columnist and deputy opinion editor at The Times-Picayune.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say their interim deal to end the war with Iran will deliver a financial windfall to American farmers.
But the Iranians deny it. And in the absence of more details, sanctions experts are flummoxed over exactly how billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets would make their way to the American heartland from the escrow accounts where they’ve been locked for years by U.S. sanctions.
A tentative agreement reached last week would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to start selling its oil freely again during a 60-day period when the two countries will continue negotiating key issues. The memorandum of understanding also promised to unfreeze Iranian assets.
Trump’s deal has come under fire for failing to address the reasons the president cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Lashing back at critics Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said U.S. farmers would get a payday: The U.S. Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.’’
Vance, who spoke about the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, and Trump say that any frozen funds and assets held outside of Iran will be used to buy U.S. crops.
But the Iranians deny that’s part of the deal. A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,’’ not terms dictated by Washington.
“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said.
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Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, rejected Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would dictate how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.
A U.S. official dismissed the contradiction, asserting that Iranian leaders were speaking to their domestic audience. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Iran was unlikely to abandon its other trade partners on food.
Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina, he said. Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”
Under previous sanctions, the U.S. has required that money foreign countries spend on imports from Iran — such as South Korean purchases of oil and Iraqi purchases of Iranian electricity — be locked in escrow accounts and typically released only if the Treasury approves and if the proceeds go toward “non-sanctionable’’ items such as food and medicine.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products through Aug. 21. It did not mention any escrow accounts.
Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X that he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying U.S. agricultural products.”
Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it’s unclear what the new U.S.-Iran agreement actually means for releasing restricted Iranian assets.
Could the U.S. require that the assets be used to buy American farm products?
“Well, we can try!’’ Nephew, who helped design Iran sanctions in the Obama and Biden administrations, said by email. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a U.S. bank to buy soybeans or whatever.”
Banks do not have to comply, he said. If they refuse, the U.S. could sanction them as well.
But it’s rare for the U.S. to conduct itself that way, he added, “in part because we don’t usually like to give the impression that we treat national security issues as a cash grab.”
___
Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.
Wednesday marks four years since the Supreme Court issued its landmark Dobbs decisionwhich effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and repealed the constitutional right to an abortion. On “Morning Joe,” co-host Mika Brzezinski explained how the ruling set off a domino effect across the United States, affecting not just abortion-related care, but also altering “the state of women’s healthcare as a whole.”
As Brzezinski noted, states across the country have enacted harsher abortion restrictions since the 2022 ruling, with 13 outright banning the procedure with very limited exceptions. This has created a climate of fear among those who treat pregnant patients, with many healthcare providers worrying that any care involving an abortion could violate the law, even when the mother’s health is at risk.
“We are talking about people dying when they’re miscarrying because doctors are too afraid to intervene and save their lives,” Amy Littlefield, abortion access correspondent for The Nation, told MS NOW.
Brzezinski said the laws have effectively limited women’s “access to lifesaving healthcare.”
The MS NOW host reflected on some high-profile stories of pregnant women who faced delayed care in states with near-total abortion bans, noting “the numbers of cases that we’ve covered here on the show of women who have had their lives threatened, have been forced to give birth to dying or dead babies, and then, by the way, denied the access to ever create life again, because they became sterilized in the process.”
“There’s an image I can’t get out of my head,” Brzezinski added, before sharing reporting from ProPublica about Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother who died in Texas in 2023 after not receiving timely care for a miscarriage.
“For months afterward, Porsha’s 3-year-old son would chase after women who looked like her on the street, shouting, ‘That’s Mommy!’” Brzezinski said. “That’s the detail I can’t forget. I can’t stop imagining that little boy chasing after strangers on the street. And that story repeats itself.”
You can watch Brzezinski’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.
Allison Detzel is an editor/producer for MS NOW. She was previously a segment producer for “AYMAN” and “The Mehdi Hasan Show.”
One of the biggest upsets in Tuesday night’s primaries came in New York’s 13th Congressional District, where Darializa Avila Chevalier, a 32-year-old democratic socialist, managed to beat incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, 71, who was backed by establishment Democrats.
Chevalier, a doctoral student in sociology at the City University of New York, secured 49.4% of votes in the district — which encompasses upper Manhattan, Harlem and parts of the Bronx — defeating Espaillat, who received about 46% of the votes after representing the district for nearly a decade, according to The Associated Press. She now advances to the November general election, which she is presumed to win in the solidly Democratic district.
Chevalier’s primary win marks a major win for the Democrats’ left-wing flank that backed her, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdaniwho endorsed Chevalier last month during a joint interview on MS NOW’s “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
Here is what to know about Chevalier and the platform she campaigned on.
She has never held elected office
Prior to her congressional campaign, Chevalier had never run or held elected office. But she has been involved with advocating for issues that became political flashpoints, including helping organize the pro-Palestinian encampments at Columbia University, according to her biography on the website of the Justice Democratsthe progressive group that recruited her to run.
The daughter of Dominican immigrants, Chevalier also worked as an organizer for Families for Freedom, a New York City group that assists immigrants facing deportation.
Chevalier earned a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern studies from Columbia University in 2016 and later worked as a paralegal, according to her LinkedIn.
Chevalier faced scrutiny during her campaign over previously articulated stances and incendiary comments, including her appearance at a Times Square rally the day after Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, where attendees reportedly suggested the attack was justified.
At a March candidates’ forum, Chevalier declined to condemn Hamas, saying that a request to do so “ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that that folks were living under before this genocide began,” the local outlet City & State reported. Later, on local radio station WNYC, Chevalier said she did condemn Hamas when asked, adding, “As far as I know, the U.S. does not send a single dime to Hamas. What we fund is the Israeli military.”
In a series of since-deleted social media posts between 2018 and 2022Chevalier also used expletives to refer to former Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic National Committee, calling for abolishing borders and stopping all deportations, according to BLN. Other reports noted that she called former President Joe Biden a “rapist” and disparaged white people in some of her posts.
Chevalier has said she has “grown considerably” since writing those posts and that she regrets them. Mamdani defended her after the social media posts surfaced but said he was unaware of them before endorsing Chevalier.
She’s the left’s preferred candidate
Chevalier’s focus on affordability, expanding housing access and opposing war and deportations made her the preferred candidate of many progressive groups. In addition to the endorsements from Mamdani and the Justice Democrats, she was also backed by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and several progressive members of the New York City Council.
After her primary win, the Democratic establishment also seems to have rallied behind her, despite her previous expletive-laden critiques of them.
In a statement Tuesday, DNC Chair Ken Martin called Chevalier “a tireless advocate for the hard-working people of New York City” who “will fight for healthcare, affordable housing, public education, civil rights, and an economy that works for everyone.”
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.
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