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| ===== Target is ending its diversity goals as a strong DEI opponent occupies the White House ===== | ===== International Women's Day protests demand equal rights and an end to discrimination, sexual violence ===== |
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| By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO AP Retail Writer | By MEHMET GUZEL and ANDREW WILKS Associated Press |
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| NEW YORK (AP) — Discount store chain Target said Friday that it would join rival Walmart and a number of other prominent American brands in scaling back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that have come under attack from conservative activists and, as of this week, the White House. | ISTANBUL (AP) — Women took to the streets of cities across Europe, Africa, South America and elsewhere to mark International Women's Day with demands for ending inequality and gender-based violence. |
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| The Minneapolis-based retailer said the changes to its "Belonging at the Bullseye" strategy would include ending a program it established to help Black employees build meaningful careers, improve the experience of Black shoppers and to promote Black-owned businesses following the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. | On the Asian side of Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city, a rally in Kadikoy saw members of dozens of women's groups listen to speeches, dance and sing in the spring sunshine. The colorful protest was overseen by a large police presence, including officers in riot gear and a water cannon truck. |
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| Target, which operates nearly 2,000 stores nationwide and employs more than 400,000 people, said it already had planned to end the racial program this year. The company said Friday that it also would conclude the diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, goals it previously set in three-year cycles. | The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared 2025 the Year of the Family. Protesters pushed back against the idea of women's role being confined to marriage and motherhood, carrying banners reading "Family will not bind us to life" and "We will not be sacrificed to the family." |
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| The goals included hiring and promoting more women and members of racial minority groups, and recruiting more diverse suppliers, including businesses owned by people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, veterans and people with disabilities. | Critics have accused the government of overseeing restrictions on women's rights and not doing enough to tackle violence against women. |
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| Target has long been a fierce corporate advocate for the rights of Black and LGBTQ+ people. In a memo to employees, Kiera Fernandez, Target's chief community impact and equity officer, described the DEI decisions as a "next chapter" in the company's decades-long process to create "inclusive work and guest environments that welcome all." | Erdogan in 2021 withdrew Turkey from a European treaty, dubbed the Istanbul Convention, that protects women from domestic violence. Turkish rights group We Will Stop Femicides Platform says that 394 women were killed by men in 2024. |
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| "Many years of data, insights, listening and learning have been shaping this next chapter in our strategy," Fernandez wrote in the memo, which Target shared Friday. "And as a retailer that serves millions of consumers every day, we understand the importance of staying in step with the evolving external landscape, now and in the future." | "There is bullying at work, pressure from husbands and fathers at home and pressure from patriarchal society. We demand that this pressure be reduced even further," Yaz Gulgun, 52, said. |
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| There's no doubt the U.S. civil rights landscape has undergone a massive transformation in the five years since much of corporate America adopted DEI goals in response to the Black Lives Matter protests that followed Floyd's death in Minneapolis. | **Women across Europe and Africa march against discrimination** |
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| A 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions emboldened conservative groups to bring or threaten lawsuits targeting corporate initiatives such as employee resource groups and hiring practices that prioritize historically marginalized groups. | In many other European countries, women also protested against violence, for better access to gender-specific health care, equal pay and other issues in which they don't get the same treatment as men. |
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| Walmart, McDonald's, Ford, Harley-Davison and John Deere are among the well-known consumer brands that reduced or phased out their DEI commitments in recent months. | In Poland, activists opened a center across from the parliament building in Warsaw where women can go to have abortions with pills, either alone or with other women. |
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| President Donald Trump this week signaled his administration's agreement with conservatives who argue that policies designed to increase minority representation by considering factors such as race, gender and sexual orientation are unconstitutional. | Opening the center on International Women's Day across from the legislature was a symbolic challenge to authorities in the traditionally Roman Catholic nation, which has one of Europe's most restrictive abortion laws. |
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| On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order aimed at ending DEI programs across the federal government. The order calls for revoking all DEI mandates, policies, preferences and activities, along with the review and revision of existing employment practices, union contracts, and training policies or programs. | From Athens to Madrid, Paris, Munich, Zurich and Belgrade and in many more cities across the continent, women marched to demand an end to treatment as second-class citizens in society, politics, family and at work. |
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| Still, some prominent companies have resisted public pressure to retreat from their diversity plans. On Thursday, Costco shareholders rejected a proposal urging the wholesale club operator to evaluate any risks posed by its diversity, equity and inclusion practices. | In Madrid, protesters held up big hand-drawn pictures depicting Gisele Pélicot, the woman who was drugged by her now ex-husband in France over the course of a decade so that she could be raped by dozens of men while unconscious. Pélicot has become a symbol for women all over Europe in the fight against sexual violence. |
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| According to preliminary results shared by Costco executives, more than 98% of shares voted against the proposal submitted by a conservative think tank based in Washington. Costco's board of directors had recommended a no vote. | Thousands of women marched in the capital Skopje and several other cities in North Macedonia to raise their voices for economic, political and social equality for women. |
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| Apple's board and the CEO of JPMorgan bank also have expressed a commitment to preserving their companies' DEI activities. | Organizers said only about 28% of women in the country own property and in rural areas only 5%, mostly widows, have property in their name. Only 18 out of 100 women surveyed in rural areas responded that their parents divided family property equally between the brother and sister. "The rest were gender discriminated against within their family," they said. |
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| Unlike some of the companies retooling or retiring their diversity initiatives, Target's work to build a more inclusive workforce predated 2020, and the company also was long seen as a trailblazer with respect to LGBTQ+ inclusion. | In Nigeria's capital, Lagos, thousands of women gathered at the Mobolaji Johnson Stadium, dancing and signing and celebrating their womanhood. Many were dressed in purple — the traditional color of the women's liberation movement. |
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| But the employee memo shared Friday said Target no longer would participate in surveys designed to gauge the effectiveness of its actions, including an annual index compiled by the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ+ rights organization. Target said it would further evaluate corporate partnerships to ensure they're connected directly to business objectives, but declined to share details. | In Russia, the women's day celebrations had a more official tone, with honor guard soldiers presenting yellow tulips to girls and women during a celebration in St. Petersburg. |
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| Getting corporations to withdraw from the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index and to stop sponsoring Pride activities have been goals of DEI opponents. | **German president warns of backlash against progress already made** |
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| Steering clear of a backlash from conservative customers and organizations is something that Target has tried to navigate for a while. As transgender rights became a more prominent issue in 2016, the company declared that "inclusivity is a core belief at Target" and said it supported transgender employees and customers using whichever restroom or fitting room "corresponds with their gender identity." | In Berlin, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for stronger efforts to achieve equality and warned against tendencies to roll back progress already made. |
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| But after some customers threatened to boycott Target stores, the company said that more stores would make available a single-toilet bathroom with a door that could be locked. | "Globally, we are seeing populist parties trying to create the impression that equality is something like a fixed idea of progressive forces," he said. He gave an example of " large tech companies that have long prided themselves on their modernity and are now, at the behest of a new American administration, setting up diversity programs and raving about a new 'masculine energy' in companies and society." |
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| In 2023, Target removed some of its Pride Month merchandise after online complaints and in-store confrontations that the retailer said threatened employees' well-being. The company decided last year not to stock Pride Month products at every U.S. store. | **Marchers in South America denounce femicides** |
| ===== With home prices and mortgage rates high, many families find the American dream out of reach ===== | |
| | In South America, some of the marches were organized by groups protesting the killings of women known as femicides. |
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| | Hundreds of women in Ecuador marched through the streets of Quito to steady drumbeats and held signs that opposed violence and the "patriarchal system." |
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| | "Justice for our daughters!" some demonstrators yelled in support of women slain in recent years. |
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| | In Bolivia, thousands of women began marching late Friday, with some scrawling graffiti on the walls of courthouses demanding that their rights be respected and denouncing impunity in femicides, with less than half of those cases reaching a sentencing. |
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| | Kirsten Grieshaber contributed to this report from Berlin. |
| | ===== How a canoe helped turn Hawaiian culture into a source of pride and even influenced Hollywood ===== |
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| | By AUDREY McAVOY Associated Press |
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| | KANEOHE, Hawaii (AP) — Hawaii's American colonizers once banned the Hawaiian language in schools. Some Native Hawaiians tried to lighten their skin with lye. Many people believed Polynesian voyagers had simply lucked into finding the islands by drifting on logs. |
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| | But a canoe launched half a century ago helped turn Hawaiian culture from a source of shame to one of pride, reviving the skill of traveling the seas by decoding the stars, waves and weather. That vessel — a double-hulled sailing canoe called the Hokulea, after the Hawaiian name for the star Arcturus — would even influence the Disney blockbuster "Moana" decades later. |
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| | To mark the anniversary, the Hokulea's early crew members gathered Saturday for ceremonial hula and kava drinking at the Oahu beach where the canoe launched on March 8, 1975, and where they began their first training sails. |
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| | "It's a vehicle of exploration. It's a vehicle of discovery," Nainoa Thompson, the CEO of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, said in an interview. "It's also been our vehicle for justice as Native Hawaiians, as Pacific Islanders, as a very unique, special culture of the Earth." |
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| | In 1980, Thompson became the first Hawaiian in six centuries to navigate to Tahiti without a compass or other modern instruments — a span of about 2,700 miles (4,300 kilometers). |
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| By R.J. RICO Associated Press | **Hawaiian culture had long been repressed** |
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| The Petersen family's two-bedroom apartment in northern California is starting to feel small. | Thompson, 71, remembers stories from his grandmother, born less than a decade after the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. Teachers beat her for speaking Hawaiian, and her uncle tried to wash the brown off his skin with lye. |
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| Four-year-old Jerrik's toy monster trucks are everywhere in the 1,100-square-foot unit in Campbell, just outside of San Jose. And it's only a matter of time before 9-month-old Carolynn starts amassing more toys, adding to the disarray, says her mother, Jenn Petersen. | When she had children, she didn't teach them Hawaiian. |
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| The 42-year-old chiropractor had hoped she and her husband, Steve, a 39-year-old dental hygienist, would have bought a house by now. But when they can afford a bigger place, it will have to be another rental. Petersen has done the math: With mortgage rates and home prices stubbornly high, there's no way the couple, who make about $270,000 a year and pay about $2,500 in monthly rent, can afford a home anywhere in their area. | "If her children tried to be Hawaiian, they would get hurt in the new society," Thompson said. "And so you have to become something else." |
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| According to October data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, a San Jose family with a median income of $156,700 would need to spend 80% of their income on housing — including an $8,600 monthly mortgage payment — to own a median-priced $1.54 million home. That's far higher than the general rule of thumb that people should pay no more than 30% of their income on a mortgage or rent. | A resurgence of Hawaiian pride and identity starting in the late 1960s and 1970s set off a cultural renaissance. Artist Herb Kane began painting ancient canoes based on drawings from European explorers and got the idea to build a double-hulled canoe with tall, triangular sails similar to those his ancestors had used hundreds of years earlier. |
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| Moving out of state is out of the question for the Petersens — they have strong family ties to the area and their income would plummet if they move to a lower cost-of-living area. "I'm not willing to give up my job and close connections with my family for a house," Petersen said. | **Debunking the drifting log theory** |
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| The issue is widespread and near historic highs nationally: As of last fall, the median homeowner in the U.S. was paying 42% of their income on homeownership costs, according to the Atlanta Fed. Four years ago, that percentage was 28% and had not previously reached 38% since late 2007, just before the housing market crash. | At the time, many people accepted the notion that Polynesians settled islands by accident. |
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| "The American dream, as our parents knew it, doesn't exist anymore," Petersen said. "The whole idea that you get a house after you graduate college, get a steady job and get married? I've done most of those milestones. But the homeownership part? That just doesn't fit financially." | Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl had theorized that Polynesians arrived from South America, pushed west by the prevailing winds and currents. In 1947, he set out to prove it by floating from Peru on a log raft. He landed in the Tuamotu Islands north of Tahiti and wrote a best-seller. |
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| **First-time homeowners are getting older** | Heyerdahl's theory took hold even though Hawaiians for generations had passed down stories of people who traveled from the distant lands -- including Kahiki, possibly what is today known as Tahiti — by canoe, bringing with them edible plants such as ulu, or breadfruit. |
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| The same is true for an increasing number of American families. | Kane, University of Hawaii archaeologist Ben Finney and Honolulu surfer Tommy Holmes wanted to challenge the drifting log concept. They started the Polynesian Voyaging Society, intent on sailing a canoe to Tahiti without modern instruments. |
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| In 2024, the median first-time homebuyer was 38 years old, a jump from age 35 the previous year, according to a recent report by the National Association of Realtors. That's significantly above historic norms, when median first-time buyers hovered between 30 and 32 years old from 1993 to 2018. | They needed a navigator. Traditional long-distance voyaging skills had all but disappeared, but a Peace Corps volunteer on the isolated atoll of Satawal in Micronesia told them about Pius "Mau" Piailug, who had been taught navigation from childhood. Over about a month in 1976, Piailug guided the Hokulea from Hawaii to Tahiti — about the same distance from Hawaii to California. |
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| The biggest driver of this trend, experts said, is simple: There are far too few houses on the market to match pent-up demand, driving prices past the point of affordability for many people who are relatively early in their careers. Coupled with high mortgage rates, many have concluded that renting is their only option. | Some 17,000 people thronged the Tahitian shore to greet them and witness what one crew member called "the spaceship of our ancestors." |
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| "Wage growth hasn't kept up with the increase in home prices and interest rates," said Domonic Purviance, who studies housing at the Atlanta Fed. "Even though people are making more money, home prices are increasing at a faster rate." | Former Hawaii Gov. John Waihe'e was in his 20s then, and a delegate to the 1978 state Constitutional Convention. The Hokulea's success spurred delegates to make Hawaiian an official state language even though few residents still spoke it, he said. They also created the Office of Hawaiian Affairs to improve the well-being of Native Hawaiians. |
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| That gap has left many out of the housing market, which for generations has been a way for Americans to build equity and wealth that they can pass down or leverage to buy a larger home. It's also led to widespread worries about housing in the U.S. About 7 in 10 voters under age 45 said they were "very" concerned about the cost of housing in their community, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters in the 2024 election. | "It helped us believe in everything that we were doing," Waihe'e said. |
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| **Is the dream of homeownership going to fade?** | Today, two dozen schools have Hawaiian language immersion programs, and Census data show more than 27,000 people in Hawaii, and 34,000 in the U.S., speak Hawaiian at home. |
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| Brian McCabe, a sociology professor at Georgetown University, said he frequently tells his students that "there are few things that all Americans agree on, but one of them is that they'd rather own a home than rent." | **Bringing dignity to the elders** |
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| McCabe said homeownership, especially as a wealth-building tool, is the right move for many, especially if the owner intends to be in one place for a long time. But he also said many are realizing that not owning a home has its advantages, too — it gives people more flexibility to move and allows them to live in exciting neighborhoods they would not be able to afford to buy property in. | In 1978, an ill-prepared crew set out for Tahiti in poor weather, and the Hokulea capsized just hours after leaving port. Crew member Eddie Aikau paddled his surfboard to get help. The Coast Guard rescued the canoe, but Aikau was never found. |
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| McCabe said millennials are getting married later, having children later, have a stronger desire to stay in cities and, especially due to remote work, value the flexibility of being able to move with ease — all of which he said could prompt an end to the notion that homeownership is the "apex of the American dream." | The voyaging society overhauled itself in response, setting clear goals and training requirements. Thompson studied at a Honolulu planetarium and spent over a year under the tutelage of Piailug. In 1980, he navigated to Tahiti. |
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| "The big question is whether we see the sheen of homeownership start to fade," McCabe said. "It's such an interesting cultural marker: Why is owning a home the pinnacle for so many people?" | Thompson said he felt a deep obligation to fulfill Aikau's wish to follow the path of his ancestors and "pull Tahiti out of the sea." But he didn't celebrate when the Hokulea got there. |
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| It's a question Petersen wrestles with because she knows any three-bedroom home she found in her area would leave her family "house poor." | "I just went into a quiet, dark place and just told Eddie we pulled it out of the sea," Thompson said. "There's no high fives. It's too profound." |
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| "I used to subscribe to the idea that owning a house is just a natural milestone you have to reach," she said. "At some point, though, what are you sacrificing by just owning a house and gaining equity? I want to be able to travel with my kids. I want to be able to sign them up for extracurriculars. How are we supposed to do that if we're paying a mortgage that's most of our take-home pay?" | In decades since, the society has sailed the canoe around the Pacific and world, including New Zealand, Japan, South Africa and New York. |
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| Petersen said she'll "always hold out a little bit of hope" that homeownership will be in her family's future. But if they find a townhouse to rent that has space for her kids and fits within their $3,600 monthly rental budget? | It inspired other Pacific Island communities to revive or newly appreciate their own wayfinding traditions. |
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| "I'd take that," she said. | In Rapa Nui, Chile — also known as Easter Island — islanders have embarked on long-distance canoe voyages. The University of Guam has a navigation program. Similar trends have surfaced in the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Samoa and Tonga, said Mary Therese Perez Hattori, the director of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center. |
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| **Some cities are providing crucial aid to first-time homebuyers** | "We come from very, very ancient societies," said Hattori, who is Chamorro, the Indigenous people of the Mariana Islands. "Hokulea sort of helped us remind the world of this." |
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| Lifelong Boston resident Julieta Lopez, 63, spent decades hoping to buy a home but watched as prices became increasingly out of reach. | **Hollywood makes a blockbuster** |
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| "The prices in Boston just got higher and higher and higher and higher," said Lopez, who works for the city traffic department issuing tickets for parking violations. | Hokulea's influence spread in 2016 when Disney released "Moana," an animated film about a 16-year-old girl who learns wayfinding about 3,000 years ago. |
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| Two years ago, furious to learn that her subsidized apartment's monthly rent was being hiked to $2,900, Lopez, who earns about $60,000 annually, took out her phone and began searching for government programs that help first-time homebuyers. She was determined to finally own her own place. | Thompson spoke to hundreds on the movie's creative team about wayfinding and the importance of canoes to Pacific culture, said Aaron Kandell, a Hawaii-born writer who worked on the movie. |
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| Within months, she had succeeded. Lopez qualified to receive $50,000 from the local Massachusetts Affordable Homeownership Alliance nonprofit and another $50,000 from the city of Boston's Office of Housing — funds that helped her with a down payment on the $430,000 two-bedroom condominium she shares with her 30-year-old son. She now pays about $2,160 a month on her mortgage. | Kandell, who is not Native Hawaiian, spent a year studying navigation with the Polynesian Voyaging Society during his 20s and incorporated that into the script, including where Moana learns to use her outstretched hand to track the stars and runs her hand in the ocean to feel the currents. |
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| Lopez knows she is lucky the city has placed such a focus on aiding first-time buyers like herself — Boston has poured more than $24 million into its homeownership assistance programs since Mayor Michelle Wu took office in 2021, helping nearly 700 residents get their first homes. | Crew members taught animators about coconut fiber ropes so they would look right when Moana pulls on them, Kandell said. |
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| But Lopez also feels proud to have her own place after years of working so hard — jobs that included everything from telecommunications to health care to electronics. | The Polynesian Voyaging Society's initial plan was to sail to Tahiti once, supporting a documentary, book and research papers. Thompson remembers pushing Hokulea's hull into the water with the crew back in 1975. |
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| "I was determined to have my piece of the pie," she said. "I felt I deserved that. I've always worked. Always. Nonstop." | "It was really a moment — I didn't recognize it — but this was going to change everything," he said. |
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