Targeting Target & making pro-democracy activism fun

In case you’re not one of the nearly 1 million people who have watched the “Target Ain’t People” video in the 8 days since it was posted to YouTube, maybe it’s time you did.

The video depicts a flash-mob style protest action in a West Seattle Target store, organized by local rabble rousers, the Vashon Island-based Backbone Campaign. Backbone. “a grassroots effort to embolden citizens and elected officials to stand up for progressive values,” has been working on the issue corporate personhood for some time. With the supremely undemocratic “Citizens United” ruling by the US Supreme Court allowing unlimited corporate donations in elections, one of the last vestiges of citizen recourse against corporate meddling is to publicly expose such corporate donations to unpopular candidates.

Target recently donated $150,000 to an anti-gay, anti-worker candidate for governor in Minnesota. What better way to publicize this fact than with a flash-mob musical performance inside a Target store, filmed & posted to YouTube? Singing a song with the chorus, “Target ain’t people so why should it be allowed to play around with our democracy?,” the bit involved a brass band and choreographed dance moves by the assembled protesters.

Once posted to YouTube, the video apparently struck a nerve, quickly gaining lots of viewers. Soon MoveOn.org was promoting it, and the video “went viral,” as they say, with over 900,000 views in the first eight days.

Good work, Backbone! May you inspire many more actions aimed at taking back our democracy from the corporate greed-heads.