▪️ EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece was first published in American Thinker. You can link to it here.▪️
“Silence is violence” has taken on a fiduciary meaning now. One that should be actionable, but not by whom you may expect.
First, the issue at hand:
Your first impulse, after thinking how insane Randy Weingarten is, is that Target may have an actionable claim here, especially since they — by Weingarten’s own admission — didn’t do anything! Well, while there are laws about corporate disparagement, our First Amendment pretty well trumps them. The First Amendment right to protest whomever we choose or whatever entity we choose is (happily) essentially sacrosanct, so it appears Ms. Weingarten is safe from being sued by Target. However, it does appear there is another party who could sue her: her own union teachers!
Thanks to the X poster above, I was compelled to research “Ramblin Rover’s” claim. Is the union invested in Target and exactly how deep?
Turns out the answer is yes, and pretty deep. Via The Wall Street Journal:
The union, which Ms. Weingarten heads, adopted a formal resolution directing its 1.8 million members to shop elsewhere and stating its plan to expand the boycott to parents, communities and the AFL-CIO’s roughly 15 million members. One problem with this strategy: Teachers’ retirement funds own millions of shares of Target.
Via AFL-CIO via Google A.I. (emphasis mine):
Pension funds tied to members of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) directly own approximately 6.79 million shares of Target stock, alongside billions more in indirect exposure through index funds.
If I were a member of the AFT, I’d want to sue Ms. Weingarten for violating her fiduciary duty to me as a pension holder. Aside from being an insane reason to boycott, it’s insane to do it when your own holdings will suffer!