By Sym Posey | The Birmingham Times
With multiple companies peeling back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, Emmy-award winning journalist and CNN anchor Victor Blackwell on Tuesday had an important question during the 2025 A.G. Gaston Conference at the Red Mountain Theatre in Birmingham.
“If those who are anti-DEI, anti-LGBTQ, or anti-woke … if they can organize, where is the organization for people who believe that DEI is a nonnegotiable? If you believe that it is important and nonnegotiable, where is the organization?” Blackwell asked.
Blackwell was being interviewed by award-winning journalist Art Franklin during a Fireside Chat.
Blackwell was one of more than a dozen featured guests that included attorney J. Mason Davis, a shareholder in Dentons Sirote’s Birmingham office; Rev. Thomas Wilder Jr., Pastor, Bethel Baptist Church, Collegeville; Charlotte Shaw, CEO, Birmingham Jefferson County Transit Authority; and Dontrelle Young Foster, CEO, Housing Authority of the Birmingham District.
Some leaders and organizations are beginning to fight attempts by the Trump administration to roll back many DEI initiatives, Blackwell said.
“We’re starting to see some of it. Rev. Al Sharpton has started a 90-day campaign of study of those companies that have divested from DEI,” said Blackwell. “But there needs to be more. There is now a Target boycott being run by [Atlanta] Pastor Jamal Bryant that’s 40 days, my question is what happens after 40 days?”
Business leaders can also apply pressure in Montgomery and in Washington, he said.
“We know that the life blood of politics is not always the people power or those ground organizers, it is the money… Use that power for what you think is important,” said Blackwell adding, “there is no brand damage to divesting from DEI (for many companies) because it’s been two years of a train in one direction. You have 19 attorneys general across the country that are pressuring Costco and other companies as well” to rollback DEI initiatives.
To be effective, those looking to make a statement to companies ending DEI is to “pick one or two things … and pushing in that direction,” he said.
He gave his example: ”It was the day that a student walked into Marjorie Stone Douglas High School and went on a shooting rampage. And so I was there in Florida … and the next day I sat with five high school students who said, ‘We are going to organize.’ and I said, ‘What do you see that suggests that you’re gonna be able to change policy under Governor Rick Scott, under then-President Donald Trump with two Republican senators and a completely Republican legislature?’”
“They said we will organize. We’ll pick two things and push those. Eight months later, there were hundreds of thousands of people in Washington for the March For Our Lives, and they changed Florida laws.”
As the co-anchor of CNN This Morning Weekend as well as First of All With Victor Blackwell, which focuses on stories affecting communities of color, Blackwell said he has a commitment to empower and amplify stories that are of importance or often go untold.
The show “is the only regular show on a major network that focuses on stories that impact communities of color,” he said.
First of All with Victor Blackwell airs on CNN on weekends and you can also listen to the podcast version.
