Affective routes and the politics of possibility

In 2025, Black faith leaders mobilized Black and allied communities to commit to a a 40-day Lenten fast of Target stores. Premised in histories and legacies of Black resistance, the Target Fast located the urgency of the movement as it called for a redirection of shopping patterns away from corporate greed and toward Black economic agency. In this essay, we consider the larger discourse around the Fast as we think across two scholarly conversations: mobilization and mobility studies. We advance affective routes as a frame that accounts for mobility amid mobilization. Affective routes in the Target Fast, we suggest, enable movement toward possibility.