The Free Enterprise Project Exposes Marxist "Woke" Companies
By John Grimaldi
Marxist elements seek to brainwash our next generations of citizens using the Critical Race Theory [CRT]. They’re using a similar strategy to upend the cornerstone of American democracy — the free enterprise that has given us, as a nation, economic freedom. The focus of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project [FEP] is to expose them.
“We essentially buy shares in ‘woke’ corporations to use our influence as shareholders to combat a lot of [those] woke policies. The whole idea is, instead of just giving up on American business and our institutions, we take the same strategies that the left used to corrupt them and then implement them to kind of bring them back to neutral,” says FEP associate Ethan Peck.
Peck recently joined Rebecca Weber, CEO of the Association of Mature American Citizens, on her Better for America podcast for an in-depth discussion of how the Left seeks to infiltrate corporate America.
Peck explained that FEP uses shareholder activism to challenge corporations that have gone astray, companies such as Twitter, Amazon, Exxon, and Chevron. “We go to [shareholder meetings], we hold these corporations accountable. We talk to CEOs, we question them, we ask them, we put the spotlight on them, and we push them into a corner. And it works, slowly. But the idea is that if we educate the public, we can have the same sort of success in the boardrooms as we had in the classrooms in Virginia, when parents stood up at school boards [to protest the socialist Critical Race Theory] we need investors to stand up to corporate boards.”
He says that socialist teachers use the Critical Race Theory in the classroom to brainwash our children. Woke executives use radical notions of diversity, equity, and inclusion “to push their woke social norms on hiring policies.”
Peck explains that as a shareholder if you own $2,000 or more of a public company’s stock, you are entitled to file a proposal asking the company to run a nondiscrimination audit of its DEI policies. Thus, you can challenge these companies by asking them to prove that their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies are not discriminatory. If a company refuses your request, it proves they know what they are doing is wrong. “They know these hiring policies, hiring people by skin color, hiring people by gender identity and sexual orientation, that these things are against the law, and that they violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And so, they’re trying to have it both ways. They’re trying to break the law in secret and kind of push this woke ideology.”
He said that anybody can challenge a company that seems dodgy when it comes to DEI policies. “I can’t tell you how many times somebody has come up to me and said, I’m very bothered by Amazon and then you do a little digging, and they own Amazon. So, if you’re an owner of Amazon, it’s your fault. Take some personal responsibility. Don’t just blame the world. Go to the shareholder meetings. Ask the CEO questions. You can buy one share in a company and attend the shareholder meeting. For example, this year I attended the American Airlines meeting, and I asked them if their DEI policies apply to hiring pilots. You would hope that when they hire pilots, they just hire by competence because you don’t want the plane crashing. And so, he said, ‘Yeah, absolutely. We definitely apply diversity, equity, and inclusion when we hire pilots.’ It got a lot of media attention. And so, all you need is one share to go into the meeting and pose a question to the CEO.”
