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“Balancing the Boardroom” Provides Guidance on How to Fight Woke Capitalism Using Proxy Votes

Washington, D.C. – The National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) has released the 2022 edition of “Balancing the Boardroom: How Conservatives Can Combat Corporate Wokeness,” a comprehensive guide for center/right investors who desire to utilize their shareholder proxies to protest the most hard-left CEOs and board members in America.

Ethan Peck

Ethan Peck

“‘Balancing the Boardroom‘ outlines the breadth of the woke rot in corporate America, identifies some of the worst actors contributing to this hard-left politicization of American companies and offers a number of solutions, with a specific emphasis on utilizing corporate board elections,” said Ethan Peck, an associate at FEP who served as lead author of the report.

Recent news stories involving Disney CEO Bob Chapek and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have highlighted the political influence wielded by corporate leaders in the United States. Chapek and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have publicly battled over whether Florida teachers should be allowed to discuss sexuality with elementary school students. Musk recently became Twitter’s largest shareholder, and signaled that he will use his influence to promote free speech on the platform.

“Unfortunately, corporate leaders are not only intruding into politics often, but are overwhelmingly advancing an explicitly woke agenda when they do,” said Peck. “However, we can reverse-engineer this mess using the same methods that the left has used, and the best place to start is with corporate board elections. It is urgent for us, as shareholders, to remove the wokest board members from their culturally and politically influential – and lucrative – positions.”

“Balancing the Boardroom” advises investors to vote against hard-left corporate leaders using their shareholder proxies. In some cases, it recommends targeting individual board members, such as Larry Fink (BlackRock), Al Gore (Apple), James Quincy (Coca-Cola) and the CEOs of all three American companies that developed COVID-19 vaccines. The guide also recommends voting against every board member at 32 companies that FEP has identified as particularly egregious.

Balancing the Boardroom

“Vote against these directors, and then join us in constantly reminding these companies that we sensible people of the center/right will not rest until their companies have returned to making products, providing services, protecting their businesses from the rapine of greedy politicians and otherwise staying well away from political and social discord,” said FEP Director Scott Shepard, who co-authored the report.

Scott Shepard

Scott Shepard

“Balancing the Boardroom 2022,” which can be read and downloaded here, also provides in-depth analysis of several trends that have swept over corporate America this past year, including corporate “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs, which FEP traces to critical race theory; corporate intrusion into state debates over election integrity; the revelation that corporate support for the Equality Act is not as robust as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has claimed; and the ethical and moral boundaries crossed by developers of the COVID-19 vaccines.

To schedule an interview with a member of the Free Enterprise Project on this or other issues, contact Judy Kent at (703) 477-7476.

Launched in 2007, the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project focuses on shareholder activism and the confluence of big government and big business. Over the past four years alone, FEP representatives have participated in over 100 shareholder meetings – advancing free-market ideals about health care, energy, taxes, subsidies, regulations, religious freedom, food policies, media bias, gun rights, workers’ rights and other important public policy issues. As the leading voice for conservative-minded investors, it annually files more than 90 percent of all right-of-center shareholder resolutions. Dozens of liberal organizations, however, annually file more than 95 percent of all policy-oriented shareholder resolutions and continue to exert undue influence over corporate America.

FEP activity has been covered by media outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Variety, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Drudge Report, Business Insider, National Public Radio and SiriusXM. FEP’s work is prominently featured in Stephen Soukup’s new book The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business (Encounter Books) and Kimberley Strassel’s 2016 book The Intimidation Game: How the Left is Silencing Free Speech (Hachette Book Group).

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors.

Sign up for email updates here. Follow us on Twitter at @FreeEntProject and @NationalCenter for general announcements. To be alerted to upcoming media appearances by National Center staff, follow our media appearances Twitter account at @NCPPRMedia.

Author: The National Center