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Too many businesses are rolling over to accommodate the demands of woke activists.

Derrick Hollie

Doing so, writes Project 21 member Derrick Hollie, only encourages the left to come back for more:

For America’s business leaders, the question shouldn’t be “how long must we ride out the storm?” The question now is “are we ready for the moment when the mob turns against my organization?”

In a Newsmax commentary, co-authored with Jack Kalavritino, Derrick notes that succumbing to the woke mob does not have to be a certainty as long as a company is prepared:

With the right strategies and some courage, blue chip multinationals and local mom and pop enterprises alike can navigate the woke waters. Indeed, they will have to, because calmer seas don’t seem to be on the horizon.

Over the past few years, the left has made extraordinary gains in getting CEOs to align their companies with the progressive agenda:

  • “Engine No. 1 pushed three of their preferred candidates onto ExxonMobil’s board of directors, despite owning just 0.02% of the company’s shares.”
  • “North Face refused to fulfill a custom apparel order from oil and gas company Innovex Downhole Solutions.”
  • “Delta and Coca-Cola… hitch[ed] their wagons to unfounded left-wing criticism of Georgia’s voter ID law.”

Yet it seems there truly is not a lot of thought – or passion – for those causes on the part of the business community, other than trying to avoid harassment from the left. That’s the weak link that conservatives need to target.

As an example of this, Derrick notes the rather sloppy display when it came to executives defending their actions in the Georgia election integrity battle:

Senator Tim Scott asked a group of banking CEOs to highlight what made the Georgia voting law so discriminatory. The awkward 14 seconds of silence – a total inability or unwillingness to answer – was a public relations black eye. The CEOs looked foolish or uninformed – something they would never tolerate of themselves on an earnings call.

There’s also the fact that woke business leaders could be hurting their workforce as well as potential new hires and customers:

Companies embracing wokeism also risk alienating conservative and moderate shareholders and consumers, who are equally turning up the heat in response to corporate America’s genuflections to political correctness.

Derrick gives a shout-out to the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project, which is the most active shareholder activist organization on the right. Derrick says that to make a difference like FEP does, more work needs to be done to make sure “executives must know the facts – or non-facts – of what [the left is] claiming.”

To read all of Derrick and Jack’s commentary – “Business Leaders Need the Tools Against the Woke Mob” – click here to go to the Newsmax website.

Author: David Almasi