Who’s Putting the Woke in Coke? Shareholders Want to Know

Washington, D.C. — At today’s annual Coca-Cola shareholder meeting, a representative of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) will present a proposal requesting the creation of a board-level Improper Influence Committee to consider whether the Company’s decision-making has been hijacked by activists.

Stefan Padfield

“The company appears to be all in on agendas that many Americans believe are radical and leftist, including embracing utopian environmental goals, dividing employees on the basis of race and sex in the name of DEI, and scoring 100% on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which has been described as a woke credit scoring system that promotes transgenderism,” FEP Executive Director Stefan Padfield will tell shareholders today. “Are we really to believe that objective expected-value calculations have somehow just coincidentally landed Coke on all these far-left platforms?”

In its supporting statement for Item 6, FEP explains why Coca-Cola’s positions on net-zero goals, DEI and gender ideology are bad for business, and reminds shareholders that “consumers have repeatedly destroyed the value of companies pushing these divisive and radical policies.”

In fact, in the 1792 Exchange’s Corporate Bias Ratings, it ranks Coca-Cola as “High Risk,” noting that the political contributions of Coke’s leadership favor Democrats over Republicans by a ratio of roughly 4-to-1.

Besides requesting that shareholders vote YES on Item 6, FEP has published an entire voting scorecard for Coca-Cola shareholders as part of its Proxy Navigator voting guide, including these recommendations:

ITEM 1: Board of directors: VOTE ABSTAIN FOR THE ENTIRE BOARD.
ITEM 2: Executive compensation: ABSTAIN.
ITEM 3: Ratification of auditors: ABSTAIN.
ITEM 4: Vote on shareowner proposal regarding an assessment of non-sugar sweeteners: AGAINST.
ITEM 5: Vote on shareowner proposal regarding a report on food waste: AGAINST.
ITEM 6: Vote on shareowner proposal regarding creation of an improper influence board committee: FOR. This is our proposal. Are the Company’s net zero, DEI, and transgender commitments driven by objective expected value calculations or the improper influence of ideological activists posing as fiduciaries and investors? Shareholders deserve more information about that.
ITEM 7: Vote on shareowner proposal regarding DEI goals in executive pay: FOR. This is from our ally the National Legal & Policy Center.
ITEM 8: Vote on shareowner proposal regarding a report on brand image impacts: AGAINST.
ITEM 9: Vote on shareowner proposal regarding a report on civil liberties in advertising services: FOR. This is from our ally Bowyer Research.

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.

FEP, the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life, aims to push corporations to respect their fiduciary obligations and to stay out of political and social engineering. More information about this proposal can be found in FEP’s mobile and web app, ProxyNavigator.

Contributions are tax-deductible and may be earmarked for the Free Enterprise Project. Sign up for email updates at https://nationalcenter.org/subscribe/. 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.