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In another sign that the anti-woke movement is only gaining steam, even conservative shareholders are getting off the sidelines and into the fight. While Americans stick it to the Bud Lights and Targets of the world, investors are building a small army of activists to dismantle these radical politics from within. And according to Axios, they’ve been surprisingly effective.

Since 2020, the number of anti-DEI shareholder proposals has tripled, a surge that’s putting even more pressure on CEOs to back off their political agendas. Companies like Apple, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, and Boeing were some of the major targets of the 13 resolutions brought before Russell 3000 firms last year, research from Conference Board shows. But unlike the wave of grassroots pushback that’s swallowed big brands since Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney fiasco in April of 2023, this is a movement that’s been bubbling under the surface for decades.

While Robby Starbuck has gotten the lion’s share of the attention for bringing Fortune 500 businesses to their knees, there’ve been a number of conservative foot soldiers working day in and day out for decades to stem the tide of extreme politics on Wall Street. Justin Danhof, one of the earliest pioneers of shareholder activism on the Right, jokes that “13 years ago, we could have filled a room on ESG with me standing in a restroom yelling at myself in a mirror.” Even a few years ago, he said, “it might have been the size of a locker room.” And now, he shakes his head in disbelief, “We’re filling rooms on this issue.”

Wave of Change

Look, Justin said, “I was lonely for a very long time. But I’m not lonely anymore. There are so many great Americans — so many great warriors — that understand that ESG and DEI through corporate America is a threat to your everyday life, and you are now standing up and fighting back.”

No longer an “outlier”, Danhof tells The Washington Stand that “the growing number of shareholder proposals promoting excellence and meritocracy are an important part of the equation in driving corporate change, because they open up the door for honest dialogue. It helps create a balanced conversation as opposed to the nearly monolithic demand for DEI heretofore.” He thought back to the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, when there was “a rush to implement DEI everywhere and all at once in corporate America. Many of these initiatives were poorly planned and implemented. Under investor scrutiny, the case for DEI often collapses.” As it’s doing on a broad scale now.

Scott Shepard, another expert who’s been in the trenches of shareholder warfare before acronyms like ESG and DEI were even mainstream, loves what he’s seeing from the grassroots. After so many decades of being taken for granted, everyday Americans are forcing “a stampede” of retail behemoths like Walmart, Toyota, Nissan, Ford, Coors, McDonald’s, and so many others to overhaul their entire strategy. But this return to political neutrality can — and should — be part of a broader strategy. Boycotts are good, Shepard told the crowd at Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit late last year, “but it’s not enough. You’ve got to get in the fight if you own shares. … If you are getting a pension, you’ve got to make sure that pension is following fiduciary duty, not voting according to ESG [and DEI].”

What he means is that this is a multi-front war. We’re seeing individual consumers push back with their wallets and voices on social media platforms — and their impact cannot be overstated. But we’ve also seen a powerful legislative response coming from state leaders and treasurers divesting from the nefarious asset managers like BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard. And last, but certainly not least, there’s this spike in activity that we’re seeing from shareholders, who are taking on companies from the inside with targeted resolutions. Together, they’re creating a perfect storm that’s squeezing CEOs until they surrender.

Reversal

Just the Thursday before last, the market was stunned when Larry Fink’s BlackRock, the mastermind of woke investment, decided to officially pull out of the United Nations’ Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) coalition. Fink, who’s been bloodied more than most in the ongoing backlash against DEI and ESG, stunned a lot of people by walking away from this project, given his obsession with climate initiatives.

“This should be music to the ears of every consumer in the entire country,” Will Hild, the executive director of Consumer’s Research, declared to The Daily Wire. “It’s a good thing for consumers because it’s going to help alleviate some of the inflationary effects of ESG and net zero.”

Of course, Fink — like so many executives — sees the writing on the wall of a Trump administration that openly embraces fossil fuels. Still, Hild contended, “This is a huge win for consumers and a decent start for BlackRock rolling back their destructive influence on our economy.” But, he cautioned, there’s a long way to go.

That sentiment is certainly echoed by the movement’s longest champions. Stefan Padfield, executive director of the Free Enterprise Project at the National Center for Public Policy Research, underscored the need for conservatives to stay in the game. He talked about a call he had just last week with “a major, major player.” And when they approached him about changing the business’s woke stance, the guy “basically laughed. … He thought this was a joke.”

As he explained to The Washington Stand, “You’ve got the actual radical activists, [who] are all in on this sort of neo-racist, neo-Marxist agenda. And they would happily sacrifice the share price if it puts them on the ‘right side of history.’ Everything’s political. All you can do is get rid of them, because they’re not going to stop what they’re doing.” And that, he acknowledged, takes time.

“We’ve seen the Robby Starbuck phenomenon. He’s had some great wins,” Stefan pointed out. “All he’s doing is showing people the actual DEI programs, the actual documents [from their own corporations]. … And he’s talked about how he’s gone to at least some executives and shown them this stuff, and they were surprised. And when they saw how bad it was, they just said, ‘Yes, we’re going to get rid of it.’” Obviously, Padfield explained, “That’s a huge problem. I mean, it’s great that they’re responding appropriately, but the fact that they didn’t know [what they were promoting], that’s a big deal.”

With Donald Trump days away from retaking the White House, there’s plenty of reason for optimism, Padfield stressed. Remember, he said, “It’s taken a while for the actual damages to percolate up. We’ve had an administration that has basically run cover for this stuff — if not flat out just like forced it down the throats of all of society. So there’ve been no repercussions on that. And in fact, companies were rewarded for doing this stuff.” That’s about to change.

In the meantime, he encouraged people to lean into the successes conservatives are having — including the ones that go largely unnoticed. One of the reasons there were just 13 anti-DEI resolutions, Padfield agreed, is because so many of these victories are happening in negotiations behind closed doors. Just two weeks ago, Free Enterprise Project celebrated AT&T’s decision to stop pressing suppliers to comply with their woke policies. Because the phone giant agreed to respect their vendors’ civil liberties, the group withdrew their shareholder proposal on the subject. Who knows how many other victories have been decided before investors catch wind?

For now, Padfield said, “It’s fantastic to celebrate the wins, but it’s taken a long time.” It’s really just “the flip side” of “of what the Left has done, right? I mean, they had their own long march.”

But now? Stephen Soukup, author of The Dictatorship of Woke Capital, is “optimistic”. “When my book came out,” he recalled, “I did probably 100, 150 podcasts and radio interviews, and I would have to explain at each and every interview what ESG was. It didn’t matter who the host was, how famous they were, how prominent they were, how well they understood politics. Nobody knew what ESG was. Now everybody knows what ESG is. Now everybody knows what DEI is, [and they know] what the issues we’re facing are. And I think that’s important.”

Looking over at Danhof during the summit, he smiled. “My job early in the movement was to drag Justin out of the bathroom, where he was yelling at himself, and raise awareness about this issue. And I think that that’s one of the things that we’ve done remarkably successfully, is raise awareness about what a small group of elites is doing to our corporate culture, doing to our capital markets, and thereby doing to our entire society.”