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A conservative group has launched a new alert system that helps grocery shoppers spot products peddled by corporate behemoths that have a hand in the advancement of the left's woke agenda.
While those championing the service suggest it will "help consumers make better-informed decisions," leftists claim this anti-ESG technology is regressive.
Every purchase a battle won or lost
According to the New York Times, consumer rights activist Fredrick J. Schlink co-founded the Consumer's Club with Stuart Chase with the aim of protecting the consumer "by publicizing defective and unsafe products." They incorporated this club as the nonprofit Consumers' Research Inc. in 1931, making it America's first independent organization to test consumer products and report on them by brand name.
When Schlink stood firm against the demands of suspected communist labor unions in the mid-30s, strikers left Consumers' Research and founded the competing Consumers Union, which published Consumer Reports.
Despite this schism, the original organization persisted.
Will Hild, who previously worked with the Federalist Society and other conservative organizations, became the executive director of Consumers' Research in 2020, then championed the launch of the Consumers First Initiative the following year, seeking to put "corporations on notice that they need to start serving their customers, not woke politicians."
Consumers' Research has since sought to fight environmental, social, and governance initiatives, noting that ESG is wielded by political activists and their ideological allies in the business community to "drive a progressive agenda ... through economic coercion and ignoring democratic processes."
The Washington Post reported in January, "Consumers’ Research has morphed into aself-styled watchdog of liberal causes. It has singled out ESG, which it argues harms consumers, reduces investment returns and contributes to inflation."
Its budget reportedly grew tenfold to over $8 million in 2021, and its 2022 budget was likely $2 million higher.
Leonard A. Leo, the Federalist Society’s co-chairman, told the Post, "Consumers’ Research and its leader Will Hild are executing the most impactful pushback I know against ESG and other aspects of woke corporate culture. ... It’s time that businesses that are out of step with the sentiments of most Americans pay a price for their standing up for woke special interests instead of consumers."
Woke alerts
Axios reported that as of Friday, Consumers' Research is offering "Woke Alert": a free text service that notifies grocery shoppers which brands are linked to the left's cultural, economic, and social agendas.
The sign-up page says, "Many corporations are putting progressive activists and their dangerous agendas ahead of customers. They'll only succeed if we look the other way."
Subscribers to the service are alerted when an organization or brand ceases to merely sell a product and instead begins peddling a radical ideology or participating in wokery.
For instance, subscribers would have recently received a woke alert about Jack Daniel's. The alert indicated that the recent Jack Daniel's "Small Town, Big Pride" advertising campaign featured drag queens, one of whom stressed “drag culture — which is all about … inviting others to accept you as you are.”
Shoppers with little time on their hands are spared the legwork and provided supporting evidence for the alerts; in this case, a Newsweek article detailing the Jack Daniel's boycott over claims the company has "gone woke."
Already, there have been woke alerts about Anheuser-Busch, BlackRock, Silicon Valley Bank, the American Women's History Museum, Apple, Puffin Books, the National Football League, and others.
According to Axios, the organization is kicking off a six-figure digital ad campaign this week to promote "Woke Alert."
Leftists already upset
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), touted as Congress' first openly gay representative, told Axios, "The right wing is hell-bent on moving our country backwards, and this new text service is laughable."
Anna Bahr, a political consultant with Left Flank Strategies, said, "I hate to break it to the radical right, but people in this country are a lot more concerned about paying for an eighty-dollar tank of gas than the color of their Budweiser bottle."
In response to Bahr's claim, the State Financial Officers Foundation noted, "Americans are equally concerned about the #ESGscam that's causing $80 tanks of gas."
\u201cSign-up for Woke Alerts today at:\n\nhttps://t.co/UPRoU5PpgA\u201d— Consumers' Research (@Consumers' Research) 1681474629
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‘Woke Alerts’ Notifies Consumers When Companies Go Woke
A new free notification system known as 'Woke Alerts' informs consumers when a company promotes the radical, left-wing agenda.BlackRock in crosshairs as conservative activists take aim at 'woke capitalism,' ESG investing
Conservative groups are launching a campaign aimed at stopping ESG's 'woke capitalism' from decimating investors' retirement savings, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday.
BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, the first to exceed $10 trillion, is directly in the groups' crosshairs.
"The ESG movement is polluting our culture and assaulting the dignity and worth of people," Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo told WSJ. "Our enterprise stands with a growing group of Americans who are fighting to crush leftist dominance in this arena."
ESG is an acronym for environmental, social, and governance investing. Investopedia's nutshell definition of ESG investing is "a set of standards for a company's behavior used by socially conscious investors to screen potential investments." In other words, ESG investments take a company's climate change stance and diversity-related activities into account as financial factors.
A conservative nonprofit called Marble Freedom Trust, overseen by Leo, has taken the lead in the initiative to disentangle ESG from actual financial factors asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard consider when investing on consumers' behalf. So far, the group has put more than $10 million, mostly with Consumers' Research, into its anti-ESG efforts, the WSJ reports.
Marble Freedom Trust has provided grants to groups that are pushing back on the questionable, potentially risky investment strategy. Other groups receiving grants include the Heritage Foundation, the State Financial Officers Foundation, and the American Accountability Foundation, the WSJ says.
Their approach to ousting ESG includes distributing model legislation to state capitals and creating ads explaining the risks in supporting ESG principles.
Consumers' Research is the organization that launched viral ads in 2021 targeting targeting "Woka-Cola" and in 2022 targeting American Airlines for trying to "appease woke politicians to distract from its failures as a company."
Consumers' Research blasted BlackRock last year in a blistering, 30-second spot blaming it for soaring gas prices and outrageous housing prices. In the ad, the organization placed responsibility squarely in the lap of Larry Fink, BlackRock's CEO.
Further, group pointed out that BlackRock's former ESG head, Brian Deese, had become President Biden's economic adviser. Deese left his position on Biden's National Economic Council Team last week.
\u201cToday is my last day at @briandeeseNEC.\n\nI leave the White House humbled by what we have been able to accomplish over the last two years, and confident in the team moving forward. Time to finish the job! \n\nStarting tomorrow, you can find me at @BrianCDeese.\u201d— Brian Deese (@Brian Deese) 1676983034
BlackRock has reportedly spent $3.5 million in lobbying last year, meeting with senators and representatives about ESG, the WSJ says.
Marble Freedom Trust, the anti-ESG group with Leo at the helm, received $1.6 billion to fund its efforts, which also include limiting abortion and opposing critical race theory, according to the WSJ.
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