The anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is nearing this week, and the country’s top racial justice leaders just released a video calling out the largest corporations and asset managers who invested in racism to support the insurrection and voter suppression bills in the wake of Trump’s loss.
The video, Behind the Woke-Wash: Investors that Backed the Insurrection, is available here.
Racial justice leaders including Rashad Robinson of Color Of Change, Rahna Epting of MoveOn, and Dorian Warren of Community Change are unmasking the corporate enablers of the insurrectionists and of voter suppression bills that have spread nationwide. Companies like Ford, Home Depot, FedEx, Chevron, Delta, Wells Fargo directly funded those responsible for the Capitol attack, and the biggest asset managers and shareholders of these companies like BlackRock, Fidelity, and Vanguard rubber stamped these activities at the annual shareholder meetings.
Ahead of those annual shareholder meetings, hundreds of racial justice leaders signed a full-page ad in the Financial Times calling on the biggest asset managers to stand by their public statements of support for the Black Lives Matter movement and use their power to address corporate racism.
Now the votes are complete at some of the biggest public companies, and the results are alarming.
Racial justice leaders are responding to Majority Action’s full analysis of the season’s proxy voting on dozens of shareholder proposals and hundreds of director elections in which asset managers were able to hold companies accountable for addressing racial equity audits, board diversity, political spending and lobbying activities, workforce issues and their role in perpetuating systemic racism. Time and time again at some of the biggest public companies, we found that asset managers chose to preserve the status quo — and racial justice leaders are furious. Take a look at their reaction here.
