Simone Foxman:
These companies were all targeted by a social media influencer named Robby Starbuck.
And unlike other conservative activists, Robby Starbuck is not a lawyer. He is just an online user who draws attention to what he calls woke retailer or corporate policies that many consumers are interested in, even though he believes consumers don’t want the companies to adopt those policies.
For example, if you go to the United States and very rural communities, you’ll probably find a larger number of more conservative people who might not be as interested in seeing transgender workers at Tractor Supply, for example, get health care.
So he’s basically trying to combine the potential conservative impulses of certain groups of people with corporate policies and say, “Hey, there’s a disconnect here.” And he’s been extremely effective.
Both of these campaigns have been running for two months, actually since early June, about three months. So we’ve seen a lot of movement on the corporate front. One of the questions we have to ask ourselves is, were these companies ever as committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts as they are now abandoning, as they said they were, no matter what the headlines, the press releases said two years ago?
