Time to retire ‘go woke, go broke’

I saw this Bill Gates Paul video, “Salvation Army Becomes Woke and Goes Broke”

The tile says it all (you don’t even need to watch the video). I think Ramz somewhat embellishes the truth though, which is recurring pattern of some of his videos. After researching the the topic deeper, it would appear as if the Vancouver division of the Salvation Army fell short of a $300,000 donation goal and saw a decline in donations: “The Salvation Army of Vancouver Red Kettle campaign …is seeing 40 percent fewer donations compared with last year.”

According to the WSJ, some donors pushed back against the Salvation Army’s International Social Justice Commission, which published a discussion guide called “Let’s Talk About Racism.” The document is “designed to stimulate gracious discussion among Salvationists who choose to participate,” although there is no mention or link in the article between ‘wokeness’ and any decline in donations. So rather than the Salvation Army, overall, seeing a major decline, it was just limited to Vancouver, and it’s hard to say for sure if a backlash to wokeness is to blame. Falling short of a donation goal in some markets, is a long way from ‘going broke’ as the title of the video suggests.

Also, it’s not unheard of for the Salvation Army to fall short of its donation goals; a Google search shows many examples from before 2021. For example, in 2019 the Jackson Salvation Army fell $150,000 short of its objective.

I think it’s time to retire “go woke, go broke.” I dunno who originated it, but it’s wildly inaccurate and amounts to nothing more than wishful thinking. If there was any truth to it, Apple, Facebook, and Google would not be trillion-dollar companies. These are among the most profitable companies in existence and couldn’t be further away from ‘going broke’. It’s more like the opposite: going woke means being the darling of Wall St. and Silicon Valley, at the cost of possibly losing some customers but getting good press and new customers, such as deep-pocketed organizations that spend heavily on advertising despite not turning a profit. BLM spent heavily on Google ads in 2020.

Mailchimp is another example of a company that saw huge success after going woke. To fight ‘misinformation’ regarding the 2020 election, Mailchimp “refused to provide service to the Northern Virginia Tea Party, citing that it violates their terms of agreement about ‘potential… misinformation.'” In 2021 Mailchimp was bought by Intuit for $12 billion…so much for going broke.