Inheritors of Walmart founder Sam Walton’s fortune have poured millions of dollars into LGBT activist organizations in Arkansas, helping to bankroll a number of propaganda events ranging from drag shows and story hours for kids to so-called “education” programs for sexually-confused youths.
The Waltons stocking kids’ transition closets
In a recent report, Heritage Foundation research associate Gillian Richards scrutinized some of the causes that second- and third-generation beneficiaries of the Walmart patriarch’s wealth have patronized.
In June 2021, the Alice W. Walton Foundation and Olivia and Tom Walton, through the Walton Family Foundation, launched the Arkansas LGBTQ+ Advancement Fund.
Heather Larkin, president of the Arkansas Community Foundation, stated that this $1 million fund, which in turn confers grants of up to $150,000 to “LGBTQ-serving” nonprofits throughout the state, helps ensure that activist groups can “expand their impact on communities and help Arkansans pull together to build a more welcoming and supportive environment for us all.”
Richards noted that the Equality Crew is one beneficiary of the Waltons’ advancement fund.
This particular group established Arkansas’ confidential “Affirming Teacher and School Staff Database” ahead of the 2021-22 school year so that confused children could connect with teachers who would “affirm” their amorphous adolescent and teen sexual identities.
According to Richards, the Equality Crew hosted an event at the Walton Arts Center, which had a segment titled “Kids Zone,” featuring a “drag story time for younger children.” In another segment, titled “Teen Zone,” grade school students were treated to a “DJ, local band, and TWO drag shows.”
In another Equality Crew event that was set to take place at a public library, youth were invited to get “clothing from The Transition Closet” and to take part in a “teens-only dance party.”
The Transition Closet happens to be another Walton-funded nonprofit that provides “gender-affirming clothing and accessories for transgender and non-binary Arkansans.”
According to the organizers, the Equality Crew event was ultimately cancelled due to an “increasing number of violent and disruptive attacks on parents, children, and organizers seeking to serve members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
Richards reported that the Walton Family Foundation and the Walmart Foundation are both also leading sponsors of Northwest Arkansas Equality, an activist nonprofit based in Fayetteville.
According to the group’s website, “Northwest Arkansas Equality’s mission is to provide programs, education, and advocacy to serve, connect, and empower the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community.”
The NAE puts on various drag events.
The NAE proudly claims to have targeted kids with a number of its events, including drag brunches and “children’s storytimes.” Some of the group’s events featured so-called celebrities like drag queens Brian Michael Firkus (“Trixie Mattel”), Darius Jeremy Pierce (“Shangela”), and Ryan Taylor (“Trinity Taylor”).
The Walmart Foundation has been giving the NAE money since at least 2007 and has been filling the group’s coffers with the help of the Waltons as recently as 2020.
In addition to bankrolling LGBT groups, the Waltons have involved themselves directly in political battles regarding the advancement of the transgender agenda in Arkansas.
In 2021, Alice Walton, Tom Walton, and the Walton Family Foundation fought Arkansas’ “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act” and failed. The proposed legislation passed despite a veto from Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The act, now law, bans doctors from medically mutilating children and teens for the purposes of so-called “gender transition.”
Woke capital
The Capital Research Center, an American conservative nonprofit focused on charity and philanthropy, previously detailed Walmart’s long slide into woke philanthropy.
Sam Walton wrote “that Wal-Mart really is not, and should not be, in the charity business,” not the least because it would amount to the company being charitable with other people’s money, particularly “shareholders or our customers.”
Nevertheless, the Walmart Foundation, created by Walton in 1982, reportedly tripled its expenditures on philanthropic donations between 1999 and 2005.
While the foundation largely gave to right-leaning think tanks in the early 2000s, facing criticism over being too capitalistic, it ramped up its funding of progressive and liberal causes in the 2010s.
The CPC indicated that the foundation soon was giving millions to leftist and leftist-adjacent organizations such as the New Venture Fund, FSG Inc., the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, the Meridian Institute, and others.
Soon, it was funneling cash into open-borders organizations like the National Immigration Forum and leftist identity groups like the Institute for Latino Progress.
Advocate, a gay activist publication, reported in 2016 that “Walmart has made an imperfect but nonetheless remarkable turnaround on LGBT advocacy,” trending from 14 out of a possible 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s so-called Corporate Equality Index to 90.
Now, just six years later, Walmart sits at first place on the index with a 100 CEI score, ahead of Amazon, ExxonMobil, and Apple.
In addition to donating to groups pushing open borders, amnesty for criminal noncitizens, bigger government, and drag shows for children, Walmart also jumped on the BLM bandwagon.
In June 2020, amidst the George Floyd riots, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon announced that the Walmart Foundation and Walmart were committing $100 million to create a new center on racial equity.
While financially backing and systematizing identity politics, Walmart also embraced critical race theory. City Journal reported in October 2021 that Walmart employees were told that the U.S. was a “white supremacy system.”
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