Despite criticism over its alarming ties to pro-Hamas protesters, the George Soros-backed Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) continues to win support from prominent Democrats like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Warren, who has a history of promoting the group, will serve as co-host of a Capitol Hill panel discussion featuring a top member of the organization — PESP Director of Programs Eileen O’Grady — on Wednesday.
PESP says it wants to “hold private equity companies accountable for the impacts they have on the people and planet.” But its leaders have also been vocal critics of Israel and supporters of the campus protests that many say have devolved into antisemitism.
In fact, senior PESP staffer K Agbebiyi used social media to praise the protests outside the U.S. Capitol that greeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he spoke to a joint meeting of Congress last week. Protesters called for violence against Israel, waved the Hamas flag, and burned the American flag.
And just two weeks after the horrific Oct. 7 terror attack, the PESP employee union released a statement declaring its “unwavering support for the people of Palestine as they fight against their brutal occupation at the hands of the Israeli government.”
Warren has repeatedly ducked questions regarding her support of the organization, which brands itself as a labor rights group.
Neither Warren’s office nor PESP responded to requests for comment.
While the organization claims its mission is “transparency and accountability” on behalf of “impacted communities,” Gordon Gray, executive director of the pro-free market Pinpoint Policy Institute, questions PESP’s true motives.
“Recent reports make clear that the Private Equity Stakeholder Project is far from the credible ‘watchdog’ group it has long portrayed itself to be,” Gray stated. “It’s disturbing that this group, whose senior staff includes actual, self-described communists and expressed extreme anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric, would be welcomed into the U.S. Capitol by a member of the U.S. Senate.
“It’s little surprise then that Pinpoint has identified significant methodological errors in PESP’s published work, which virtually always attacks the U.S. free enterprise system.”
Actions over the last several years show the cause of labor rights and supporting the American working class, typically the bread-and-butter of the Democratic Party, is drifting further backward on the list of priorities for leftist labor organizations like PESP.
Vermont Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders told attendees at a series of town hall-style events last weekend that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other party members are taking the support of labor unions for granted.
“What Democrats for too long have not done is to understand that tens and tens of millions of working people are struggling to put food on their table, to take care of their kids, to retire with dignity,” Sanders said at a stop in Manchester, N.H.
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee earlier this month, International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien delivered a primetime speech and said he “refuses to do the same thing his predecessors did.”
“I don’t care about getting criticized, it’s an honor to be the first Teamster in our 121-year history to address the Republican National Convention,” O’Brien said.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) later penned a column praising O’Brien’s decision to speak at the RNC.
“The C-suite long ago sold out the United States, shuttering factories in the homeland and gutting American jobs, while using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag,” Hawley wrote.
O’Brien later drew criticism from leftists for agreeing with Hawley’s take.
“100 percent on point,” O’Brien wrote on a social media post promoting Hawley’s column.
PESP, meanwhile, describes its mission as one that seeks to “identify, engage, and connect stakeholders affected by private equity with the goal of engaging investors and empowering communities, working families, and others impacted by private equity investments.”
The true cause for PESP and other related left-wing groups, critics say, is to bully private equity-owned companies into buying into supporting far-left progressive political initiatives as part of the cost of doing business.
Peter C. Earle, senior economist at the Massachusetts-based free enterprise advocacy organization American Institute for Economic Research, describes PESP’s “whole scenario as ludicrous.”
“Where once Marxists and other collectivists vilified private corporations and successful entrepreneurs, they’re now trying to co-opt finance to promote their own agendas, essentially conceding the superiority of economic calculation over central planning,” Earle added.
Warren, meanwhile, has a cozy history with the Soros-backed PESP. In 2019, she prompted a report co-authored by PESP slamming private equity’s influence in the economy’s retail sector.
In 2021, Warren appeared alongside PESP chief Jim Baker in a video conference that targeted hedge funds, while in April it was Warren who was front-and-center in a PESP press release announcing the launch of the organization’s Private Risk Index.
“Let’s call out private equity’s abuse for what it is: legal looting,” Warren said.
