On September 2021, Rappahannock Electic Cooperative's board approved the adoption of a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plan (DEI). DEI is rooted in Marxist Critical Race Theory and has no place in an electric utility provider, regardless of whether the electric power industry and international cooperative community choose to incorporate DEI.

DEI is designed to create conditions for hostility, discomfort, polarization, conflict, and collapse in the institutions that use them. DEI not only wastes money now but will cause increased costs more or less perpetually afterward.

As cooperative members, we denounce the DEI plan and are asking for prompt removal of all vestiges of it. REC needs to focus on its core mission of  "connecting our members and communities with safe, reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy solutions" not promoting a progressive destructive agenda.