One of We Heart Seattle’s most generous benefactors helped launch a pseudoscientific racist research network. Seattle resident Andrew Conru, who gifted at least $600,000 to We Heart Seattle over the last three years, made headlines in 2024 after the Guardian revealed that he supplied $1.3 million in start-up cash to a group called the Human Diversity Foundation
Now known as Polygenic Scores, the Human Diversity Foundation aims to revive and popularize racist pseudoscience by cloaking it in euphemisms and academic jargon. The founder, Danish white nationalist blogger Emil Kirkegaard, previously created an open-access journal specializing in so-called race realist material.
The group is a rogue’s gallery of folks with similar backgrounds, interests, and ideologies, including German neo-Nazi Erik Ahrens, a former teacher named Matthew Frost, and Bo Winegaard, a “race realist” professor. The foundation was back in the news recently after it was discovered that the organization played a central role in the racist dogpile that led to the suicide of Black academic Jason Arday.
When the Guardian confronted Conru, he pulled his support, saying that it had strayed from its mission of “non-partisan academic research.” Conru made his fortune creating AdultFriendFinder, an adult-themed dating website, which he sold to Penthouse for $500 million. Afterward, he more or less became a full-time philanthropist.
Conru funds many of the standard causes, such as arts and culture, but his other charitable contributions suggest he knew exactly who he was giving a $1.3 million check to. He’s given sizeable chunks of cash to the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies as well as the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA.
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The value We Heart Seattle brings to its donors
Like the Human Diversity Foundation, We Heart Seattle attempts to conceal its purpose, but you don’t need to look very hard to figure out what it is. The group presents itself as a harmless civic organization trying to beautify Seattle and as a social services provider doing “boots on the ground” outreach.
But at its core, We Heart Seattle is a conservative propaganda operation that depicts the homeless as filthy, violent, drug-addicted, mentally ill criminals. The steady stream of videos showing piles of garbage, burnt foil, and needles reinforces this message.
On the rare occasion when We Heart Seattle does ostensibly help get someone “off the streets,” that, too, is conservative propaganda. The message is that the private sector can get it done better than the government. But We Heart Seattle often drops people off at a shelter or a treatment center, claims victory, and then leaves. There’s no follow-up or reporting.
The group adds another number to their website without tracking whether the person stayed housed or drug-free. Even then, the number isn’t that impressive. The group claimed to have helped 33 people get on the “pathway to housing” last year.
We Heart Seattle Director Andrea Suarez has one solution for everything: criminalization. End diversion programs. Make fentanyl possession a felony. Jail the “service resistant.” Outlaw harm reduction supplies. She also wants to implement mass surveillance. Suarez was pushing Flock Safety so hard for a while, you might have confused her for a sales rep.
This philosophy is reflected in the type of grantmakers who fund We Heart Seattle. It’s no surprise that a megamillionaire conservative who believes in eugenics would financially support a pseudo-advocacy organization that wants to lock up all the untermenschen.
The group’s second-largest donor, the Alsdorf Foundation, is headed by Andrew Alsdorf, a deputy prosecutor in Snohomish County. Alsdorf comes from a wealthy family of Chicago art collectors. Ironically, Alsdorf spends much of his time prosecuting robberies and organized retail theft, while his family has knowingly trafficked in treasures looted from the Global South for decades (and also a Picasso painting that the Nazis stole).
Another major donor is Mary Kay McCaw, the widow of a telecom billionaire who died in a hot tub accident. McCaw has a distinctively conservative political profile. She gave to Republican King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn in the last election cycle. McCaw also donated to Recall Sawant, various anti-tax initiatives, and, of course, the deceptively named 2021 anti-homeless charter amendment Compassion Seattle.
The fact that none of We Heart Seattle’s major donors give to any other homelessness organizations is also telling. If Andrea Suarez were actually working in good faith to “save lives” and “get people off the streets,” wouldn’t We Heart Seattle attract funding from grantmakers that give to the homeless? Guess those other donors are part of the “Homelessness Industrial Complex.”
Still, We Heart Seattle’s revenue nearly hit a million dollars in the last two years, and it will probably surpass that in 2026. With low overhead and a steady supply of wealthy phrenologists, billionaire widows, and prosecutor failsons from art theft dynasties, being part of the Anti-Homeless Industrial Complex is pretty lucrative, too.
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