Downtown Los Angeles was a sea of blue clothes and confetti Monday as Dodger followers took to the streets to rejoice their group’s back-to-back World Sequence wins.
However some followers are questioning if their love for the group is reciprocated.
In spite of everything, Dodgers proprietor Mark Walter has a monetary stake within the ongoing ICE raids which might be ravaging Southern California’s Latino communities.
Los Angeles Dodgers participant Clayton Kershaw, left, and proprietor Mark Walter, proper, pose with President Donald Trump throughout a ceremony to honor the 2024 World Sequence champions within the East Room of the White Home on April 7.
Amid President Donald Trump’s choice to deploy ICE brokers and later Nationwide Guard members and Marines to Los Angeles, Walter already had a stake in some questionable amenities housing immigrants being focused for deportation.
In line with Black Press USA nationwide correspondent Stacy Brown, Walter’s monetary companies agency Guggenheim Companions owns a 0.38% stake in GEO Group, a personal jail firm the Trump administration has contracted to construct and function immigrant detention facilities.
On high of that, Walter can be CEO of multinational holding firm TWG World, which introduced a partnership in March with software program firm Palantir to develop immigrant-tracking software program, simply months earlier than the ICE raids started in L.A.
However as ICE brokers have been terrorizing native communities by detaining road distributors and raiding House Depot parking tons, the baseball group so fervently liked by L.A.’s big Latino inhabitants was notably silent.
The Dodgers don’t simply play in a closely Latino metropolis; the group additionally leans into the tradition when it is handy—and worthwhile.
By hiring mariachi bands throughout post-season video games, internet hosting Mexican, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan heritage nights, and even trademarking their Spanish nickname “Los Doyers” and promoting merch emblazoned with the moniker, the group homeowners make no try and masks the Dodgers’ longtime connection to the Latino neighborhood.
That made the group’s preliminary silence on ICE raids particularly conspicuous.
Including insult to damage, the group’s executives instructed Dominican American singer Nezza that she couldn’t sing the nationwide anthem in Spanish amid the raids. She did it anyway.
This all strains up with the group’s go to to Trump’s White Home in April, the place the proprietor bent the knee to the president.
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When the criticism grew too loud for the Dodgers’ homeowners to disregard any longer, they did what the rich and highly effective do: throw cash on the drawback in hopes it could go away.
In June, the Dodgers introduced a $1 million donation to immigrant households impacted by the ICE raids.
“What’s happening in Los Angeles has reverberated among thousands upon thousands of people, and we have heard the calls for us to take a leading role on behalf of those affected,” Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten mentioned in a obscure assertion.
This announcement got here simply days after the Dodgers denied entry to ICE brokers requesting to make use of their stadium car parking zone for staging and processing .
The group’s donation and assertion was a small gesture within the face of a large-scale effort to decimate the immigrant neighborhood not simply in Southern California, however throughout the US.
In order Dodgers followers rejoice the win, it’s a joyous time by all accounts. However Walter and his multibillion-dollar empire, which has now expanded into possession of the L.A. Lakers, loom behind the happiness.
