Latest news with #Venezuelan-owned
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
What do the Dodgers and Giants have in common? An iconic ad — for Big Oil
Long before Clayton Kershaw donned No. 22 and Fernando Valenzuela wore No. 34, another number told fans it was time for Dodger baseball: 76. Union Oil Co., the 76 gasoline brand's former owner, helped finance Dodger Stadium's construction. The brand's current owner, Phillips 66, remains a major sponsor. Through six World Series titles, orange-and-blue 76 logos have been a constant presence at Chavez Ravine. They tower above the scoreboards and grace the outfield walls. So when 76 recently posted on Instagram that it had begun sponsoring L.A.'s rivals in San Francisco — with an orange-and-blue logo on the center field clock at Oracle Park — some Dodgers fans weren't pleased. 'THE BETRAYAL,' one fan wrote on Instagram. 'bestiessss nooooo,' another lamented. 76 was unfazed, responding: 'Still a bestie, just spreading the love!' Strange as the reactions may sound, it's not unheard of for long-lived ad campaigns to take on a life of their own, evolving from paid promotions to cultural touchstones. Outside Fenway Park in Boston, Red Sox fans have fought to preserve the massive Citgo sign, with its logo of a Venezuelan-owned oil company. Nor is it shocking that Houston-based Phillips 66 would market itself through another baseball team. The 76 gasoline brand, after all, evokes the patriotism of 1776 — a clever marketing ploy. And what's more American than Major League Baseball? Still, the timing of Phillips 66's decision to start sponsoring the Giants is intriguing. Since last summer, nearly 30,000 people have signed a petition urging Dodgers ownership to cut ties with the oil company. California is currently suing Phillips 66 and other oil and gas companies for climate damages, accusing them of a 'decades-long campaign of deception' to hide the truth about the climate crisis. The Sierra Club Angeles Chapter held its third protest at Dodger Stadium before a game against the Athletics on May 15. Activists cloaked in sackcloth marched outside the parking lots. One played a bagpipe. 'It was a bit hard for the fans to comprehend,' organizer Lisa Kaas Boyle acknowledged. Still, she believes the cause is righteous. A former environmental crimes prosecutor and a co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, Kaas Boyle lost her home in the Palisades fire. She's also a Dodgers fan, having caught the bug from her husband, whose 89-year-old mom grew up cheering for the team in Brooklyn. She has a special place in her heart for Kiké Hernández. So when the Dodgers joined other sports teams in pledging $8 million to wildfire relief, she felt the organization was 'speaking out of two sides of its mouth.' She pointed to a study concluding that the weather conditions that helped drive the Palisades and Eaton fires were 35% more likely due to climate change. 'If you really care about us fire victims, you wouldn't be promoting one of the major causes of the disaster,' Kaas Boyle said. 'If you really care, you wouldn't be boosting their image, greenwashing it through baseball.' At least one member of the Dodgers ownership group cares about presenting a climate-friendly image. Tennis star Billie Jean King posted on Facebook, Instagram and X in the fall promoting a climate summit being held next week at the University of Oxford, co-hosted by an arm of the United Nations. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called on all countries to ban fossil fuel advertising. So, what does King think of the 76 ads at Dodger Stadium? Hard to say. Her publicist didn't respond to my request for comment. The Dodgers also declined to respond. Same goes for the Giants and Phillips 66. So why is the oil company 'spreading the love' to the Bay Area? Again, hard to know for sure. But Duncan Meisel has a theory. He runs the advocacy group Clean Creatives, which pressures ad agencies to stop working with fossil fuel clients. And he suspects that lawmakers and regulators based in Sacramento are less likely to attend a baseball game in L.A. than in nearby San Francisco. 'If you're 76, and you're worried about decision-makers in California, that's where you'd want to be,' he said. Indeed, Phillips 66 may have reasons to be worried. The company plans to close its Los Angeles County oil refinery this year — a troubling sign of the economic times for Big Oil as California shifts toward electric cars. Lawmakers are also weighing a 'polluters pay' bill that would require fossil fuel companies to help pay for damages from more intense heat waves, wildfires and storms. Phillips 66, meanwhile, was arraigned this month on charges that it violated the U.S. Clean Water Act by dumping oil and grease from its L.A. County refinery into the local sewer system. (It pleaded not guilty.) That followed a win for climate activists in March, when state Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) wrote to Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, urging him to dump Phillips 66. Hence, perhaps, the newfound relationship with the Giants. 'That's why you advertise,' Meisel said. 'If you're a company like Phillips 66 that's under threat from political and cultural pressures in California, it's hard to get a better deal than sponsoring a local sports team.' It's not just California turning up the heat on Phillips 66. Executives have been battling a pressure campaign from Elliott Investment Management, which won two seats on the company's board last week. As Elliott ramped up the pressure on Phillips 66 earlier this year, executives announced an expanded sponsorship deal with their hometown ball club — another Dodgers nemesis, as it happens, the cheating Houston Astros. Phillips 66 now sponsors the home run train atop the high left-field wall at Houston's Daikin Park (formerly Minute Maid Park). The train is filled with 25 oversized baseballs, each representing a special moment in Astros history — yes, including the World Series title they stole from the Dodgers. As Phillips 66 brand manager John Field said in an April news release: 'Sponsorships like these are more than just fun — they're a strategic investment.' Fun and strategic, sure, if you're mainly invested in oil industry profits. If you care about watching baseball games in safe temperatures, without choking on wildfire smoke, you might reach a different conclusion. One thing's for sure: Fossil fuel companies will keep pumping money into baseball so long as teams let them. The Astros, Texas Rangers and Cleveland Guardians all wear jersey patches sponsored by oil and gas companies. In California, meanwhile, Phillips 66 will keep reminding Dodgers fans how much they love looking at 76 logos — a playbook so successful it once inspired a campaign to save the rotating 76 balls above gas stations. 'This is a heavy play on Americana,' Roberta J. Newman said. A Yankees fan and professor in New York University's Liberal Studies program, Newman wrote the fascinating book, 'Here's the Pitch: The Amazing, True, New, and Improved Story of Baseball and Advertising.' There may be nobody with a better understanding of the cultural and political power of baseball-linked advertising. When a brand like 76 associates itself with the Dodgers — through special ticket deals, joint promotions with the team charity and TV commercials starring Vin Scully — it's engaged in 'meaning transfer,' Newman said. 'Your positive associations of the Dodgers will become positive associations with 76,' she said. Most fans won't drive away from Dodger Stadium and immediately choose 76 over a rival gasoline station. But in the long run, they'll have good vibes when they see the orange-and-blue logo. It'll feel familiar, friendly. If that sounds nuts — well, you might want to tell business executives they blew $1 trillion on ads last year. 'People might think, 'Oil is terrible. But 76 is the Dodgers,'' Newman said. Now it's the Giants, too — not that Newman thinks the dual loyalty will hurt the company. As one Instagram user, a Giants fan, wrote: 'Hey Dodger fans, it's OK! ... 76 is a California icon and tradition from North to South!' Fair enough. Wildfires are getting bigger and more destructive up there too. This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our 'Boiling Point' podcast here. For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @ on Bluesky.
Buzz Feed
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Buzz Feed
People Who Escaped Authoritarianism Share Their Final Straws
Due to the state of, well, everything in the world right now, the topics of authoritarian governments are on everybody's mind. Recently, Reddit user Free_Dimension1459 asked, "People who escaped authoritarian governments, when did you KNOW it was the right time for you to leave your country?" Sadly, there were A LOT of replies. Here are some of the most compelling: "I remember asking my mom why she left the Philippines in the '70s. She explained the Ferdinand Marcos regime and how he declared martial law. She said when that was announced, she knew she had to leave. She had been working towards moving anyway, but she said that was her cue to hurry it up." —duckface08 "I'm from Myanmar (formerly Burma). Most of us young people left the country when they enacted the conscription law. Now you can't leave the country unless you've done military service — which essentially means until you die. There's a civil war going on, and they need more meat for the meat grinder." —LordAdri123 "I left Russia back in 2006. Everything was great back then (freedom of internet, foreign tourists, international brands, etc.), but I had a weird feeling it wouldn't last long. I cannot explain it. I visited my parents for a month in 2019, and it felt like the beginning of the end. Then came Covid, and the war." "IKEA and McDonald's left the country, and flights were cancelled. The time I lived in Russia was a short window between the Soviet era and the prosperity of the 2000s. I'm a bird. I used my gut feeling to fly away."—HAKAKAHO "I left the US in 2006. With the Patriot Act and several other infringements of citizens' rights, I felt it was the right time to leave." —SeaDry1531 "My grandad left Poland after he was thrown in a concentration camp and escaped. He was very clever and bilingual in German. He made it to the UK. He was 16 in 1939." —Anonymous "The police started harassing people on the streets after a protest in Belarus. Some of them were killed, some injured. Thousands were imprisoned and tortured. It is still happening. When everything happened, I just took the first morning flight and left for another country." "This is the short version; the full story is a bit more complicated, obviously."—fromcityoftheSun "When I went to the market and found nothing at all but bones. When I had a gun pointed in my face and was robbed for the umpteenth time. When one of my neighbors got shot, and I heard his relatives screaming. When kids died around me in protests. When we got tear gassed and shot at by the National Guard. When the dictator was dancing salsa in a mandatory national transmission while he celebrated the death of protesters. I left Venezuela in 2016 and it still fucking hurts." "I am blessed and privileged. I am grateful that out of sheer good luck, I got to escape via plane and not through the Darién Gap or a shoddy boat. Others are not that lucky. If you have money to spare, go to a Venezuelan-owned restaurant, help your local refugees, and donate to UNHCR or Doctors Without Borders."—AmazingRise "I used to know a woman who was from Haiti. She said the right time to leave was in 1980 when the Tonton Macoute came for her husband, who was a political dissident. That was the last time she and the kids saw him." —nmuncer "My grandfather, the bravest man I have ever known, fled Germany shortly before the Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935. He had been a lawyer and had arranged everyone's passports, hidden some gold away, and established a place for them to flee. The judiciary was already under the control of the regime. He took his wife and five children and crossed France into Belgium. By 1936, he was applying for asylum to multiple countries, including the US (where he knew people in the embassy). He was summarily denied." "My family fled along the coast on foot, separating children and adults so they weren't all traveling together, hoping their odds were better that way. My grandmother and two aunts were caught and sent to the gas chambers at Treblinka. Mikhael was caught by the Gestapo in Southern France and summarily executed on the spot. Joseph developed pneumonia and died somewhere in northern Spain. My grandfather and father were smuggled into Portugal, got onto a boat, and eventually made it to New Palestine. After the war, my grandfather had had enough of the Zionists, and he was finally granted a US immigration visa and came here in 1947. I was born on American soil in 1961."—Pusfilledonut "We left Turkey after the 2016 coup. I think we did the right thing, but now we have another authoritarian government to deal with in the US." —Sirenafeniks "My grandmother left Hungary when the hospital she worked at took a direct hit around the October Revolution. It was amazing what she and her family survived for love of country before that moment." —violetx "My great grandma fled the USSR during the pogroms and settled in Germany. The day Hitler was elected, she and her husband starting packing and made a break for the US." —RaySizzle16 "My great-grandparents took their six kids and fled Scotland during the second Highland Clearance. They lost their land at bayonet point. My great-grandfather went from being an educated doctor in the Highlands to being a janitor here in the US because the British were determined to starve out the Scottish clans just like they did with the Irish." —sunlitmoonlight1772 "When Putin invaded Crimea, I accepted a job offer to move out of Russia. People around me didn't care much, and I realized that Putin knew he could do anything he wanted there because people wouldn't protest. I thought he would turn the country into a full-on dictatorship, and I was right." —Vjuja "My mother and her parents left Bosnia in 1991 when the Iron Curtain fell and Yugoslavia started falling. They saw the whole conflict and genocides coming." —femboyisbestboy "When Putin and Medvedev swapped positions as president and prime minister in 2012, my wife and I looked at each other and were like, 'yep, it's time to go.' Best decision ever." —CanadianRussian74 And finally, a reminder to stay vigilant now more than ever: "I have read many accounts of people who lived in authoritarian governments, and most didn't notice until authoritarianism was already in full swing." "Many seem to deny it until it affects them directly. Most people are just living their lives, and a lot of people consciously avoid the media as it's generally depressing. The first to leave are those who are paying attention."—WXavierM H/T r/AskReddit
