The Wardens win the Series! The Wardens win the Series! Who are the Wardens? Didn’t the Los Angeles Dodgers win this year’s world series? Yes, well, even if you own a minuscule share of a private prison, as the Dodger’s ownership does, it’s sort of like being a little bit pregnant.
You either are or you aren’t.
Guggenheim Baseball Management is the management group that owns the Los Angeles Dodgers. Guggenheim Partners is the parent company and has $350 billion of assets under management as part of these assets. They have a .38 % interest in Geo Group, a corporation that runs private prisons and is closely associated with ICE detention facilities. The controlling partner of this group is Mark Walter, whose own personal net worth is estimated at $12 billion. Walter is also CEO of Guggenheim Partners. In addition to being head of Geo Group, Walters also heads TWG Global which, according to Stacy Brown of Black Press USA, “recently announced a partnership with Palantir Technologies, the data analytics firm that ICE paid $30 million to build ImmigrationOS. That platform uses facial recognition, predictive algorithms, and data fusion to track immigrants and support deportation efforts.”
It would be easy and completely justified to buy a ticket for the Dodgers on the vilification train, but it’s not so simple. The irony is that the Guggenheim group espouses DEI. In our twisted times, that’s the equivalent of calling the offending corporation the “N” word. Without getting into the heads of the partners of the management group, it’s hard to fathom what their thinking was when the larger Guggenheim group invested into the brand tarnishing incarceration industrial complex of Geo Group and Palantir, but one can speculate.
Clearly, when fans found out about how the parent company of the Dodgers ownership group was investing in private corporations who were profiting from the decimation of Southern California communities, they had to be enraged cries of protest from the team’s loyal diehards. Not that it makes the brutality any less, well, brutal, but Guggenheim group did not invest in these companies as an asset where they expected a return on their investment. No, these were extortive payments to companies propping up the authoritarian regime of the moment. It’s what makes sense.
Guggenheim Baseball Management by all measures, including the ultimate one, winning the World Series, is a well run organization. By investing in Geo Group and Palantir the Guggenheim group curries favor with the Trump administration. Their hope is to simply be left alone to go about their business. It isn’t obvious at first, but Mark Walter and the Guggenheim partners are in the same sycophantic, supplicant position as the tech overlords were when they stood as a cover of credibility for Trump at the inauguration earlier this year. They may be billionaires hundreds of times over, but they still bend a knee to the grifting Imbecile in Chief. It may seem like an enviable problem to have, but imagine the Zuckerbergs, the Bezos, the Cooks who have built companies that are worth trillions having to fawn over the likes of a faux billionaire like Trump, who has made his house of mirrors fortune through chicanery and deceit. It must make them want projectile vomit anytime they consider it.
We are getting a bit far afield. Mark Walter is the managing partner of Guggenheim Partners and he is also the face of ownership of the Dodgers and now, $10 billion later, the Lakers as well. This is not to mention the myriad of other sporting franchises Guggenheim Partners owns. They, and Mark Walter are in it for the long haul. They will be a fixture of Southern California sports for decades to come.
Guggenheim Baseball Management established itself as a well run sports organization by winning the last two World Series matchups as well as always being competitive over the years since they bought the team. Unfortunately, because of their parent company, Guggenheim Partners, the Dodgers will always be drawn into the controversies surrounding ICE and surveillance capitalism. It’s completely unavoidable given that a large percentage of Dodger fans are Latino and ICE’s brutal, fascist raids affect that community intensely and disproportionately. Sort of hard to root for a team whose investments support the goons ripping kids away from their mothers in the name of border security.
At the risk of seeming like a sop for Walter and Guggenheim, asking you to feel sorry for the poor, poor billionaires, this situation seems like it could be interpreted as that. Mark Walter and his wife Kimbra head a large philanthropic organization, The Walter Family Causes that focuses on social impact and conservation as the focus of their philanthropy. Governor Newsom even appointed Walter to help direct the efforts of LA Rises, an organization focusing on raising funds to help rebuild the areas affected by the devastating January 2025 fires. Mark and Kimbra Walter even committed $100 million of their own money to the efforts. Walter and Guggenheim find themselves in the unenviable rock and hard place scenario: make a principled stand and not make an investment in these authoritarian businesses and wind up as an out of favor American oligarch, or … wait for it … play ball, bide their time and wait until America has regained its sanity. Unfortunately, this tact will ignite the ire, frustration and abandonment by a significant portion of the Dodgers fan base. Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t.
And what of the Dodger’s fan base? Those fans who are empathetic towards those being brutalized by ICE and its ilk, have some choices to make. What actions can you take as a fan of the Dodgers who wishes to show their displeasure with Guggenheim’s investments in the incarceration economy, while still showing love for your team? For starters, there is a petition circulating that aims to let the Dodgers know how many of its fans feel about the team’s relationship with ICE. Signing a petition online can feel rather empty and ineffectual at achieving meaningful change. I suggest you get to know Guggenheim Partners, in depth. As noted earlier, Guggenheim is a huge corporation with almost $350 billion of assets under management. Surely, there are some investments Guggenheim Partners holds that you might find in your daily lives. Perhaps you should consider making some changes in your purchasing decisions. Make these changes out of economic calculation, not out of anger. Guggenheim Partners is a business and operates on the principles of profit maximization, not your feelings. To be successful in achieving your goal, it’s important to remember this. The surprising irony is that Guggenheim should welcome the pushback, because investing in the incarceration economy is contradictory to their espoused values.
Given the events of the time we live in, it often feels like we have no control or even influence over those events. But we do. We may vote in elections periodically over issues concerning us, but often feel disempowered by the process because our votes seem far removed from what affects us in our daily lives. Our real power, our real vote is when we reach into our wallets and pay for the necessities of life. Your dollars are your real power. The Dodgers are a much beloved institution in Southern California. The only way to keep them that way is to economically motivate them to be their better selves.
It’s all about the Benjamins.
