Music

coachella owner phil anschutz is an anti-gay gop supporter & climate denier

January 4, 2017
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Coachella’s lineup just dropped and social media has been teeming with palpable excitement at the prospect of warm weather and good vibes. The lineup boasts names like Kendrick Lamar and Beyonce, Black music royalty more than deserving of our hype, but Coachella’s owner is a whole different story. Philip Anschutz is the billionaire machine behind Coachella and his politics are icky, sticky with the slime of the swamp that folks like president-elect Trump loves to associate with. Anschutz owns AEG, the entertainment and sports company only second to Live Nation in its reach, with investments in the Los Angeles Lakers, the Los Angeles Kings and the Staples Center to name a few. But really where his money is doing the most damage is in his support of socially conservative causes. ProgressNow Colorado’s executive director Ian Silverii was quoted saying, “Phil Anschutz’s extensive influence in Colorado politics has been known for years, but the degree of his support for anti-LGBTQ groups that fund extremist hate groups like Gordon Kligenschmitt’s ‘Pray in Jesus Name’ is shocking.” In even more covert efforts, the Anschutz Foundation gave $110,000 to Alliance Defending Freedom, $50,000 to National Christian Foundation, and $30,000 to Family Research Council between 2010 and 2013, all of which have been known to support prejudice against LGBTQ efforts.Since 2008, the Anschutz Foundation has donated $175,000 to the Mission America Foundation, a far-right organization whose president considers homosexuality to be a “deviance.” Anschutz’ Walden Media group funds films that support his political views as well, funding “Won’t Back Down” and “Waiting For Superman” which are pro-charter school and anti-teachers union. To add insult to injury, Greenpeace notes that media companies owned by Anschutz figure prominently in the denial of climate science and the promotion of climate-change skepticism and even went as far as suing a small town for their regulations on fracking, but eventually lost the case. All in all, this guy is a prick and not someone who should be profiting from the hard earned dollars of the very people he would discriminate against. So you still tryna go to Coachella?

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