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Activists have been pressuring Tom Gores since his personal justice company bought one of the country’s largest criminal phone companies, pressured lawmakers, tried to suppress investment in his business, and now, with social justice in the foreground, they are taking the fight. in the social circles of Los Angeles billionaires.
Taking credit for unscrupulous judicial reform lawsuits that have emerged since George Floyd’s death in custody in Minneapolis, two teams sent a letter last week to LACMA director Michael Govan and the co-chairs of the museum’s board of administrators. It’s not easy for Gores to lose his seat on the museum’s bookshelf.
The hard-term two-page letter accuses Gores of taking credit for “the planned exploitation of black, brown and financially troubled communities” ownership of Securus Technologies through his personal justice firm, which Gores ‘ Platinum Equity acquired in 2017.
“While other people across the country call for racial justice, Tom Gores continues to accumulate wealth and derive merit from a formula that exploits other black people and takes credit for our pain. Simply put, Tom Gores is a criminal profiteer and has no position on the board of a prestigious public museum like LACMA, “read the September 9 letter sent through Color of Change, an Oakland-based civil rights organization formed after Hurricane Katrina, and Rises Worth, a nonprofit organization. New York profit organization to “dismantle the criminal’s commercial complex. “
The crusade comes in the middle of the NBA, where Gores owns the Detroit Pistons and soon the finals will begin. Players protested police shootings at black and accumulated Americans around the reborn Black Lives Matter movement, whose call is inscribed in giant letters in court this season.
Gores declined to comment on the letter, which was sent after the company and activists pledged to reduce inmates’ phone rates. Talks failed in the spring after reforms announced through Platinum Equity failed to satisfy activists and a planned face-to-face meeting between Gores and letter co-signer Bianca Tylek, founder of Worth Rises, never materialized. A Spokesperson for Platinum Equity said the company would continue its efforts.
“We are working hard for genuine reform, we perceive that the execution issues are more than rhetoric, and we are convinced that the paintings speak for themselves,” said Mark Barnhill, spouse of Platinum Equity, in an email. “They don’t want to. ” recognize or our reforms because it would deprive them of an adversary they wish to feed their cause. “
Govan also declined to comment. The museum issued a statement that the council had won the letter and was “working to meet to discuss it. “The board’s co-chairman, Antony Ressler, a Los Angeles billionaire who is also the majority owner of an NBA team: the Atlanta Hawks – declined to comment. Co-chair Elaine Wynn, the largest shareholder at Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas, may not be contacted for comment.
Gores, 56, who has an estimated net worth of $5. 7 billion and director of LACMA in 2006, is not the first business leader of an activist-led arts council because of his ties to the corrupt judicial system.
Warren Kanders resigned last year as vice president of the Whitney Museum in New York because of his ownership of Safariland, a company that manufactures tear fuel and other devices used by law enforcement and the military. Activists also called for the resignation of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. of the city’s Board of Directors of the Museum of Modern Art on the reported holdings of criminal operators GEO Group and CoreCivic.
While criminal justice reform advocates have long targeted personal criminal operators, who under a new law are being eliminated in California, they have also started targeting corporations that offer communications, tracking bracelets around the ankle and others to the prisoners for what they consider exorbitant. Rate.
Activists began focusing on Gores three years ago when their Beverly Hills personal justice company acquired Securus Technologies for $1. 6 billion, asking him in 2018 to reform and sell telecommunications and tried to convince the public pension budget not to invest in Platinum Equity’s new purchase fund. The crusade caused the pension formula of workers from the state of Pennsylvania to be withdrawn, but did not prevent Platinum Equity from raising $10 billion last year, $2 billion more than its target and the largest fund to date.
Prison telecommunications qualify a premium for calls, which are monitored for security reasons. Activists calculated that Securus Technologies rated the highest rates in the industry, with a 2018 survey revealing that 226 of the country’s 250 most expensive prisons had contracts with the company, adding 3 in Arkansas. charge $24. 82 for a 15-minute call. These prices are paid by prisoners and their families, a disproportionately deficient and non-white population.
Platinum Equity specializes in recovering companies in trouble, and earlier this year announced that it had recruited a new watchdog and issued its reform promises, which included a greater commitment to providing educational and reintegration opportunities for inmates while working with correctional agencies. to reduce prices and rates, adding the elimination of the highest “inherited outliers”.
He also said he would “trust” a commitment he had already made to offer contracts without so-called site commissions: additional appeal fees that fund prisons and prisons. (In 2018, Securus Technologies signed such a contract with the Illinois Department of Corrections, which had been put under pressure from state activists for maximum fees and commissions. The new contract reduced the rates to 1 cent per minute).
Dave Abel, a former IBM and PwC spouse hired to manage Securus Technologies and its parent company, told The Times this week that telecommunications had already renegotiating contracts with 58 agencies whose call rates “previously exceeded national averages,” in some cases reducing them by 60% or more.
He stated that the rate efforts had a higher average charge of a call at less than 15 cents per minute; In June, more than part charge less than $ 1 and only 0. 01% charge more than $ 20. He said knowledge from last month showed that no calls had been processed through Securus Technologies, which charge more than $ 15 for 15 minutes.
“We’ve done a lot of things, and I’m incredibly revered for how much remains to be done,” said Abel, who said the company’s for-profit business style is what provides capital for other facilities, such as educational opportunities. , secure pill computers and authorized entertainment.
Activists, however, are calling for much bigger and faster cuts, especially in local prisons, where fees and commissions tend to be higher. The correctional formula negotiated a contract with Securus Technologies that cut village prices to 3 cents per minute. The willingness to point out such contracts “paid through the agency” is one of the company’s commitments.
This year, San Francisco has become the first county in the country to offer loose phone calls by negotiating a contract with telecommunications for a consistent line fee.
Activists had threatened a crusade opposed to Gores in Detroit, where the titan of personal justice enjoys a higher public profile as the owner of the Pistons. In the state where he was raised, Gores cultivated the symbol of a progressive owner, supporting player activism and recently providing the team’s education center as a voting floor in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, but this effort through activists did not begin when the season turned upside down because of the coronavirus.
While activists acknowledge that the company has lowered rates, Scott Roberts, senior director of criminal justice campaigns at Color of Change, said the measures were “superficial” and that inmates and their families are still paying too much to communicate.
He said forcing Gores to get rid of the company deserves to make it less difficult for governments and correctional agencies to drastically reduce rates, because Gores’ involvement gives the company credibility, even if Securus Technologies is acquired through someone who does not rent activists at all. .
“He’s a guy who’s a good businessman, who already had an ungodly sum of cash and who made the genuine selection to embark on this kind of business. He is not positioned as a network leader, especially in Detroit, but also in Los Angeles because he serves on the board of directors of establishments such as the Museum of Art,” said Roberts, who signed the letter to LACMA.
The crusade to force Gores to resign from the LACMA board led LACMA artist and former laCMA study assistant Jessica Simmons to write and circulate her own open letter to the Los Angeles art community asking Gores to resign from the board of directors. He noted that the museum had published its own to help social justice after Floyd’s death.
“Where there’s a lot of cash, that money is dirty,” Simmons said, pointing out the multiple controversies in the arts world about board members. “I think there’s a lot of help for something like that, but I also think the other people here had no idea. “
The letter presented at the museum on Wednesday had more than a hundred signatures.