Catholic World News News Feature

Coalition Of Religious Investors Fight Baseball Team Logo July 10, 1997

CLEVELAND (CWN) - An association of religious institutional investors has succeeded in putting pressure on companies to stop using the Cleveland Indians' Chief Wahoo logo because of American Indian protests.

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a network of 275 Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish institutional investors with a combined $70 billion in assets, lobbied the Anheuser-Busch Corp. to drop the logo from its Ohio beer ads and convinced Denny's Restaurants to ban its Ohio restaurant employees from wearing it while working.

The center's director, Timothy Smith, told the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, "Chief Wahoo is a symbol that mocks the Native American community. We're pleaded with the responsiveness of Anheuser-Busch. We're working with ... corporations to help them get the message that using Chief Whaoo is insulting and racially insensitive marketing."