True Commitment to Justice Means Creatives Cutting Ties with Fossil Fuels

In 2020, we saw elected officials and corporations rush to post black squares as profile photos, issue solidarity statements, and promise equity after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and too many others. They pledged diversity. They pledged inclusion. They pledged justice.

But here we are, six years later, in an age of coordinated anti-DEI backlash and creeping authoritarianism, and those pledges have disappeared. The truth is: many of these same entities – particularly officials, organizations, and the ad and PR firms that shape their public persona – still profit from contracts with fossil fuel corporations. The gap between words and actions didn’t just reveal itself in boardrooms and hiring policies—it extends to where power and profit flow.

We are also seeing in real time how the current administration is doing the bidding for the oil and gas industry, striking Venezuela in pursuit of its oil reserves at a time when the world must transition to 100% clean energy.

Vapour rises from a petrochemical plant. Photographer: Eddie Seal/Bloomberg.

Big Oil companies fuel climate chaos and devastate the same Black and Brown communities globally that these PR, ad, and marketing firms claim to support. That’s not just hypocrisy. It’s greenwashing once dressed up in the language of racial justice, now silent on any effort championing justice.

PR, Advertising, and the Business of Deception

For more than a century, the narrative industry has polished the image of Big Oil and other polluters, casting them as “job creators” and “community investors” while their facilities poisoned the air, water, and soil of Black and Brown neighborhoods. I saw it up close when I worked at Edelman, one of the world’s largest PR firms. Behind every glossy campaign was a strategy to convince the public that small scholarships or minority-owned business investments could somehow offset decades of environmental racism.

But storytelling doesn’t just shape perception; they shape policy outcomes. By running campaigns that pit “clean air” against “good jobs” or frame environmental protections as too costly for communities of color, creatives fracture coalitions that should be standing together. The messaging is meant to manipulate.

Racial Justice in an Era of Anti-DEI

The fight for racial justice cannot be separated from the fight for climate justice. My father worked in a steel mill for 30 years in Northeast Ohio before dying from congestive heart failure linked to emissions from his and surrounding facilities. His story mirrors thousands across the Rust Belt and the Gulf Coast, where Black, Brown, and poor workers were left to carry the toxic costs of industrial profit.

Yet in 2025, while state legislatures moved to ban DEI programs and authoritarian politicians brand “racial equity” as a threat, fossil fuel corporations and their narrative partners cynically use visuals of “diversity” and job creation draped in the American flag to cover their tracks and avoid retaliation from the Trump administration. Sponsoring Black conferences and music festivals. Highlighting donations to Latino businesses. Buying influence in Native communities. It’s all a strategy: to mute criticism, buy silence, and shield extractive industries from accountability. That is not justice. That is propaganda.

As a storyteller and creative, many of us enter this field because we believe in the power of communication to inspire, to organize, to move people. But working for fossil fuel clients forces creatives—especially Black and Brown professionals—to set aside our ethics and values for someone else’s bottom line. It asks us to produce content that gaslights our own communities. It asks us to ignore that when Big Oil wins, we lose.

In the midst of climate disasters that are more frequent and deadly, in the shadow of democracy under siege, our industry cannot claim neutrality for the sake of our own livelihood. We are either helping polluters extend their power or helping communities fight back. There is no middle ground. If creatives truly believed their statements about justice, they must put them into practice. That means cutting all ties with fossil fuel companies and refusing to launder their reputations. It means refusing to prop up industries that sacrifice Black, Brown, and working-class communities for profit.

Narrative Change in the Age of Authoritarianism

Hip Hop Caucus has been advancing efforts to shift narrative in areas where fossil fuel companies plan to expand. The Trump administration may have given Big Oil a license to expand, but we have the social license and moral authority to stop them in their tracks. That’s the thing about authoritarian movements – they thrive on controlling narratives. They thrive on deciding whose voices are amplified, whose experiences are erased, and whose suffering is normalized.

As book bans spread, voting rights shrink, and DEI programs are dismantled, creatives and AI are being weaponized to reinforce those same power structures. Narrative change helps us break the monopoly that polluters and authoritarian politicians think they have on storytelling. Real narrative change means using our platforms to expose lies, uplift frontline communities, and insist that climate justice—not propaganda—defines the story of our time.

It’s time for us to control the narrative and reinforce our commitment to justice and liberation for all Black, Brown, and Indigenous people.