Appalled at Funding Genocide, Over 2,000 US Taxpayers Turn to the UN for Redress

April 15, 2025

Marjorie Cohn

With no recourse in US courts or Congress, the Taxpayers Against Genocide movement pivots to UN Human Rights Council.

In New York City, a coalition of anti-war groups gathered outside the IRS offices in Manhattan demanding no taxes for war and militarism, on April 15, 2024. Erik McGregor / LightRocket via Getty Images

Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG), a nongovernmental grassroots mass movement comprised of more than 2,000 taxpayers who have been protesting their congressional representatives’ votes to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza, filed an unprecedented report with the UN Human Rights Council on April 7.

“We have gone through all the channels open to us in our effort to stop U.S. officials from using our tax dollars to fund genocide. We have called and met with these officials, we have peacefully protested, and we have taken them to federal court. To date, none of this has stopped them,” Seth Donnelly, lead taxpayer plaintiff in the federal lawsuit, told Truthout. “The genocide in Gaza rages on, fueled by our tax dollars. We have now elevated our struggle to the international arena, starting with our report to the UN Human Rights Council, as one necessary step towards countering the impunity of the U.S. government.”

The introduction to TAG’s report says:

The focus of this report is on violations of U.S. obligations by the U.S. Congress and executive in committing residents’ tax dollars — including those of Palestinian-Americans whose families have been decimated in Gaza — to support what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres, and many other human rights organizations have recognized as an unfolding genocide in Gaza.

Tarik Kanaana, TAG’s lead contact for the report and a Palestinian activist in Northern California, told Truthout, “Since October 2023, our people in Gaza have suffered unimaginable horrors at the hands of Israel. Our families, our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters, our siblings, our newborn children, our grandmothers and grandfathers, our friends and neighbors have been slaughtered, tortured to death, burned alive, starved and executed and buried in shallow graves.” He added, “Those who survived death are facing famine and disease and will be scarred, both physically and mentally, for generations to come. Israel has, at the same time, destroyed cultural, educational, medical and municipal institutions.”

TAG’s report outlines how Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians would not be possible without the support of the U.S., which funds the vast majority of weapons used to commit it. The report charges U.S. officials with directly participating in the genocide in Gaza. It provides evidence of how both the Biden and Trump administrations, together with specific members of Congress, used U.S. tax dollars to fund war crimes and genocide, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, federal laws and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

“Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people has only been possible with support and aid from its allies in the West, especially the United States. The U.S. government — all three branches — is a full partner and bears responsibility for this genocide,” Kanaana told Truthout. “The American people have no recourse within the U.S. political or judicial systems when it comes to their government’s crimes against the people of the world. We, Americans who cannot accept our government’s actions, are forced to appeal to international bodies to influence our own government to do what its citizens overwhelmingly want.”

Pivot to the International Arena After U.S. Court Dismissal

In December, after their congressmembers repeatedly refused to meet with them, the taxpayers filed a federal lawsuit, Seth Donnelly et. al. v. Mike Thompson, and Jared Huffman, against two Democratic congressmembers, alleging that they illegally abused their “tax and spend authority” on April 20, 2024, when they voted for the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, which authorized an additional $26.38 billion in military assistance to Israel. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution specifies that funds can be allocated only for debt repayment, “the general welfare” or “common defense.” Funding a known genocide does not qualify as the “general welfare” of anyone or the “common defense” of the U.S., the suit alleged. It also charged that the congressmembers violated the Genocide Convention and several U.S. laws.

Donnelly v. Thompson was dismissed in February on the grounds that it posed a “non-justiciable political question” to the court. That means that only the two political branches — the executive and the legislative, not the judiciary — can decide foreign policy issues.

“When TAG’s federal lawsuit was dismissed in February, they decided to pivot to the international arena to amplify their complaint that no branch of the U.S. government is willing to enforce the Genocide Convention — or any other ratified human rights or humanitarian law treaty, making U.S. taxpayers and constituents complicit in the Gaza genocide,” Susan Scott, a member of the National Lawyers Guild International Committee and one of the report’s lead authors, told Truthout.

TAG’s report will be included in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the U.S. human rights record. The UPR is a unique mechanism of the Human Rights Council that calls on each of the 193 UN member states to submit to a peer review of its human rights record every 4.5 years. Each state receives reports and recommendations from other UN member states and civil society, including nongovernmental organizations, for improvement. “We look forward to the ‘interactive dialogue’ hearing in Geneva between the U.S. and other member states in November,” Scott told Truthout.

Funding Israel’s Genocide Violates the U.S. Constitution and Federal Law

In addition to violating the Constitution’s “tax and spend” authority, the U.S. Congress is violating federal statutes, TAG’s report states. They include the Leahy Law, which requires the State Department to bar U.S. assistance to foreign security forces responsible for gross violations of human rights. But when it comes to Israel, the State Department looks the other way. The TAG report quotes Stephen Rickard, a former State Department official and former senior staff for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who helped pass the Leahy Law and monitored its implementation for more than 25 years. He stated, “There is only one country where the Department of State has a ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ policy: Israel.”

“Trump has enthusiastically supplied $12 billion in additional weapons, and the U.S. Congress is currently in the process of allocating yet another $8 billion in weapons sales to Israel,” the report says.

Charging that the U.S. “is in the grip of a ‘trifecta’ of control” which includes all three branches of the government, the report notes that “voters who oppose U.S support for genocide and apartheid (the majority) are left with no remedy but marching in the streets and shaming their leadership in international fora.”

The report also documents the Trump administration’s repression (in the name of combating “antisemitism”) of those who protest the use of their tax dollars to fund genocide and who support Palestinian rights. Students and faculty who are lawfully in the country are having their visas revoked. Even lawful permanent residents have been targeted. Universities are threatened with loss of federal funding if they refuse to crack down on political protest. Criticism of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is conflated with hatred of Jews. This is the “Palestine exception” to free speech.

“The government repression and targeting of those who speak out about the ongoing genocide has created a chilling effect on this very UPR submission,” the report states. “In fact, six of the TAG plaintiffs, including several naturalized citizens, who made statements for Annex A have withdrawn them, and one of the endorsing organizations withdrew for fear of retaliation.”

Here are some of the statements written by taxpayer plaintiffs that are included in Annex A:

Judith Green, a Jewish woman: “That descendants of those who did or did not survive the Holocaust are now doing to Palestinians what was done to their ancestors is horrifying.”

Haleh Sheikholeslami: “As a physician committed to preserving life, it has been excruciating to focus on treating patients here while witnessing the mass bombing and killing of innocent children and civilians in Gaza and Lebanon — acts funded by my own government. This genocide violates every fiber of my being as a human and a healer.”

Health care worker Ariel Mihic: “Watching daily as hospitals are bombed and dismantled, and healthcare workers are targeted and killed has been a dystopian nightmare of a country set on destroying the infrastructure and healing centers of an entire people.”

Nida Liftawiya, a Palestinian refugee: “American tax dollars should have been allocated for public services and essential government functions for the American people and not misappropriated for unlawful purposes contributing to the ethnic cleansing of my homeland and people.”

Elliot Helman: “Working for social justice is a core component of my identity as a Jew. There is a famous teaching in the Jewish tradition that is said to encapsulate all of our teachings and scriptures: That which is abhorrent to you, do not do to others; now go and learn. … This is what informs my rejection of Zionism and Israel as the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people, and this is what motivates my commitment to the pursuit of justice. … This is why … I fight for justice for the Palestinian people.”

TAG’s report recommends that the U.S. government:

* Stop funding genocide and war crimes in violation of U.S. and international law;

* Stop prosecuting, persecuting, deporting and threatening advocates for Palestinian self-determination and protesters against genocide;

* Institute effective judicial safeguards against U.S. funding and support of genocide and war crimes;

* Establish a National Human Rights Institute to train legislators, judges and federal agency directors in international humanitarian and human rights law and the supremacy of all U.S.-ratified human rights treaties under Article VI of the U.S. Constitution;

* Honor the principles of academic freedom: Stop pressuring universities to police the protected speech of faculty and students; and do not threaten to cut funding in pursuit of a political agenda that violates international law;

* Take all necessary measures to ensure independent and effective oversight of U.S. treaty obligations;

* Sign and ratify the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, eliminate sanctions against court personnel and encourage cooperation with ICC investigations.

The National Lawyers Guild International Committee and the International Association of Democratic Lawyers contributed to TAG’s report. It was endorsed by The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom–U.S. Section, CODEPINK, Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace, and Roots Action.

In the next few weeks, TAG will also file a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a judicial organ of the Organization of American States which endeavors to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere. “We are turning to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights because U.S. courts have shut their doors to victims of Israel’s crimes and to those seeking to hold the U.S. accountable for its support,” Huwaida Arraf, the lead attorney preparing the petition, told Truthout.

 

How to Fight Back Against Trump’s Escalatory War on the Poor

Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis & Noam Sandweiss-Back

 

People participate in a march to Trinity Church for a moral Mass on April 11, 2022 in New York City. (Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Poverty will end when poor people and their allies refuse to allow society to remain complacent about the suffering and death caused by economic deprivation. 

The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, the 10 richest people in the world—including nine Americans—expanded their wealth by nearly $64 billion, the greatest single-day increase in recorded history. Since then, an unholy marriage of billionaire investors, tech bros, Christian nationalists, and, of course, Donald Trump has staged an oligarchic assault on our democracy. If the nation’s corporate elite once leveraged their relationships within government to enrich themselves, they’ve now cut out the middleman. We’re living in a new Gilded Age, with a proto-fascistic and religiously regressive administration of, by, and for the billionaires.

With the wind at their backs, leading elements in the Republican Party have rapidly eschewed euphemisms and political correctness altogether, airing their anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-poor prejudices in unapologetically broad and brazen terms. The effect of this, especially for the most vulnerable among us, is seismic. During the first two months of the second Trump administration, we’ve witnessed nothing less than an escalatory war on the poor.

The attacks are many-pronged. Rural development grants, food banks, and environmental protection measures have all been slashed in the name of “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs.” Planned Parenthood and other life-saving healthcare services for poor and marginalized communities have been defunded. Homelessness has been ever more intensely criminalized and Housing First policies vilified. The Department of Education, which has historically provided critical resources for low-income and disabled students, has been gutted, while the barbaric conditions in overcrowded immigrant detention centers have only worsened. Billions of dollars in funding for mental health and addiction services have been revoked. Worse yet, these and other mercenary actions may prove to be just the tip of the spear. Tariff wars and potential cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and SNAP could leave both the lives of the poor and the global economy in shambles.

This volatile moment may represent an unprecedented, even existential, threat to the health of our democracy, but it is building on decades of neoliberal plunder and economic austerity, authored by both conservative and liberal politicians. Before the 2024 elections, there were more than 140 million people living in poverty or one crisis away—one job loss, eviction, medical issue, or debt collection—from economic ruin. In this rich land, 45 million people regularly experience hunger and food insecurity, while more than 80 million people are uninsured or underinsured, 10 million people live without housing or experience chronic housing insecurity, and the American education system has regularly scored below average compared to those of other nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Amid tremendous social and economic dislocation, traditional American institutions and political alignments have steadily lost their meaning for tens of millions of people. The majority of us know things aren’t well in this country. We can feel it, thanks not just to the violent and vitriolic political environment in which we live, but to our bank statements and debt sheets, our rising rent and utility bills. As the hull of our democracy splinters and floods, the question remains: How do we chart a more just and humane path forward? There are no easy answers, but there are profound lessons to be learned from the past, especially from movements of poor and dispossessed people that have inspired many of this country’s most important moments of democratic awakening.

This is the focus of our new book, You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty. Drawing on Liz’s 30 years of anti-poverty organizing, we poured over old pamphlets and documents, memories and mementos to gather evidence that social transformation at the hands of the poor remains an ever-present possibility and to summarize some of the most significant ideas that, even today, continue to animate their organized struggles.

Homeless, Not Helpless

In the late spring of 1990, hundreds of unhoused people across the country broke locks and chains off dozens of empty federally owned houses and moved in. Bedrooms and kitchens carpeted with layers of dust suddenly whirled with activity. Mattresses were carried in and bags of food unpacked. Within hours, the new occupants made calls to the city’s energy companies, requesting that the utilities be turned on. They were remarkably disciplined and efficient—single moms who had been living in their cars, veterans, students, and low-wage or recently laid-off workers, and people battling illness without healthcare. They were Black, Latino, Asian, Indigenous, and white, and although they came from radically different slices of society, one simple fact bound them together: They were poor, in need of housing, and fed up.

That wave of takeovers was led by the National Union of the Homeless (NUH), one among many carried out by the group in those years. The NUH was not a charity, a service provider, or a professional advocacy group but a political organization led by and for unhoused people, with close to 30,000 members in 25 cities. Liz was introduced to it on her first day of college. Within a few months, she had joined the movement and never left.

NUH members included people who had recently lost their manufacturing jobs and could no longer find steady work, as well as low-wage workers who couldn’t keep up with the growing costs of housing and other daily necessities. In such dire times, the reality of the unhoused only foreshadowed the possible dislocation of millions more. The NUH emphasized this truth in one of its slogans: “You Are Only One Paycheck Away from Homelessness!” The name of the organization itself reflected a connection between homelessness and the new economy then being shaped. As industrial work floundered and labor unions suffered, there was a growing need for new unions of poor and dispossessed people.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the NUH won a string of victories, including new policies guaranteeing 24-hour shelter intake, access to public showers, and the right of the unhoused to vote without a permanent address. They also won publicly funded housing programs run by the formerly unhoused in nearly a dozen cities. Such successes were a barometer of the incipient strength of the organized poor and a corrective to the belief that poor people could perhaps spark spontaneous outrage but never be a force capable of wielding effective political power.

At the heart of the NUH were three principles: First, poor people can be agents of change, not simply victims of a cruel history; second, the power of the poor depends on their ability to unite across their differences; and third, it is indeed possible to abolish poverty. Those guiding principles were crystallized in two more slogans: “Homeless, Not Helpless” and “No Housing, No Peace.” The first captured a too-often obscured truth about the poor: that one’s living conditions don’t define who we are or limit our capacity to change our lives and the world around us. The second caught the political and moral agency of the impoverished—that there will be no peace and quiet until the demand for essential human needs is met.

Another NUH slogan has also echoed through the years: “You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take.” It’s a favorite of ours because it expresses a crucial argument of our book: that poverty and economic inequality won’t end because of the goodwill of those who hold political power and wealth (as is abundantly clear today) or even through the charitable actions of sympathetic people.

Change on such a scale requires a protagonist with a more pressing agenda. Poverty will end when poor people and their allies refuse to allow society to remain complacent about the suffering and death caused by economic deprivation. It will end when the poor become an organized force capable of rallying a critical mass of society to reorder the political and economic priorities of our country.

Projects of Survival

In the mid-1990s, Liz was active in North Philadelphia’s Kensington Welfare Rights Organization (KWRU). Kensington’s workforce had by then been decimated by deindustrialization and disinvestment. People without steady or reliable housing were moving into vacant buildings or cobbling together outdoor shelters, while tenants refused to leave homes from which they were being evicted. In its actions, KWRU reached deep into this well of experience, taking the spontaneous survival strategies that poor people were already using and adapting them into “projects of survival.”

The phrase “project of survival” was borrowed from the Black Panther Party, which, in the 1960s and 1970s, created successful “survival programs” like the Free Medical Clinic Program and the Free Breakfast Program. In 1969, the head of the national School Breakfast Program admitted that the Black Panthers were feeding more poor children than the state of California. The Panthers, however, were concerned with more than just meeting immediate needs. They were focused on structural transformation and, through their survival programs, they highlighted the government’s refusal to deal seriously with American poverty, even while then spending billions of dollars fighting distant wars on the poor of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

KWRU learned from the Black Panthers. In the late fall of 1995, a cold front swept through a large KWRU encampment known as Tent City. In need of indoor shelter, the group set its sights on a vacant church a few blocks away. Earlier that year, the archdiocese of Philadelphia had shuttered St. Edward’s Catholic Church because its congregants were poor and the drafty building expensive to maintain. Still, some of those congregants continued to pray every Sunday in a small park outside the shuttered church. Eventually, dozens of residents from Tent City walked up the church steps, broke the locks on its front doors, and ignited a highly publicized occupation that lasted through that winter.

On the walls of the church, Liz and her compatriots hung posters and banners, including one that asked, “Why do we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?” As winter engulfed the city, residents of St. Ed’s fed and cared for one another in a fugitive congregation whose youngest resident was less than a year old and whose oldest was in his 90s. That occupation ultimately pressured the archdiocese to refocus its ministry on poor communities, while electrifying the local media to report on the rampant poverty that had normally been swept under the rug.

Such projects of survival enabled KWRU to build trust in Kensington, while serving as bases for bigger and bolder organizing. As a young woman, Liz gained new insight into how bottom-up change often begins. While media narratives regularly depict poor people as lazy, dangerous, or too overburdened with their own problems to think about others, there is an immense spirit of cooperation and generosity among the poorest people in our society. Indeed, that spirit of communal care is the generative ground from which powerful social movements emerge.

A Survival Revival for These Times

Today, amid the rising tide of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s billionaire-fueled authoritarianism, there’s an urgent need for defiant and militant organizing among a broad cross-section of society. As our democratic horizons continue to narrow, we find ourselves operating within a critical window of time. In our work, we call this a “kairos moment.” In the days of antiquity, the Greeks taught that there were two ways to understand time: chronos and kairos. Chronos is quantitative time, while kairos is the qualitative time during which old and often oppressive ways are dying while new understandings struggle to be born.

In kairos moments such as this sinister Trumpian one, it is often the people whose backs are up against the wall who are willing to take decisive action. In every popular, pro-democracy movement, there is a leading social force that, by virtue of its place in the economic pecking order, is compelled to act first, because for them it’s a matter of life-or-death. And by moving into action, that force can awaken the indignation and imagination of others.

Right now, there are tens of thousands of Americans already in motion trying to defend their communities from the growing ravages of economic, environmental, and political disaster. Their efforts include food banks and neighborhood associations; churches and other houses of worship providing sanctuary for the unhoused and immigrants; women, trans kids, and other LGBTQ+ people fighting to ensure that they and their loved ones get the healthcare they need; community schools stepping into the breach of our beleaguered public education system; mutual-aid groups responding to environmental disasters that are only increasing thanks to the climate crisis; and students protesting the genocide in Gaza and the militarization of our society. Such communities of care and resistance may still be small and scrappy, but within them lies a latent power that, if further politicized and organized, could ignite a new era of transformational movement-building at a time when our country is in increasing danger.

Indeed, just imagine what might be possible if so many communities were operating not in isolation but in coordination. Imagine the power of such a potentially vast network to shake things up and assert the moral, intellectual, and political agency of those under attack. Food pantries could become places not just to fill bellies but to launch protests, campaigns, and organizing drives. Ever more devastating superstorms, floods, and forest fires could become moments not just for acute disaster response but for sustained relationship-building and communal resilience, aimed at repairing the societal fissures that worsen extreme weather events.

Last month, the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, where we both work, published a new report on the theory and practice behind this approach to grassroots organizing, A Matter of Survival: Organizing to Meet Unmet Needs and Build Power in Times of Crisis. Authored by our colleagues Shailly Gupta Barnes and Jarvis Benson, it describes how—beginning during the Covid-19 pandemic and continuing today—dozens of grassroots organizations, congregations, mutual-aid collectives, artists, and others have been building projects of survival and engaging in communal acts of care.

Over the coming months, the Kairos Center plans to draw inspiration from such stories as we launch a new and ambitious national organizing drive among the poor. The “Survival Revival,” as we call it, will connect with and link the often-siloed survival struggles of the poor into a more unified force. Together, we will study, strategize, sing, pray, and take the kind of action that, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once put it, can be “a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life.” Together, we will lift from the bottom, so that everyone can rise.

 

AOC,Bernie Sanders, Joan Baez and Neil Young Rock in Los Angeles

Ed Rampell

“Your presence here today is making Donald Trump and Elon Musk very nervous,” Sen. Bernie Sanders told Angelenos on April 12 as he took the stage to a thunderous ovation at Gloria Molina Grand Park in Downtown L.A. “There are some 36,000 of you – the biggest rally yet,” stated the Independent socialist from Vermont who, along with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is spearheading the “Fight The Oligarchy” national tour to mobilize the masses to resist the Trump-Musk regime.

The enormous event included union leaders, left-leaning politicians and musicians – “Why music?” Sanders asked. “Because we’re going to make our revolution with joy!” he said from the podium following a live rendition of his theme song, John Lennon’s “Power to the People,” performed by Raise Gospel Choir. The entire five-hour Bernie-palooza can be seen on YouTube, but here is a comprehensive list of most participants and highlights. (Noticeably missing in action: Members of the Hollywood Left. Jane Fonda and company, wherefore art thou?)

At about 9:30 a.m., Raise Gospel Choir kicked the rally off with, appropriately, Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.” Newly-elected Council- member Ysabel Jurado was the first officeholder to speak. The Filipina, who identified herself as being “queer” and the daughter of undocumented immigrants, quoted Bernie’s insightful comment about the tragic result of the 2024 presidential race: “The Democratic Party that had abandoned the working class found that the working class abandoned the Democratic Party.” Jurado’s comments set the tone for a recurring theme of the anti-Oligarchy rally that critiqued the corporate, establishment wing that controlled the Democrats, as well as the MAGA Republicans.

Citing her race for City Hall that unseated an incumbent, Jurado urged office seekers and campaigners to “lean into grass roots organizing. We knocked on 120,000 doors,” mailed thousands of handwritten postcards, etc., to win her Council seat. The fiery Filipina lauded LAUSD staffers that recently refused to allow ICE agents entry to elementary schools, proclaiming: “When they come after one of us, they’re coming after all of us… Fuck that!” thundered the Councilmember adorned in a red T-shirt emblazoned with the word “SOLIDARITY.” Jurado urged listeners to join organizations such as DSA – Democratic Socialists of America, who had endorsed her candidacy, as did LA Progressive and the Bernie-affiliated Our Revolution LA County.

When I interviewed Jurado during her City Council race, she said: “I come from a rich socialist tradition… It’s hot pink socialism, baby! That’s the history I come from and learning about Third World socialism, conceived of in the developing countries around the world. That is really my point of departure.”

The rally’s first union speaker, Unite HERE Local 11 Co-President Ada Briceno, struck a note of defiance, lauding “the biggest hotel strike of 2024… which beat the hell out of the billionaires.” Briceno thanked Bernie for joining the strikers a year ago at Downtown L.A.’s Hotel Figueroa. The union leader led the audience in a call and response: “When we strike!” with the crowd shouting back: “We win!”

The Red Pears performed, followed by the Congress’ youngest Representative.

Maxwell Frost, who rose to office after a school shooting as part of what the 28-year-old Floridian called the largest youth movement (against gun violence) in American history. Exuding a fighting spirit, Frost told the throng packing the park, “I can see here you have lots of people power” which, he noted, “the billionaires don’t have… It’s not about Democrats or Republicans, it’s about the people… You have to take to the streets and be loud about it.” The first congressional Gen X-er elected to Congress described those resisting the Trump regime as “freedom fighters” and quoted former Communist Party member Angela Davis: “I’m not accepting what I can’t change, I’m changing what I can’t accept.” Frost ended with another call and response, shouting out “People” with the crowd roaring back: “POWER!”

Alex Aguilar, Business Manager of the Motion Picture & Television Fund, Local 724, and other production assistants spoke out about working conditions in the entertainment industry. One compared “organizing a union” to “making a film,” and another, urging show biz proletarians to sign up to join a union, repeated famed labor slogans: “An injury to one is an injury to all” and that other oldie but goodie: “Solidarity forever!”

Brandi Good, Longshoreman, Vice President of Local 13, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, repeated “an injury to one is an injury to all,” adding “That’s the power of the labor movement.” She spoke about the fabled history of the ILWU, including “Bloody Thursday, of 1934’s great strike,” when two longshoremen were killed in San Francisco. Good went on to say, “ILWU isn’t just a union, we’re a family,” denounced automation, advocating a “fight for future technology that serves us, not replaces us,” and praised the role AOC and Bernie play in the cause.

The musician Jeff Rosenstock played for the political Woodstock, then Aidan Cullen of Pair and Care and others spoke about providing relief to victims of L.A.’s wildfires. About an hour and 50 minutes into the rally, City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez then delivered one of the happening’s best speeches, denouncing “our country descend[ing] into a fascist oligarchy [which is] a product of policies over years.” She said it was “bullshit!” that “Trump blames immigrants and trans people, not billionaires, corporations and special interests” for America’s problems. “They want us to fight each other so we don’t fight back” against an economic system where “three individuals own more wealth than half the country combined.” (Forget about ethics – from a purely mathematical perspective alone, late stage capitalism is completely impractical and unsustainable.)

Councilmember Hernandez decried the fact that “seven [unhoused] people die on the streets every day” in L.A. and called for “building collective power and a new system.” She condemned the current system’s priorities where there’s “always money to bomb kids in Gaza, not money for kids to have a safe place to sleep… The rent is too damn high… We deserve a city where nobody sleeps on the streets, while luxury towers lie empty.” Hernandez insisted, “There’s more of us than there is of them… Do not give up. Healthcare is a human right, not a business model,” and urged people to join organizations such as DSA (which endorsed Hernandez’s during her race for City Council). In another call and response Hernandez declared: “When we fight” with the multitude answering: “We win!”

U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez took the stage, railing against the “billionaire establishment taking root in Washington, D.C. Are we going to stay quiet? Hell motherfucking no! We are the ‘Fuck around and find out’” generation, which led to another saucy call and response.

Guitarist Indigo de Souza played, then Sandy Reding, President of the California Nurses Association spoke: “We’re in the fight of a lifetime against corporations taking over Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.” Reding made an “O” with her hands, symbolizing her support for no cuts to these vital programs, adding: “We know who’s hoarding the wealth, it’s the billionaires, corporations.” At a sign of distress from members of the audience, true to form, the nurses stopped their speech to render offstage help to someone needing aid. Winded, returning to the podium, Reding went on to say: “They want to take the virus of capitalism – yeah, it’s a virus! – and unleash it on us. The billionaires made their money on the backs of the [masses], never forget those billions don’t belong to them.”

Nick Nunez of the National Union of Health Workers spoke about “six fucking months on strike” against Kaiser, denouncing: “They put profits over people by delaying healthcare, give CEOs benefits and perks, instead of their employees and patients.” Licensed clinical social worker Cassandra Thompson called the industrial action “the longest mental health strike in U.S. history.”

Belize-born Georgia Flowers Lee, the United Teachers LA NEA’s Vice President spoke, as did Julie Van Winkle, a special ed teacher and AFT V.P. for UTLA, condemning “send[ing] Homeland Security to schools, parents disappear. They’re bullies: stand up, punch back. We HATE them!”

Mike Miller, UAW Region 6 Director, said “the best way to fight back against billionaires is to join unions,” advocated for a general strike on May 1, 2028 and chanted another oldie but goodie: “Si se puede!” The Dirty Projectors performed and Silicon Valley Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna appeared, criticizing the Democratic establishment which “rejected Bernie in 2016 and 2020. But now they’re listening to him!” (Can Chuck Schumer turn out 36,000 people?)

Representative Pramila Jayapal urged listeners to “fight against unelected billionaires and petty grifters who want to steal from you to buy another yacht. We’re not just fighting back, we’re fighting forward… Bernie and I are introducing a Medicare for all bill again. Take the hand of the people next to you and lift it into the air. Our love is greater than their greed and our power will eclipse their cruelty.” Then it was the first Indian-American’s “great honor to introduce the moral voice of nonviolent resistance, Joan Baez!”

Accompanied by an acoustic (but of course!) guitar player the legendary Baez sang “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”; “There But for Fortune”; and Lennon’s “Imagine.” Joined by guitar-strumming Maggie Rogers, she and Joan performed a duet of “America the Beautiful.” Perhaps in reference to the recent Bob Dylan biopic wherein she’s depicted, Joan went on to sing Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Baez commented that at this rally, a sort of political mini-Yasgur’s Farm, that “it’s a much more meaningful goal than we did at Woodstock.”

Baez introduced Lorena Gonzalez, President of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, as the first woman and person of color to hold that post. April Verrett, President of SEIU, spoke about her recent trip to Selma, Alabama to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday at Edmond Pettis Bridge: “It was really clear to me that we’re still fighting that fight. Different tactics, same old oppression. The shit show is still happening in our country. Divide us by race to control us by class… When three Americans have more wealth than more than half the country it’s time to change the rules… We can’t just protest, we gotta disrupt. We are stronger than their greed,” Verrett insisted, harkening back to the sit-down strikes at auto factories in Flint, Michigan during the Depression.

Blowing his harmonica and strumming his guitar like an avenging wraith, Neil Young rocked the free world and the City of the Angels, belting out “Take America Back” and “Rainbow of Colors,” with Baez and Rogers accompanying him. They were a tough act to follow, but if anybody could, it was that barista-turned-congresswoman, the Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. After wishing everyone a “Happy Passover,” the impassioned AOC demanded the release of disappeared Columbia University pro-Palestinian protest leader Mahmoud Khalil and Tufts University’s Rumeysa Ozturk, whose “thought crime” was writing a Gaza-related op-ed in the campus newspaper. AOC noted there was no evidence that they broke any laws, and lauded “the everyday people who refused to let ICE enter two LAUSD schools. It can’t be officials alone who uphold democracy, it’s the people, the masses.”

The bold and beautiful AOC reminded everyone “Donald Trump is a criminal found guilty of 34 charges [of business fraud]. Of course he’s manipulating the stock market” to enrich his cohorts. The NYC Congressmember denounced “the every-day corruption and dark money,” and members of Congress who invest in and trade stocks, including in pharmaceutical and military-related industries, for having a clear conflict of interest and possible insider trading. “How can they make objective choices?” AOC asked, adding, “It must end… I don’t care what party you are… I don’t take a dime in corporate money and you have me to standup for you.”

Although elected as a Democrat, she criticized her own party, maintaining “We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for the working class.” She criticized Democrats who voted for the GOP’s recent budget and went on to say, “We can’t turn in our neighbors. Reject division – the only way we can win is with solidarity.

After “Power to the People” was performed, Sen. Sanders stormed the stage where he and AOC – the old and the new – clasped hands and raised them overhead like the progressive champions of the downtrodden. The spry 83-year-old looked and sounded like an Old Testament prophet in a blue Dodgers baseball cap. (Of course, when Bernie was born, they were still the Brooklyn Dodgers.) Bernie thanked the union and other speakers and performers and turning to the throng said, “Mostly thanks to all of you.” Amidst resounding chants of Bernie, the lifelong socialist replied: “No – it’s not ‘Bernie’ – it’s you,” meaning the vast sea of humanity, who had turned out to attend the Fight The Oligarchy rally.

As a chopper flew overhead and a drone hovered, the Tribune of the People attacked the “President who has no understanding or respect for the constitution. They’re moving us to an authoritarian society – we ain’t going there!” Sanders recalled the stage at Trump’s inaugural address, with “the three richest men in America behind Trump. Thirteen other billionaires were also there – that’s what oligarchy is all about,” he said, referring to the Greek word that is defined as “a form of government in which power rests with a small number of people,” a system which Sanders pointed out, is opposed to “the separation of powers” crafted by America’s founders. “They never wanted to see a country under one person with unlimited power.”

The Independent Senator from Vermont went on to cite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which he said was delivered to honor the thousands of Union soldiers “fight[ing] the evil of slavery,” quoting the Great Emancipator’s immortal words about: “‘Government of the people, by the people, and for the people… shall not perish from the Earth.’ Not to become a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the billionaire class,” as the Trump-Musk regime is trying to install.

Bernie also referred to a 1940s’ State of the Union address by Pres. Franklin Roosevelt called for expanding America’s notion of rights to include economic rights. Sanders lampooned the “corrupt campaign system” that allowed Musk to give “$270 million to elect Donald Trump” and called for “overturn[ing] Citizens United. They are very religious, but their religion is not based on love or justice, it’s based on greed, greed and more greed. Addiction is a big problem, and the addiction of the oligarchy is for greed.” The Independent lawmaker did not spare the party that he caucuses with from his withering comments.

Sanders condemned Trump policy at Ukraine, Gaza, the trillions spent on the military and repeated the recurring mantra about “the three wealthiest Americans own more wealth than half of America, 170 million people. CEOs earn 300 times what” average workers do, he added, excoriating “the concentration of ownership,” noting that ordinary people die seven years earlier than the rich. Why? Stress. Worry every day how to feed their kids… All people should live out their life expectancy… The homeless sleep out on the streets.”

For those following the longtime socialist, it was standard if updated classic Bernie. But that’s one of the best things about Sanders: His consistency, especially in contrast to a White House where the slogan could be “consistency causes cancer.” Wrapping up, Bernie quoted Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will…” Bernie concluded: “They’re the 1%, we’re the 99%… They own congress and the media but they don’t own us,” which sparked an eruption of applause.

The immense rally brought individuals together out of their isolation into a solid mass. The mood was high-spirited – there was no violence, although people were inspired to continue the struggle against an oligarchical takeover of the U.S. and for a more just world. I asked a young woman who identified herself as “Cat, a supporter born and raised in L.A., who’s tired of the way things are now and would like some change,” what she thought of the marathon of the masses, and she gushed: “It was beautiful! Bernie said all the right things.”

Her friend Shelby, an L.A., documentarian making a film about the Eaton fire, added: “It’s good to see some action. It’s about damn time, I want to see more of this from the Democrats. If we’re going to get together collectively as a party, we need leadership like this and we want to see real action in our democracy. It’s really great to see people showing up,” in huge numbers that demonstrate the deep discontent with the Trump-Musk regime.

I asked, “Can you rely on the Democrats or should we try to create independent force?” and Shelby replied: “With the Republicans as they are, we Democrats can’t split up. The Democratic Party needs to shift to what the people want.”

The Fight The Oligarchy tour – which after L.A. went on to the Coachella music festival, Salt Lake City, Idaho and beyond – raises profound questions. Especially considering the abundant criticism not only of the GOP, but of the Democratic Party as well. Should the masses mobilize to oust the control of corporate, establishment Democrats to lead the party with a more economic populist, working class politics? Or will the bourgeois wing of the party use Bernie and AOC to rouse the rabble, only to then cast their ballots for the same old, same old corporate hacks? Should Bernie, AOC and the other left-leaning leaders and speakers seize the momentum represented by 36,000 people at L.A. and at their other very well-attended rallies to spearhead a new pro-people front and force independent of both the Republicans and a “Democratic Party where progressive ideas go to die,” as former Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb once reportedly said?

The backdrop for the April 12 Fight The Oligarchy rally at Gloria Molina Grand Park was L.A. City Hall. During the 1950s, in the Adventures of Superman TV series, that City Hall doubled as the Daily Planet Building, where “mild mannered reporter” Clark Kent would secretly change into Superman and fly out of a window to fight for “truth, justice and the American way.” What the huge, enthusiastic turnout at the Fight The Oligarchy demo showed is that the real superhero is not a “strange visitor from another planet,” but rather the ordinary people, when they are organized, united and determined to fight for their rights against the privileges of the few. That’s our real superpower.

For info re: the “Fight The Oligarchy” tour, including schedule information, see: https://berniesanders.com/oligarchy/.