A march supporting California’s billionaires didn’t exactly draw a huge crowd on Saturday — the San Francisco Chronicle counted around three dozen attendees, along with another dozen tongue-in-cheek counter-protesters.
To be fair, organizer Derik Kauffman had predicted attendance of only “a few dozen” beforehand. But the “March for Billionaires” has drawn outsized attention on social media because it’s such an incongruous idea, and according to Mission Local, journalists nearly outnumbered demonstrators at the event itself, where marchers carried signs with messages like “We ❤️ You Jeffrey Bezos” and “It’s very difficult to write a nuanced argument on a sign.”
The ostensible reason for the demonstration was to protest the Billionaire Tax Act, a proposed state ballot measure that would require Californians worth more than $1 billion to pay a one-time, 5% tax on their total wealth. If the measure actually passes, Governor Gavin Newsom said he will veto it.
Kauffman, who founded the AI startup RunRL and is not a billionaire himself, told reporters, “California is, I believe, the only state to give health insurance to people who come into the country illegally. I think we probably should not be providing that.” (Fourteen states offer health care to undocumented immigrants.)
