A coalition of organizers pulled up to UC Berkeley in a bus advocating for students to tax billionaires Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The demonstration was organized by Tax the Ultra-Rich Now, a national organization working to raise awareness about wealth inequality.<\/p>\n
In attendance were Berkeley District 7 Councilmember Cecilia Lunaparra, District 7 candidate Syrak Micael and District 1 candidate Daria Wrubel.<\/p>\n
The bus parked on Bancroft Avenue in front of campus, across the street from Caff\u00e8 Strada. There, organizers spoke with students passing by, urging them to vote for Proposition 40 \u2014 also known as the Billionaire Tax \u2014 which would require billionaires to pay a one-time wealth tax equal to 5% of their wealth. The organizers also expressed support for Prop. 3, which would extend an existing tax on individuals earning high incomes to fund schools and healthcare.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s about whether we, as a society and as a state, want to look into ways to radically change our economy to benefit working people,\u201d Lunaparra said. \u201cAnd I think that most students and young people do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The demonstration is part of a bus tour across California that began at Sen. Bernie Sanders\u2019 rally in San Francisco on Saturday. Other stops on the tour include Oakland, Bakersfield and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
During the demonstration, the campaign\u2019s mascot \u2014 a California bear \u2014 emerged from the bus and headed to Caff\u00e8 Strada to canvas with coffee drinkers.<\/p>\n
Micael expressed hopes for the demonstration being the most effective way to engage with UC Berkeley students. He said he had asked students passing by questions such as, \u201cHey, do you want to take on some billionaires? Hey, do you hate Elon Musk?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd most of the time, they\u2019re receptive, like, \u2018Hell yeah, I do,\u2019\u201d Micael said.<\/p>\n
Organizers also called on students to vote no on propositions 41 and 42, two billionaire-funded propositions that could block Prop. 40 if they pass alongside it.<\/p>\n
Brian Galle, a Berkeley Law professor who co-authored Prop. 40, said propositions 41 and 42 were \u201cdesigned to confuse voters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tax the Ultra-Rich Now has created two chants: \u201cYes on 40, yes on 3! Billionaires, don\u2019t tread on me!\u201d and \u201cNo on 41 and 42! Stop billionaires from screwing you!\u201d<\/p>\n
Igor Volsky, the campaign manager for Tax the Ultra-Rich Now who fled the Soviet Union, described Prop. 40 as the \u201cfirst battle in the broader war\u201d of reclaiming power from billionaires for regular people, especially young people who are impacted by economic changes as a result of AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Berkeley students want to have control over their future, if they want to be able to make decisions about how AI shapes our lives moving forward, if they want to be able to just have economic freedom and independence, and have that power in their own hands \u2014 like we should in a democracy \u2014 then they have to vote for Prop. 40,\u201d Volsky said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A coalition of organizers pulled up to UC Berkeley in a bus advocating for students to tax billionaires…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[151,764,9419,36944,40292,74243,90517,7,13775,191304,38812,1611,191305,47,143,145,144,179808,167370,101,5300,110273,191303,149],"class_list":["post-490404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bakersfield","tag-berkeley","tag-berkeley-law","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-billionaire-tax","tag-brian-galle","tag-caff-strada","tag-california","tag-cecilia-lunaparra","tag-dari-wrubel","tag-district-7","tag-elon-musk","tag-igor-volsky","tag-los-angeles","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-proposition-3","tag-proposition-40","tag-san-francisco","tag-soviet-union","tag-syrak-micael","tag-tax-the-ultra-rich-now","tag-uc-berkeley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}