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Robin Hoods to Occupy NY to Demand 1% Pay Their Fair Share
Group calls for a Financial Speculation Tax
NEW YORK
Friday, Robin hoods and a band of Merry Men and women from National People's Action will demand Wall Street pay their fair share of taxes and get our money back from the 1%. The group is calling for the implementation of a Financial Speculation Tax and the extension of New York's Millionaire's Tax.
A Robin Hood taxis a tax on financial speculation that would generate $1.3 trillion dollars across the world to reinvested in people, job creation, greening and rebuilding our roads and bridges, and lifting millions out of poverty and hunger. It is a small tax, less that one quarter of one percent would generate enough money to fund every social and environmental program in the world. At home, a Financial Speculation Tax - an even more modest version of the Robin Hood Tax - would generate more than $170 billion annually and could have the added benefit of cutting down on the speculative activity on Wall Street. While in New York, allowing the Millionaire's Tax to expire will cost New York State an estimated $5 billion needed to protect schools, healthcare services and get New Yorkers back to work
On October 29th, people across the world will take action and demand that our leaders immediately impose a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades.
Here at home, the group of 30 Robin Hoods will start their day at noon by leading training on the Robin Hood Tax at Occupy Wall Street in Liberty Square at Zucotti Park. From there they will make their way to three locations in the financial district.
WHO: Affiliates of National People's Action Vocal-NY, Community Voices Heard and the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition. Also, community members with stories about how economic crisis is hurting them.
WHEN: Friday, October 28 at 11:30 am
WHERE:
11:30am- Occupy Wall Street at Liberty Square at Zucotti Park - Robin Hoods will gather a Band of Merry Women and Men through training on the Financial Speculation Tax
12:30pm- A Big Bank Branch where they will ask them to pay their fair share and get our money back
1:00pm -New York Stock Exchange; Robin Hood and the Band of Merry Women and Men will direct the ire of the 99% at this major financial institution
WHY: The group will call attention for the need of a financial speculation tax, the expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts for the Wealthy, and the continuation of the Millionaire's Tax in New York.
VISUALS: Robin Hood Costumes, Hats, Robin Hood "Tax the Rich" arrows and Giant proclamation that Rich, Wall Street, and Millionaires must be taxed
The New Bottom Line campaign includes National People's Action (NPA), PICO National Network, Alliance for a Just Society, Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), and Industrial Areas Foundation of the Southeast (IAF-SE) and dozens of state and local organizations from around the country.
People's Action builds the power of poor and working people, in rural, suburban, and urban areas to win change through issue campaigns and elections.
LATEST NEWS
Trump's Surging LNG Exports Cost US Consumers $12 Billion in Just 9 Months
"Trump explicitly promised voters he would slash utility bills by half within the first year, yet in the first nine months of his term, they surged," said the author of Public Citizen's new report.
Dec 17, 2025
Underscoring expert warnings that exporting liquefied natural gas not only worsens the climate emergency but also drives up energy prices for Americans, Public Citizen revealed Tuesday that as LNG exports surged under the Trump administration, US households paid $12 billion more in utility bills from January through September than they did last year.
In other words, "the costs borne by residential consumers in the first nine months of 2025 are up 22%," or an average of $124 per family, according to an analysis of federal data by Tyson Slocum, director of the consumer advocacy group's Energy Program and author of the new report. "LNG exports are also up 22% over that same time."
His report highlights President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign pledges, pointing to a Newsweek op-ed and various speeches across the country. Slocum said in a statement that "Trump explicitly promised voters he would slash utility bills by half within the first year, yet in the first nine months of his term, they surged, squeezing some of the country's most vulnerable households."
Now, "1 in 6 Americans—21 million households—are behind on their energy bills," which "are rising at twice the rate of inflation," the report states. "Even registered Republican voters are increasingly blaming President Trump for the affordability crisis."
"Limiting or prohibiting LNG exports would provide immediate relief for households across the country, but it would require action from the White House."
It's not just "higher domestic natural gas prices, driven primarily by record LNG exports," affecting US utility prices, the report acknowledges. Other factors include "electric transmission and distribution costs, which include extreme weather and wildfire liabilities. These costs are administered by state or federal regulators and have been exacerbated by climate change."
"Electricity demand load growth, driven by the rise of artificial intelligence data centers, along with transportation electrification," is also having an impact, the document details. Additionally, "Trump's unprecedented cancellation and revocation of billions of dollars of permitted renewable energy projects, combined with his unlawful abuse of emergency authorities to impose punitive tariffs, have injected chaos into domestic supply chains, stifling domestic investment in energy infrastructure."
As the report explains:
Of these four factors, record natural gas exports not only represent the largest impact on natural gas prices, but feature clear statutory solutions to help protect consumers. The Natural Gas Act—passed by Congress during the Great Depression—asserts in Section 1 that "the business of transporting and selling natural gas for ultimate distribution to the public is affected with a public interest," with the US Supreme Court affirming that the "primary aim" of this 87-year-old law is "to protect consumers against exploitation at the hands of natural gas companies." Section 3 of the law forbids exports of natural gas unless the Department of Energy determines the exports to non-Free Trade Agreement countries are "consistent with the public interest."
Rather than living up to those obligations, Slocum said, "Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum have acted as global gas salesmen, traveling to Europe to push exports and gut European methane regulations while attacking mainstream climate science. Meanwhile, Trump has done nothing to keep prices down at home."
"Limiting or prohibiting LNG exports would provide immediate relief for households across the country, but it would require action from the White House," he added. "Trump would need to stand up to some of his fossil fuel donors to make our energy more affordable."
It's not just Public Citizen pushing for action by the president. US Sen. Edward Markey (D–Mass.)—the upper chamber's leading champion of the Green New Deal—joined a press event for the group's new report. He stressed that "record-breaking levels of natural gas exports are breaking the bank on your monthly energy bill."
Public Citizen released the report just a day after Bloomberg also noted what the export boom means for US energy prices.
"We have been talking about, in apocalyptic terms, for a decade now when the world would start taking away America's cheap gas," Peter Gardett, CEO of Noreva, an energy trading platform specializing in power, told Bloomberg. "Well, we're here."
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Sanders Pushes for Moratorium on New AI Data Center Construction Amid Growing Backlash
"Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up at night, worrying about what AI and robotics will do to working families?"
Dec 17, 2025
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called for a moratorium on the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers in the US amid growing nationwide backlash.
In a video posted on social media, Sanders (I-Vt.) explained why it's time for the government to hit the brakes AI data center projects, which have drawn protests all over the country for driving up electric bills and draining communities' water supplies.
Sanders began the video by acknowledging that AI has the potential to be a truly transformative technology, before noting that those who are pushing for its rapid development the most were the wealthiest people on the planet, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel.
"So here is a very simple question I'd like you to think about," Sanders continued. "Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up at night, worrying about what AI and robotics will do to working families of our country and the world? Well, I don't think so."
Sanders then argued that AI's biggest backers are pushing the technology to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else by replacing human laborers entirely with computers.
Sanders then quoted Musk, who predicted that AI and robots would "replace all jobs" in the future, and then cited a quote from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who said that "humans won't be needed for most things."
Sanders then questioned how people will survive if AI meets its backers' goals and deprives people of jobs on a mass scale. This problem is being compounded, Sanders continued, because "very few members of Congress are seriously thinking about this."
In addition to discussing AI's potential to vastly undermine working people's economic power, he also touched on its social implications, and said he was concerned that "millions of kids in this country are becoming more and more isolated from real human relationships, and are getting their emotional support from AI."
"Think for a moment about a future where human beings are not interacting with each other," he said. "Is that the kind of future you want? Well, not me."
Sanders concluded by arguing that the push to advance and integrate AI is "moving very, very quickly," and without proper considerations for the economic and social impacts it will have.
The Vermont senator argued for his proposed moratorium on data center construction to give "democracy a chance to catch up with the transformative changes we are witnessing."
Sanders' message on data centers came on the same day that MLive reported that both Republican and Democratic politicians in Michigan have been rallying against the construction of more data centers, which have been championed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
During a Tuesday anti-data center rally, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel slammed plans to build a 2.2-million-square-foot data center in Saline Township, and pointed to electric service company DTE's efforts to rush through the construction approval process as reason enough to oppose it.
“Do you guys trust DTE?" she asked. "Do you trust OpenAI? Do you trust Oracle to look out for our best interests here in Michigan?"
Republican gubernatorial candidate Anthony Hudson told MLive that he shared Nessel's criticism of the data center plan, and he questioned whether Michigan residents would see any economic benefit from it.
"They don’t support local job growth," he said of the data centers. "They pull millions of gallons of water a day, and they’re going to strain the power grid that’s already crippled. And once they’ve made their money, like Dana Nessel said, they’re going to leave."
Earlier this month, more than 230 environmental advocacy groups, led by Food and Water Watch, demanded a moratorium on building new data centers, which they said consumed unsustainable amounts of water and electricity, while also worsening the global climate emergency.
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Trump 'Taking a Sledgehammer' to One of World's Most Vital Climate Research Center, Scientists Warn
"This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face," said one hurricane researcher.
Dec 17, 2025
One US House Democrat pledged Tuesday night that Colorado officials will fight the Trump administration's latest attack on science "with every legal tool that we have" after top White House budget adviser Russell Vought announced a decision to break up a crucial climate research center in Boulder.
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) called the decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) "a deeply dangerous" action.
"NCAR is one of the most renowned scientific facilities in the WORLD—where scientists perform cutting-edge research every day," said Neguse. "We will fight this reckless directive."
Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said the National Science Foundation (NSF), which contracts the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) to run NCAR, "will be breaking up" the center and has begun a "comprehensive review," with "vital activities such as weather research" being moved to another entity.
He added that NCAR is "one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.”
But scientists pointed to the center's 65-year history of making major advances in climate research and developing systems that scientists use regularly.
NCAR developed GPS dropsondes, which are dropped from the center's aircraft into the eye of hurricanes to gather crucial data and improve forecasts, as well as severe weather warnings and analyses of the economic impacts that weather can bring, Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, told USA Today, which first reported on the plan to dismantle the facility.
Neguse also called the decision to shutter NCAR "blatantly retaliatory." The breakup of the center was announced days after President Donald Trump announced his plan to pardon Tina Peters, despite uncertainty over his authority to do so. The former county clerk was convicted in Colorado court on felony charges of allowing someone to access secure voting system data—part of an effort to prove the baseless conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Trump attacked Colorado's Democratic governor, Jared Polis, over the Peters case last week, calling him "incompetent" and "pathetic."
Also on Tuesday, the administration announced it was canceling $109 million in environmental transportation grants for Colorado that were aimed at boosting investment in electric vehicles, rail improvements, and other research.
Writer Benjamin Kunkel said the dismantling of NCAR is evidently "what happens to a state whose leading officials do accept climate science... and don't accept that Trump won the 2020 election."
Polis said Tuesday that his government had not received any communication from the White House about the NCAR review and dismantling, but "if true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked."
"Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science," he said. "NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”
The White House Tuesday said it objected to UCAR's "woke direction," including its efforts to "make the sciences more welcoming, inclusive, and justice-centered" via the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences and wind turbine research that aims to "better understand and predict the impact of weather conditions and changing climate on offshore wind production.”
The administration also said the review of NCAR will eliminate "green new scam research activities"—green energy research completed by many of the center's 830 employees.
Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe warned that the dismantling of NCAR was an attack on "quite literally our global mothership."
"NCAR supports the scientists who fly into hurricanes, the meteorologists who develop new radar technology, the physicists who envision and code new weather models, and yes—the largest community climate model in the world," said Hayhoe. "Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet."
Hurricane specialist Michael Lowry said the center is "crucial to cutting-edge meteorology and improvements in weather forecasting."
"It's far, far bigger than a 'climate' research lab," he said. "This is self-sabotage by a wildly ignorant and malicious administration cutting off their nose to spite their face."
The president this year has also pushed massive cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where major climate and weather research takes place. The cuts have come as 2024 has been named the hottest year on record and scientists have warned that planetary heating has contributed to recent weather disasters.
“Any plans to dismantle NSF NCAR," UCAR president Antonio Busalacchi told the Washington Post, "would set back our nation’s ability to predict, prepare for, and respond to severe weather and other natural disasters."
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