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Mass Mobilization to Expose Links Between Climate Change, Economic Inequality and Rising Authoritarianism Driven by the Billionaire Class
In a historic collaboration of movements, climate justice activists, migrant rights defenders, and frontline communities are joining forces across the U.S. on September 20th to confront Trump and his billionaire allies as they accelerate climate chaos and fascism. Under the banner “Make Billionaires Pay,” mass mobilizations nationwide will unite demands for climate action, migrant justice, gender and economic equality. As Trump, other world leaders, and their billionaire allies gather for the UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week, a major march through New York City will demonstrate opposition to the tax cuts for the wealthy and Big Oil handouts that drive oppression and climate chaos.
Make Billionaires Pay is being convened by Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), Women’s March, Climate Defenders, and 350.org, with over 100 endorsing organizations. It is part of a global week of action for climate justice, called “Draw the Line” (convened by 350.org, Demand Climate Justice, Climate Action Network and War on Want).
Make Billionaires Pay will focus on three key demands:
Candice Fortin, U.S. Campaign Manager, 350.org, says: "This isn't a new story—billionaires have always prioritized profit over people. This is a system working exactly as it was designed, but now without even the pretense of justice. As the U.S. braces for more extreme heat, wildfires, and hurricanes, the Trump administration has been systematically defunding our communities to give handouts to billionaires. They’re dismantling our democracy, attacking immigrants, and feeding the war profiteers. We are proud to be calling out this hypocrisy through Make Billionaires Pay and to be joining colleagues and communities mobilizing around the world to demand we Draw the Line for people and the planet.”
Renata Pumarol with Climate Defenders, says: “Billionaires caused the climate chaos, spearheaded the rise of authoritarianism and they continue to profit from our suffering. But they forgot one thing: there are more of us than there are of them. On September 20th, we will send a strong message—it's time for billionaires to pay."
Kazi Fouzia, Organizing Director, DRUM-Desis Rising Up and Moving, says: “Our South Asian, Indo-Caribbean and many Global South peoples contribute the least to the root causes of the climate and migration crises. Yet we are targeted by these oppressive forces and policies. We risk everything to survive—we are forced to leave our homes, put our bodies in dangerous situations and end up working hard in new places far from our families. As displaced working class migrants, we are hit hard in the frontlines of our home countries and here in the US. Just last month, in my ancestral homeland in Bangladesh, more than 60,000 people have been affected by flooding and are without electricity or mobile phone coverage. By 2050, Bangladesh will lose one-third of our agricultural land because of rising sea levels caused by Big Oil.
Here in New York City, our streets and homes are flooded, too. Black, Brown, Indigenous and migrant people our life, labor and care are the backbone of this city but we are kidnapped, disappeared, terrorized and hunted down by ICE and the police. Who is responsible? Billionaires profit off climate chaos. Billionaires are destroying our planet. They are damaging our land, polluting our air and contaminating our water. Billionaires cause displacement and migration. They profit off detention centers, militarizing our communities and separating our families. They take over our governments and make us believe that we are each other’s enemies. But we are not. We are many and billionaires are few. We demand respect and dignity. We demand to be treated like human beings. We will fight alongside masses of people to shut down fascist billionaires.”
Tamika Middleton, Managing Director, Women’s March, says: “Women, migrants, queer and trans people, and communities of color have long been at the center of overlapping crises, from climate disaster to economic injustice to gender-based violence and forced displacement. These are not separate struggles; they stem from a global system designed by billionaires who exploit our struggles to maintain power. This mobilization isn’t just about climate — it’s about reclaiming our voices, our families, and our futures from those who seek to divide and dominate. When we unite across movements, we become an unstoppable force.”
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
A former FEMA official said that the agency "can't do disaster response and recovery without" the employees being terminated by the Trump administration.
The Trump administration this week made abrupt cuts to the top federal disaster response agency, even as US communities face increased threats from natural disasters caused by the global climate crisis.
Independent journalist Marisa Kabas reported on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) "has begun issuing termination notices" to staff at the agency's Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) that are effective as of January 2.
A FEMA staffer who spoke with Kabas described the terminations as "The New Year's Eve Massacre," and explained that "the driving force behind all CORE employees is supporting and enacting the mission of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters."
A Thursday report from CNN added some additional details to Kabas' reporting, including that the decision to issue the layoffs was made by Acting Administrator Karen Evans, who was appointed to the role after former Acting Administrator David Richardson resigned in November.
One former FEMA official bluntly told CNN that the agency "can't do disaster response and recovery without CORE employees" that are being laid off by the administration.
The former FEMA official added that regional agency offices throughout the US "are almost entirely CORE staff, so the first FEMA people who are usually onsite won’t be there," which will mean that "states are on their own" when it comes to disaster response.
CNN also reported that there is anxiety among remaining FEMA staffers that these cuts could just be the start "of a larger effort" by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "to shrink FEMA, potentially axing thousands of workers in the coming months who deploy during hurricanes, wildfires and other national emergencies."
President Donald Trump has been targeting FEMA for potential termination for nearly a year now, and he said shortly after being inaugurated last January that a goal in his second term would be "fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA," while emphasizing that individual states should bear the cost of responding to natural disasters.
“I think, frankly, FEMA’s not good,” the president said. “I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go, and whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA.”
The Trump administration's deep cuts to FEMA come as the intensity of natural disasters is only projected to increase thanks to climate change.
According to a report published on Tuesday by the Yale School of the Environment, 2025 was the second hottest on record and was only surpassed by the previous year.
"The last three years have been, by a wide margin, the hottest ever recorded," stressed the report. "Each of the last three years has measured more than 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial times, putting the world at least temporarily in breach of an international goal to limit warming below that level."
"Trump should know that American interference in this issue is equivalent to chaos in the entire region and will destroy America’s interests," responded one top Iranian official.
US President Donald Trump on Friday issued his latest threat to attack Iran militarily, warning in a social media post that the United States is "ready to go" if Tehran intensifies its crackdown on ongoing street protests.
"If Iran shots [sic] and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "We are locked and loaded."
Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, quickly hit back, writing on X that "Trump should know that American interference in this issue is equivalent to chaos in the entire region and will destroy America’s interests."
Trump's post came days after the president suggested, following a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that he would support another round of military strikes against Iran after greenlighting the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities last year.
Jamal Abdi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), said in response to Trump's meeting with Netanyahu that the Israeli prime minister "came to the US with the goal of moving the goalposts for military action on Iran."
"Trump’s comments are a dangerous signal the president may have taken the bait," Abdi warned. "The US should not be involved in joining, supporting, or enabling another war on Iran for Israel. The president should instead be pursuing a diplomatic resolution to take war with Iran off the table for Americans, not continuing to follow Netanyahu into a quagmire."
"President Trump likely views his own reckless comments as diplomatic posturing to pressure Iran to the table," Abdi added. "But such rhetoric risks seriously backfiring and is more likely to remove diplomatic off-ramps, which also serves Netanyahu’s agenda — not America’s."
"A familiar playbook is unfolding: Israeli government officials and their allies are cynically co-opting the legitimate grievances of ordinary Iranians to advance their own agenda of militarism and outside-led regime change."
The protests in Iran began last weekend in response to deteriorating economic conditions, specifically the collapse of the nation's currency. Analyst Sina Toossi noted on his Substack Dissident Foreign Policy that the demonstrations, which now include students, were "sparked by a group of mobile phone and technology merchants in Tehran going on strike."
"From there, the protests spilled into surrounding streets of the capital and, over subsequent days, into other cities across the country," Toossi wrote. "As they spread, economic grievances increasingly mixed with overt anti-government slogans, as seen in past protest movements."
Reports indicate that several protesters have been killed by Iranian security forces.
NIAC's Etan Mabourakh and Ehsan Zahedani wrote Wednesday that "as protests erupt across Iran in response to economic collapse and broken promises of reform, a familiar playbook is unfolding: Israeli government officials and their allies are cynically co-opting the legitimate grievances of ordinary Iranians to advance their own agenda of militarism and outside-led regime change."
"The Iranian people’s struggle for dignity, economic justice, and freedom is their own," they added. "It deserves self-aware solidarity from the diaspora that asserts their self-determination—not Western 'salvation' in the form of more bombs on Tehran."
"Asking the handful of wealthiest Californians to contribute less than the annual appreciation on their fortunes to mitigate these crises is a small, reasonable, and administrable request," argued a group of experts.
Billionaire outrage against a proposed one-time wealth tax on the richest Californians reached a fever pitch in recent days as organizers began the process of gathering the hundreds of thousands of signatures needed to get the initiative on the November ballot.
Without providing specifics, billionaire Bay Area investor Chamath Palihapitiya claimed in a social media post that he knows people "with a collective net worth of $500 billion" who "scrambled and left California for good yesterday" to avoid the potential 5% wealth tax, which would apply to billionaires living in California as of January 1, 2026. (The evidence for significant billionaire tax avoidance via physical relocation is virtually nonexistent.)
Palihapitiya characterized the proposed ballot initiative, which is aimed at raising revenue to avert a healthcare crisis spurred by federal Medicaid cuts, as an "asset seizure tax."
Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager who lives in New York, similarly described the proposed tax as "an expropriation of private property."
The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post, meanwhile, published a hostile editorial on Thursday denouncing the proposed tax and mocking its supporters, including Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW).
"Many progressives think of taxation the way teenage boys think about cologne: If some is good, more must be great," the editorial reads. "California, already reeks of overtaxation, but it’s thinking about trying out its most potent scent yet: a wealth tax. Just a whiff has some of the state’s wealthiest residents fleeing."
The Wall Street Journal reported that "the firms of two high-profile California investors issued announcements on New Year’s Eve about establishing new offices out of state, without saying anything about the proposed Golden State tax."
"Tech investor Peter Thiel’s investment firm, Thiel Capital, said it signed a lease in December for office space in Miami," the newspaper added. "The office will 'complement Thiel Capital’s existing operations in Los Angeles,' the company said."
Supporters say the response from billionaires and other opponents of the proposed tax—including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is helping raise money to fight the initiative—badly misses the mark. According to organizers, most billionaires see larger capital gains increases in months than the amount they would pay if California voters approved the tax.
“Asking those who have benefited most from the economy to contribute more—particularly to stabilize healthcare systems under direct threat—is not radical. It is reasonable,” Suzanne Jimenez, the chief of staff of SEIU-UHW, told the Journal.
Earlier this week, as Common Dreams reported, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) endorsed the proposed wealth tax, which proponents say would raise roughly $100 billion in revenue from around 200 California billionaires. Under the proposal, most of the resulting revenue would be allocated to a Billionaire Tax Health Account, while the rest would go toward an account to fund food assistance and education.
A new expert analysis of the proposal, authored by some of those involved in drafting the initiative, argues that the one-time tax is urgent because "decisions at the federal level have put—and will put—California's healthcare system, education system, and broader economy under severe stress."
"Asking the handful of wealthiest Californians to contribute less than the annual appreciation on their fortunes to mitigate these crises is a small, reasonable, and administrable request," the experts write. "And that is all that this ballot measure does."