Just one percent of Americans hold nearly a third of the nation’s wealth. So it was fitting that after organizers announced an apparently earnest “March for Billionaires” for this Saturday at Alta Plaza Park, only a few handfuls of pro-billionaire agitators actually showed.
Mission Local contributor Benjamin Wachs coined a term for an event in which media observers outnumber participants: a panopticonference. This was close to that. Those in attendance did their best to field questions from the barrage of journalists that backed them into a tree.
The march’s organizers did many of the things good protesters do, like hold up handmade posters with slogans like “We *heart* you Jeffrey Bezos” and “It’s very difficult to write a nuanced argument on a sign,” even when their hands trembled. Aella, a writer, sex worker and former tech worker with a sizable online following, even made an appearance.
But the discourse sounded more like what you’d hear at a high school debate conference, public forum style (which, for those who were cool in high school, consists of speeches, crossfire questioning, and rebuttals).
The protesters argued that, broadly, very rich individuals have gotten a bad rap. Derik Kauffman, the founder of an artificial-intelligence startup and the leader of the small band of billionaire admirers, laid out his stance to the assembled crowd of reporters, observers, and passerbys looking to get in a good heckle on a sunny Saturday in the park.
Kauffman feared that California’s proposed wealth tax, a planned one-time 5 percent levy on the state’s roughly 200 billionaires, would drive the fat cats away and discourage aspirational billionaires from forming companies here.
The tens of billions of dollars that could be raised from this tax would fund healthcare, a journalist said. What did Kauffman think of that?
Kauffman began his rebuttal, but it was drowned out by the hubbub of a “counter protester” wearing a towering papier-mâché Swedish Chef puppet chasing around a man in a crown. “He’s coming to eat the rich!” the royal provocateur yelled. “Help me get away from the unwashed masses!”
Nevertheless, Kauffman persisted.
“California is, I believe, the only state to give health insurance to people who come into the country illegally,” Kauffman said nervously. “I think we probably should not be providing that.”
Fourteen states offer health coverage to undocumented immigrants. Far more offer health coverage to pregnant undocumented immigrants. Kauffman later clarified that he meant the state was the only one to extend state-funded health coverage to all low-income adults regardless of immigration status.
“So you’d rather everyone just be sick, and get everyone else sick?” another reporter asked.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” said Kauffman.
“Isn’t that effectively what happens?” the reporter countered. “They don’t have access to health care and they just have to get sick, right?”
Kauffman contemplated that one for a moment. “Then they have to just get sick,” he said. “I mean, it’s unfortunate, but I think that it’s sort of impossible to have both liberal immigration laws and generous government benefits.”
Kauffman, who recently left his tech job, has since been completely occupied with organizing Saturday’s march. He said he expected dozens to join him.
All told, at least 20 did, Kauffman later said. It was for the best that more did not: The group later decamped from Alta Plaza Park and marched to Civic Center, where they did not have a permit for a rally.
Despite the San Francisco locale, a participant said the event had “grassroots” origins at a “little rationalist restaurant get together” in a “group house” on Shattuck Avenue, subverting any assumptions that Berkeley is all radical hippies.
This is where Annie, a young transgender woman who attended the protest in a T-shirt that said “I’m in a polycule with Aella,” first met Kauffman. An impromptu debate ensued, with Annie “aggressively defending billionaires.” It was, participants concluded, worthy of a larger forum. Phone numbers were added to a Signal group chat, and organizing began. On Saturday, some of the protesters met in person for the first time.
With the spectacle of “real” billionaire boosters in Adidas and Abercrombie next to “counter-protesters” in ties, tiaras and top hats, one couldn’t be blamed for wondering if this was performance art, or just something that felt a lot like it. As the clock struck 11:30 at Alta Plaza Park, the fourth estate began to go for the jugular. Was the billionaire bacchanal B.S.?
“I am a Christian,” said Annie. “I swear on my God that I am completely genuine.”
Annie is a software engineer, she told this reporter. She draws a six-figure salary but lives frugally in an “attic cordoned off with curtains” so that she can retire early. She said there was “no way in hell” she’d share her last name, because A) she could lose her job, and B) she did not trust reporters.
“It is the intention of journalists to lie, which is why we need to not do anything to the journalists themselves, but we need to simply remove them as a class,” Annie said. “Just like Germany does to the extremist organizations.”
Well, Germany certainly did excel at removing classes of people from society. With that said, she also told this reporter that she would be happy to discuss the matter off the record over a beer.
Her political awakening, she added, was watching the press “constantly pump out obviously fake information” against Trump during the 2016 election instead of reporting on the “actual abhorrent views he holds.”
Pressed forward by the handsome swarm of reporters recording the event (we’re in the business of giving a voice to the voiceless), I asked who would publicize her march and her message without journalists.
Other methods of communication would come up to spread the word, Annie replied. Billionaires were just that great. “People are just jealous that they are poorer and weaker and uglier,” she said. “We are beautiful. We’re smart. We’re strong… We are supporting the billionaires, here.”