This article was originally published in The Burning Spear Newspaper on 4/30/2020. The Uhuru Solidarity Movement stands in solidarity with, and is under the leadership of, the African People’s Socialist Party. We are sharing this article as part of a series to expose Wall Street crimes against African people. Join the campaign to Make Wall Street Pay Reparations!
It is time to demand reparations from the parasites, thieves and bloodsuckers who are fattening their bellies off the COVID-19 crisis while Africans and Indigenous people are dying at genocidal rates.
Let’s start with the 43,000 millionaires and billionaires who will receive an average $1.7 million tax break from a provision snuck into the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act stimulus bill (Source: Analysis by Joint Committee for Taxation).
These billionaires are looking at a combined $82 billion windfall. That is more than the total allocated to funding for all hospitals in the U.S. and more than the total provided to all state and local governments.
The bill allows for business owners to deduct unlimited losses from their “non-business” income such as capital gains like stocks and bonds.
Over 80 percent of the business owners who stand to benefit from this provision are millionaires. The top beneficiaries are hedge-fund investors and real estate developers.
The billionaire elite has added $308 billion to its wealth in the past four weeks, with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s wealth jumping from $105 to $130 billion.
As a report published by the Institute for Policy Studies noted, “this is larger than the Gross Domestic Product of Honduras, which was $23.9 billion in 2018.”
Seven other billionaires have increased their wealth, each by over $1 billion, during the pandemic: MacKenzie Bezos (Amazon), Eric Yuan (Zoom), Steve Ballmer (Microsoft), John Albert Sobrato (Silicon Valley real estate), Elon Musk, Joshua Harris (Apollo, financial asset management) and Rocco Comisso (Mediacom, cable and internet).
Millionaires and billionaires bagged over $600 million in forgivable loans from the aid supposedly meant for “small businesses.” Over 150 publicly traded companies fed at the trough.
Some, like Shake Shack, a company valued at $2 billion, gave back the cash after a wave of bad press. Most kept it.
Two million dollars in bailout cash were fast-tracked to Fisher Island, a posh, members-only getaway off the coast of Miami, FL where millionaires lounge on beaches made from imported Bahamian sand, while 800,000 people in the state still haven’t received their unemployment benefits.
Capitalism must go
It is time to fight back against the billionaires and millionaires who are hoarding their stolen riches as Africans and Indigenous people are fighting to survive the ravages of the imperialist-imposed Coronavirus pandemic!
The average white family possesses up to 31,000 times the wealth as the average African family in the U.S.
The colonial reality of white wealth and African poverty is further exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Africans and Indigenous people are dying at disproportionately high rates.
African people were more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people in New York City.
Over 26 million people are facing unemployment.
Millions of people in the African community have never received the measly $1200 stimulus check promised by the government.
Most small businesses, especially those owned by African business owners, never saw a dime of the $484 billion allocated by the CARES ACT.
Meanwhile, Bank of America, JP Morgan and PNC Bank netted $10 billion in bank fees from processing loans that went to big public companies.
It is time to ramp up the demand for reparations to African people from the Wall Street parasites
We demand reparations from the billionaires and millionaires whose fortunes are built on the backs of the oppression and exploitation of African and Indigenous people.
We demand that the 43,000 millionaires get out their checkbooks and write a $1.7 million reparations check; and that is just the bare minimum!
Their checks can be made out to the African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF) earmarked for the Black Power Blueprint, the project building political and economic power in the hands of the African working class.
White people: join the struggle for reparations to African people as a revolutionary demand.
This is the time for white people to divorce ourselves from our own white ruling class.
It’s time to crash the billionaires’ club and let them know: the party’s over, and your bill has arrived. Reparations Now!
Join the campaign to “Make Wall Street Pay Reparations.”
Join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, the organization of white people working under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party, building unity through reparations to African people.