Taking to the streets can be an effective motivator, as we’ve seen in the past month. But what if those who need to hear a protest’s message most are merely a helicopter ride away from peace and quiet? On Wednesday, protestors brought their message to the Hamptons, where Donald Trump Jr. just partied away another mask-less evening and commerce secretary Wilbur Ross once clanged his loose bones on the dance floor near the president’s personal bungler Rudy Giuliani. Their message is tax the rich.
Writers like to call the Hamptons a “moneyed enclave” for a reason. Justin Bieber may or may not be enjoying a three-week rental there, for the amount of money it takes to buy an upper-middle-class home in cash. Rihanna is doing the same, reportedly. But those are just a couple of the interlopers. The home owners in the area are those with a firmer grasp on the marionette bars. The area is the home turf—or at least the vacationer turf—to billionaire investor in Equinox and Hudson Yards Stephen Ross, who fundraises for Trump; Joe Farrell, developer of million-dollar real estate out east that even the well-heeled residents say is a little much; and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who managed to pull off and keep a Water Mill build amid the 2008 recession. That’s to name a paltry few.
It was erstwhile presidential candidate and former mayor Mike Bloomberg that bore the brunt of the recent protest. Page Six says that they gathered outside his Southampton home ($20 million), and called him a “looter” and suggested one might “Tax the rich, not the poor!”
Part of the impetus for the gathering was New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s forecasted cuts of 20% in state funding. The money would come out of schools, hospitals, and local governments, it appears. The protesters, on the other hand, had a pretty kooky idea: have the 100+ billionaires in the state pay for it. Have them pool together a windfall for the state’s least fortunate. Those guys’ wealth has only surged, the protesters said, thanks to a booming stock market, among other reasons. “Billionaires are experts in social distancing,” Alice Nascimento, the New York Communities for Change director of policy and organizer, told the New York Post. “They’ve chosen to live in their own world and are separate from realities of everyday people and the people whose lives they have a tremendous impact on.”
Shinnecock Indian Nation and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, among others, banded together with Nascimento’s group for the demonstration. About 40 taxi drivers even gave some of the 200 or so demonstrators a lift. Taxi drivers have suffered long before the pandemic hit, and the pandemic has not helped their struggles. Likewise the economic fallout from the virus has [hit low-income workers hardest, according to the Federal Reserve—minorities especially are more likely to have lost their job in the past few months as well as to be deemed essential workers without the pay that would reflect that turn of phrase. The median home price in Bloomberg’s neighborhood is, for the record, $1.8 million.
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