It is easy to see billionaires as a few individuals who make us uneasy. Look at the system instead. California’s billionaires are now worth more than $2 trillion, and their fortunes are built on our labor: the retail, caregiving, food service, and healthcare jobs held mostly by women of color and trans and gender-expansive people. In 2000, billionaires made up about 1% of federal campaign donations. In 2024, it was 19%. When wealth gets this concentrated, it buys the rules, the airwaves, our sense of what is possible, our imaginations.
So let’s take our imaginations back. Universal childcare in California would cost about $20 billion, roughly 1% of what California’s billionaires hold. Every parent we know is drowning without it, and the money is there.
Every day, there are new cruelties splashed across the front page. The Defense Secretary announced plans for a public firing squad execution, set for December 3. In the Bronx, ICE agents shot Oscar Belgal, a 28-year-old father, while his 5-year-old son sat in the car. His son has not spoken since. Oscar’s lawyers say a bullet is still lodged in his neck. Our communities are hurting, and anger and grief are the right response. But tired is the goal. Let’s not hand it to them.
The powers that be want us to believe democracy is dead. Then why are they spending this much to stop us? Because when we vote together, we deliver. We have the power, the influence, and the possibility. We just have to use them.
That is why we made our ballot measure voter guide: Vote Like the Outraged, Anti-Billionaire, Hopeful Feminist You Already Are. It breaks down important measures through a gender lens, so you can see who is behind it, what it really does, and who pays.
