On a Monday evening, outside the Whole Foods in Palo Alto, the usual after-work rush is met with an unusual backdrop: acoustic guitar, “End ICE” posters, and anti-billionaire chants.
A small group of demonstrators organized by Menlo Park-based activist group The Wolves has made the store a weekly meeting point. Almost every Monday from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., they gather to protest wealth inequality, specifically targeting Whole Foods owner Jeff Bezos.
“We’re out here in front of Whole Foods because Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, and Amazon’s chairman of the board is a guy named Jeff Bezos,” protester Scott Herscher said. “He’s a billionaire who has used his immense wealth to ingratiate himself with the current administration.”
Herscher and the group’s grievances with Bezos range from his efforts to delegitimize unions within Amazon to his unchecked control of media, referencing his purchase of the Washington Post in 2013.
“I’d like to live in a country where the politics isn’t dominated by who has the most money. We’re here to enlighten folks,” Herscher added. “Some people don’t even realize that Whole Foods is owned by Amazon.”
“People should understand that Bezos is a donator [to the Trump administration], and when you’re shopping here at Whole Foods, or you’re shopping on Amazon, you are further allowing these billionaires and these rich people to fund ICE, to further fund this fascist downturn, to further fund murder,” protester Ashley Ortiz said.
Ortiz describes herself as “a concerned community member that is sick and tired of people continuing about business as usual when democracy is actively under attack, or really the Constitution is being ignored.”
“It’s all connected, right? And I think that at the end of the day, it’s just caring,” Ortiz said. “‘Are they coming for me? No? Then I don’t care.’ That’s what I see a lot of when I’m trying to connect with some folks out here.”
Meanwhile, another demonstrator performed a modified pledge of allegiance. “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. One nation, under the National Guard,” he sang.
A major point of contention for the organization is the tremendous wealth disparity between billionaires and the rest of the country. Herscher and Ortiz say they support the California Billionaires Tax, a recently proposed act that would place a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of the nearly 200 California residents with net worths exceeding $1 billion.
“I pay more taxes than Jeff Bezos. What the f*ck? Like, what in the actual f*ck? How does that make any sense at all? It doesn’t, and it’s not right, it’s not fair, it’s not equitable. It doesn’t lead to outcomes that are good for everybody; it leads to outcomes that are good for billionaires,” Herscher said.
The protesters also invite conversation with pedestrians and Whole Foods shoppers. “A woman and her husband [once] came up to me just to say that they support ICE,” Ortiz added. “They were immigrants. She thinks that illegal immigrants have stolen her husband’s place in the citizenship line, and I was like, ‘That’s not how that works.’”
When asked what he wanted to say to the administration and the corporate powers they were protesting, Herscher’s message was very clear.
“You can’t scare us,” he said. “You can shoot us. You can put tear gas on us. You can pepper spray us, but we’re still gonna come out.”
