Eat the Rich
Richard Sackler on the left, Jeff Bezos on the bottom middle, Steve Jobs on the top middle, John D. Rockefeller on the right. Art by Izzy Tellin.
The image is of planet Earth encapsulated by flames to represent climate change. Big corporations or billionaires burn fossil fuels, the mass production of beef which causes deforestation, the use fertilizers and equipment that produce carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and harmful man-made gasses; all of which ultimately deplete the ozone layer which protects us from the harmful ultraviolet light rays of the sun.
In the image the Earth is clearly distressed and has chosen to consume a miniscule number of individuals. This is an attempt for survival. On the left is Richard Sackler, an American billionaire, businessman and physician. Richard Sackler is best known as the developer of OxyContin. Richard Sackler is the cause of the Opioid Crisis in the United States. His net worth is currently $1 billion dollars, while the Sackler family as a whole is worth about $15 billion.
Jeff Bezos is in the middle. He is the founder of Amazon. His net worth today is $158.1 Billion. This is an unfathomable amount of money for any one person to have. $1 billion is already absurd. Meanwhile Amazon workers, who have created this mass amount of money, are exploited for their labor every day. Bezos has more than enough money to pay his workers a decent wage and still be the second richest person on the planet. Elon Musk holds first place at $219 Billion.
The man in the top middle is Steve Jobs, someone who may look more familiar. Steve Jobs was the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Apple. Steve passed away in October 2011, at the time he was worth $250 million and was one of the youngest people ever to make the Forbes list of the nation’s richest people. Steve is one of the few who accomplished such wealth and success without inherited wealth. Steve was an inventor and investor; he attended Reed College in 1972. It’s important to note that though his parents struggled, they were able to pay for his education, which is a privilege many in this country do not have.
Lastly on the right is John D. Rockefeller; he founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870 and became the country’s first billionaire. He soon became the richest person in the country and controlled 90% of all oil in the United States and had 2% of the nation’s economy. His company was the first great business trust or a large grouping of business interests with significant power over the economy. John D. Rockefeller was also the founder of the University of Chicago, Rockefeller University and provided funding to establish the Central Philippine University in the Philippines.
In 1902 he created the General Education Board with a total of $129 million. This provided major funding for US schools and played a significant role in shaping and influencing the school system as it is today. Because of Rockefeller our education system was not intended to provide well rounded Americans, but instead a mass production of workers. Rockefeller stated, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” A nation of critical thinkers who are educated of our history would be impossible to control. CEO’s, Billionaires, the ruling class, they all require us to be docile, and manipulate our fear of being unemployed and homeless to control us. I don’t believe they intend to stop competing for first place as the richest person on the planet. While they continue to play this game of world domination, they ignore or are completely blind to the unsustainability of this system.
Ultimately, the sustainability of our earthly ecosystem lies within our power. It lies within all workers across the country. If we can strategically and collectively withhold our labor—while supporting the most marginalized and struggling in society—we will create an opportunity to build for workers power that can create solutions that can provide for the sustainability we need. We are running out of time.
On August 23, 2023, Republican Presidential candidates avoided providing their opinion on whether climate change is a result of human activities. Meanwhile March 13th of 2023, Biden approved the Willow Project in Alaska which will result in the extraction of 600 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years. This will dangerously accelerate emissions and the climate crisis. A total of one million letters were written to the White House in protest of Willow Project and more than 3 million signatures via a Change.org petition. ConocoPhillips is a massive and decades-long oil drilling company. This is the only company that currently has oil drilling operations in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. ConocoPhillips originally proposed the Willow Project and was originally approved by the Trump administration in 2020. The Biden administration reduced the original approved 5 drills to 3, allowing the company to drill 90% of the oil originally proposed. Currently ConocoPhillips’ net worth is $138.68 billion, and they have yet to start the Willow Project.
I’m not sure that it could be clearer that politicians red or blue have an agenda to appease the ruling class over the people. The next presidential election is approaching fast; Trump recently mentioned there is a lot of anger and passion in the country right now (potentially alluding to a Civil War between Republicans and Democrats). If there is a civil war to play out, it needs to be the people vs the ruling class; otherwise, we continue to play their game of submitting out of fear and allowing them to become even more rich and powerful. It’s each of our responsibilities to start digging into our history to learn what union means, what systemic racism means, what climate change means, what human rights mean, and so on.
Izzy Tellin is a worker, activist, writer, and artist based in Madison, Wisconsin.
