You vs Billionaires
- Details
- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
- Written by editor
We need your help to decide what we should do next to fight for a fair economy. Will you weigh in on our 3 minute survey?
The growing gap between the rich and the poor is one of the greatest moral issues of our time.
The billionaire class uses every loophole available to dodge taxes and shore up unimaginable wealth -- while the rest of us struggle to pay the bills.
Sometimes, as just one person, it can feel impossible to stand up to billionaire CEOs and their army of lobbyists. But the Leadnow community is showing that when enough of us take action together and team up with allies in strategic moments, we can take on the powerful elite and win concrete victories.
Here are two huge victories from the last month that show just how powerful your Leadnow community has become.
Victory 1:
Yesterday the Ontario government passed living wage legislation raising the minimum wage to $15/hour! Behind this victory was a major showdown between Leadnow members and some of Ontario’s most powerful corporations.
When the big business lobby tried to sabotage the bill with false claims that a living wage would kill jobs, Leadnow members jumped into action. In just a few days almost 14,000 Ontarians signed a petition urging the government resist corporate pressure. The petition was covered in the Globe and Mail and Huffington Post, and multiple sources in the government told us they were watching our campaign closely. [1-2]
When big business realized they couldn’t stop the bill, they tried to bully the government into watering it down by extending the timelines and weakening the language on issues like equal pay for equal work. But we didn’t let them get away with it -- we teamed up with $15 and Fairness to flood key Liberals with phone calls, and successfully defended the bill.[3]
But this is just the beginning. Fill out our 3 minute survey to help us decide on our next move to defend a fair economy.
Victory 2:
This summer, when the Liberals unveiled their plan to make the super-rich pay their fair share of tax, the Conservatives and big business lobby spun a web of deception in an attempt to crush the reforms.
More than 15,000 of us signed a petition supporting the government’s reforms which we delivered to Finance Minister Morneau’s online consultation inbox.
Things took a turn for the worse when Liberal backbenchers started revolting because of alarmist messages they were getting from the business lobby.
We responded by making hundreds of calls to MPs and writing dozens letters to the editors of local papers across the country to amplify the message that everyday Canadians support tax fairness.
Then we crowdfunded a series of ads with some of the most powerful voices in this tax reform debate: doctors, lawyers and farmers, who the business lobby had tried to portray as against tax reform. The ads were micro-targeted to key MPs that needed to hear your message, and they helped to push back against big business’ fear-mongering narrative.
In the end, Finance Minister Morneau backtracked on a couple of the reforms, but your campaign saved them from crumbling entirely. [4]
These victories show that when Leadnow members pool together our voices, our dollars, and our passion, we can stand up to billionaire corporations and the right-wing political machine and win.
But our work is far from done. From defending pensions from reckless CEOs to going after the tax cheats that rob our schools and hospitals of critical funding, there’s so much we could do.
We’ve got a strategy meeting on Monday morning to figure out what to tackle next on a how to build a more fair and equitable economy. Will you weigh in on where we should start?
Click here to take our 3 minute survey.
We’re in this together,
Logan, Katelynn, and Brittany on behalf of the whole Leadnow team
P.S. Special thanks go to our 2873 sustainers who chip in every month to keep Leadnow going. None of this could have happened without your support. To maintain our independence, we don’t take big cheques from CEOs or the government -- we rely on people like you chipping in what they can. If you value this work, please consider becoming a sustainer. Click here to donate now.
[3] http://15andfairness.org/latest/breaking-new-labour-law-is-coming/
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