Hundreds of UE members took to the streets during the second day of the 79th UE Convention, shining a light on the role of a local Chicago billionaire, Valor Equity CEO Antonio Gracias, in engineering a massive transfer of resources into the pockets of corporations and the wealthy. Gracias, a friend of Elon Musk, served in Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), specifically targeting Social Security for cuts.
Trump’s budget bill, passed in July, diverts $213 billion from Medicaid, Social Security, public education, and other programs that benefit working people into tax breaks for billionaires like Musk and Gracias. UE members rallied outside of a Valor Equity investment property, presenting Gracias with an invoice addressed to “America’s Billionaires,” to return that $213 billion to the public.
UE General President Carl Rosen, who emceed the rally, blasted “Antonio Gracias and all of the billionaires like him who have seized control of our government in order to rip off working people.” The invoice, he said, represents money that “could be going for public services, could be going for things that support working people, for health care, for education, for public services, and instead is being diverted into the pockets of the very wealthy.”
Ramona Malczynski, president of Local 1466 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said, “New Mexico has the highest percentage of residents receiving SNAP benefits, and one of the highest percentages of residents enrolled in Medicaid. These programs were already not enough for people to get by. But now, with the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, thousands of New Mexicans will be put in even more danger of going hungry, homeless, and dying. The purpose of this bill was a wealth transfer from the poor and working class to the ultra rich.
“But if we use the billions in tax cuts for those like Bezos and Musk and the billions being used to terrorize, kidnap and torture immigrants in this country, we can feed, house, and provide health care to every one of the residents in the United States.”
Evan Yamaguchi, president of Local 1103, Graduate Students United at the University of Chicago, pointed out that “While the wealthy and powerful are busy gutting Medicare, Social Security, and things that benefit working people, they're also busy gutting education.” He explained that Gracias sits on his university’s board of trustees, and described what it is like to work in higher education when it is controlled by billionaires and millionaires like Gracias: “The University of Chicago and universities like it like to paint themselves as these liberal institutions. But anyone who's ever set foot in these schools knows that that is not the case. They’re a business run like landlords.”
Dominic Harris, secretary-treasurer of Local 150 in North Carolina, asked the crowd, “I got a question for y’all. Since Donald Trump deported all these people and kidnaped them off the street, put them in ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and taken them over to Cuba, put them in Guantanamo Bay, how much have our paychecks gone up?” “NONE!” yelled the crowd.
“I got another question,” Harris continued. “When are we going to get what we need to survive? When are we going to get where we need to make it to a better day? When are we going to finally take this country back into the hands of the working class?”
The rally also heard from several close UE allies in Chicago. “At a time when billionaires and their bought-out politicians are looting public programs and attacking the very workers who keep this country going, we’re drawing a line,” declared longtime UE ally Congressman Jesús “Chuy” García.
Rep. Chuy Garcia
“We know that the shots [in the Trump administration] are being called by Antonio Gracias, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Those are the real movers and shakers. And what do they all have in common? They have in common that they don't build, they extract. They don't work, they exploit. They don't innovate, they steal. And every single time that we demand better pay, better health care and better rights, they scream ‘free markets.’ But when it's time to collect, they're the first in line for government contract subsidies and handouts.”
Jackee Pruitt, the executive director of Action Now and a board member of Grassroots Collaborative, decried the effects of Gracias’s cuts at the Social Security Administration on the working-class people she represents on Chicago’s west and south sides, with closed and understaffed offices. “Black and brown families are forced to wait months for access to the benefits that they are entitled to today. Families lose their lifeline while billionaires add to their generational wealth.”
Marcos Cineceros of Warehouse Workers for Justice and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights told the rally, “The Trump administration has been coming for our community since the start of this administration. On what seems like a daily basis, this administration has attacked immigrants, workers and people of good conscience sticking up for their communities.” However, he said “Together, we can move towards a society that serves the people and not the billionaires, because our labor is our power.”
Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter told the UE rally that they were not alone in taking on the billionaires, as a series of events were being held across the country that week with the theme of “workers over billionaires.” These actions, he said, will culminate in “The largest Labor Day celebration in memory in which labor and community groups in all 50 states will hold hundreds of marches, demonstrations, and celebrations of workers including a rally and march at Haymarket Square here in Chicago.”
At the close of the rally, the Fruit of Labor singing ensemble performed an a capella rendition of “Organize Organize Organize,” and the UE members marched back to the hotel, chanting “Whose City? Our City!” and “No ICE, no KKK, no fascist USA!”