FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 26, 2025
CONTACT: Unai Montes, press@peoplesaction.org, 202-660-0605 (bilingual)
As the U.S. Congress weighs tax giveaways and deep cuts to essential services, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) joined People’s Action Institute members from across the country as they called out Blackstone, UnitedHealth & American Gas Association for profiting from our housing, health & climate crises.
The livestreams from the three direct actions can be found here, here and here.
Photos from today’s events are available here and upon request.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Organized by People’s Action Institute, 100 Americans from 60 congressional districts across 27 states were joined by U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) in defiant, nonviolent protests at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the American Gas Association, a lobbying group for more than 200 fossil fuel companies, Blackstone – the biggest commercial landlord in history – and UnitedHealth – the largest health insurance company in the U.S. – to confront corporate greed and corruption.
Starting soon after these offices opened for business, members and leaders from People’s Action Institute organizations were joined by D.C. residents and allies from key national organizations, including Right To The City, National Nurses United and Physicians for a National Health Care Plan, for these peaceful direct actions in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol to “Take Back Our Money” from the mega-corporations who drive our housing, health, and climate crises, even as they profit from massive tax breaks and subsidies from Congress. At each location, they demanded corporate leaders meet with them and answer the demands of working people.
Multi-billion dollar corporations and billionaires bought off members of Congress to ensure President Trump would pass tax cuts and fatten their wallets with cash siphoned away from essential services Americans rely on. These CEOs and corporations are now expecting a payday of as much as $5 trillion, on top of subsidies they already receive, if the tax giveaways proposed to Congress by MAGA Republicans go through.
“I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, because there are people in my community that can’t afford to come up here,” said Rep. Tlaib, who was raised in Detroit and represents its residents in the U.S. Congress. “It is so important to understand corporate greed and how it is embedded in environmental injustices, embedded in environmental racism. They want the federal government to continue to literally fund poisoning us, while we get sick here in our country. So they’re making us sick, and we’re subsidizing the fact that we don’t have access to health care that supports our families.”
“We’re here today because we want to make the rich pay their fair share!” said JJ Ramirez, from People’s Action Institute member organization VOCAL-Texas. “ Blackstone is a private equity company that has over 300,000 rental properties across the country. They gobble up these homes, raise our rents, price gouge us, and then evict us when we can’t afford to live in their places. We’re here today because Blackstone has conspired with other corporate bad actors so they can gobble up everything that we have.”
“Blackstone has come into Columbus, Indiana, and built a bunch of apartments, and they control the supply of rental apartments, and raise the rent. And now people can’t afford to live in their own communities, in their own neighborhoods,” said Rev. Danny Russell, a pastor from southern Indiana and member of People’s Action Institute member group Hoosier Action. “There’s a ledger for Blackstone where these apartments are listed. And to the right is not a person’s name, not a person’s face, not a family, but a damn number. And that ain’t right!”
“I will never forget a woman with a disability telling me about the time she had to hop up with the help of a neighbor, 15 flights of stairs to get to her apartment because the landlords refused to fix the elevators. I will never forget the parents of a four year old telling me how they had to heat up water on their stove to give their kid baths because their landlord refused to fix their hot water for over a month,” said Ann Kiesling from Progressive Maryland, who organize tenants at the Enclave, an apartment complex in Silver Spring. “An out-of-state private equity landlord, Hampshire Properties, is raking in massive profits by charging luxury rent prices while letting the building fall apart and leaving tenants with the consequences. And while we are here fighting for basic living conditions against mold, broken elevators, pest infestations, corporate landlords like Hampshire Properties, like Graystar, like Blackstone, are pouring our rent money into lobbyists and elected officials campaigns instead of fixing their buildings.”
“Just last night, House Republicans passed their budget resolution to cut millions from Medicaid,” said Hannah Peterson, a disabled veteran, seminary student and member of The People’s Lobby in Chicago. “Millions of their constituents rely on it for care. Republicans are already funneling our tax dollars out of programs our communities need and into pockets of private corporations and billionaires. We deserve a government that uses our money to fund our care, not one that uses our money to line the pockets of corporations.”
“To the folks at UnitedHealthcare Group, if you really care about people’s health, why don’t you publicly come out and oppose the cuts to Medicaid?” said Amelia Bittel from Citizen Action of New York. Bittel has dysautonomia, which forced her to have heart surgery at 35, and weekly blood draws to check her clotting factors. “ In my city of Syracuse, New York, 48% of the population relies on government funded programs to get their insurance. You don’t need the $1.3 billion that you stand to profit from these cuts. Your company routinely reports the highest profits. Why not give back to the patients? And hey Elon – if you’re so sure that it’s all a scam, why don’t you come walk in my shoes for a day.”
“I am from Wisconsin, and if you’re not familiar, we hit negative 30 degrees sometimes, and that means that people can freeze to death in their homes if they do not have a way to heat their homes,” said Gloria de Graves from Citizen Action of Wisconsin at the offices of the American Gas Association, which represents her two local utilities. “So all I’m saying is WE Energies and Excel Energy, who I have paid plenty of money to over the years, need to stop charging us so much money so that we can afford to feed ourselves, we can afford to stay housed and when we are fleeing domestic violence, that there is a safe, electrified and heated home to go into so that we are warm and safe in the winter.”
For more information, visit: https://peoplesactioninstitute.org/