Caravan From New York City Brings Pitchforks to Protest East End Billionaires

The fight for a wealth tax materialized at the doorsteps of South Fork billionaires on Wednesday when a caravan of around 80 protesters — brandishing plastic pitchforks and banners reading “Tax the rich, not the poor” — crisscrossed the East End.

Composed mostly of out of town protesters, the caravan, organized by New York Communities for Change and a variety of other progressive organizations, coordinated with the Shinnecock Nation to demand that the state raise taxes on billionaires and the 1 percent.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Southampton home was the caravan’s first target.

Outside Mr. Bloomberg’s Whites Lane home, protesters disembarked from their cars, donning signs, megaphones, pots and pans and plastic pitchforks. Southampton Town Police closed the road for the demonstration.

Mr. Bloomberg drew criticism during his short-lived bid for the Democratic presidential nomination for his law enforcement policies while serving as mayor, and his personal fortune — Mr. Bloomberg spent nearly $1 billion of his own money on his campaign.

Comments Mr. Bloomberg made about the Shinnecock Nation during a campaign stop in Oklahoma City on February 28 had vexed tribal leaders.

As The Press previously reported, Mr. Bloomberg stated: “There’s a Native American tribe near where I live — the Shinnecock Nation — and it is just a disaster.”

On Wednesday, some protesters called out the massive wealth of the former mayor.

“Those yards remind me of the entrances to plantations,” said former New York City Council candidate Jamell Henderson, pointing to the entrance of the estate.

The protest, with mostly New York City and Western Long Island members, also focused on taxi cab driver suicide rates and medallion prices — a slurry of New York City yellow cabdrivers made the trek from the city to join the caravan.

Before traveling to the summer homes of the East End’s wealthiest, cars and small vans of protesters met in the parking lot of the Stony Brook Southampton campus. There, yellow cabs and orange-shirted NYCC protesters — both relatively unusual sights for residents of the East End — filled a small area of the parking lot.

William Bailey, 36, of Elmont, was one of the organizers present with NYCC. He said the protest planned to pass by many homes of the East End’s billionaires. The NYCC worked to bring yellow cabdrivers out to join the protest, he said.

Vinod Malhotra, a yellow cab driver from Hicksville, said he drove out to the East End to protest medallion prices and to force Governor Andrew Cuomo to implement higher tax rates for New York’s 1 percent.

After visiting Mr. Bloomberg’s home, the protest was also scheduled to visit the vacation estates of Blackstone CEO Steven Schwarzman, real estate developer Stephen Ross and hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb.