While poor and working-class communities keep the world running, a handful of billionaires are profiting off our labor and pain. And one Black feminist-led organization is flipping the script. 

Dream Defenders, a national political formation founded in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s murder, has been gearing up to launch Class Ruins Everything Around Me, a national campaign and narrative intervention against billionaires and big money corporations with a call-to-action for young Black and marginalized people to join the fight.

A nod to Wu-Tang’s 1994 landmark single “C.R.E.A.M.”—an indictment of capitalism’s chokehold on Black and working-class life, Dream Defenders are meticulously organizing a call-out of the destructive and criminal billionaire class while calling in a new generation of creative workers rising to take its place.

As a movement that has weathered political targeting, financial strangulation, and right-wing smear campaigns, Dream Defenders understand the stakes of this moment deeply: These billionaires aren’t just stealing, they are actively engineering the conditions of the crisis poor and working-class people live in. From housing and labor to surveillance and environmental degradation, they profit from our inability to lead a safe and good life.

Following a record number of Black women losing unemployment, Dream Defenders’ upcoming Class Ruins Everything Around Me campaign is naming names and building the power to radically create a more just and equitable world for the young Black, brown, trans, queer, poor, and chronically overworked. 

Here’s how the most powerful names in tech, finance, and real estate are fueling the suffering of marginalized communities in the U.S. and globally—all while hoarding wealth, dodging taxes, funding disinformation, and bankrolling war.

1. Jeff Bezos (Amazon) — Worker Exploitation and Climate Racism

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Amazon’s warehouses are often placed in low-income communities and contribute to poor air quality and respiratory illness, while its brutal conditions disproportionately affect Black and Latine workers. They leave a massive carbon footprint with little regard for frontline climate-impacted communities and are known to employ union-busting tactics that target predominantly Black organizing efforts.

2. Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX/X) — Gentrification, Union Busting, and Far-Right Amplification

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Musk is openly opposed to unions while simultaneously employing vulnerable, mostly immigrant and marginalized laborers. He’s used his platform to amplify white supremacist, anti-Black, and anti-trans rhetoric. Tesla’s factories have been sued for racial discrimination and unsafe working conditions. This summer’s ruling in SpaceX v. NLRB is a blow to American workers who hope to organize their workplaces without the crippling fear of retaliation. And Musk’s so-called utopian city developments and tunneling projects are vehicles for displacement and land grabs. 

3. Peter Thiel and Alex Karp (Palantir) — Fueling Mass Surveillance and Deportation

Palantir’s tech powers ICE raids, surveillance of immigrant communities, and predictive policing. They contract with local and federal governments to disproportionately target Black and brown neighborhoods while funding far-right political candidates and white nationalist movements.

4. Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) — Disinformation and Digital Colonialism

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Facebook and Instagram spread disinformation that fuels anti-Black, anti-immigrant, and anti-trans violence. Meta profits from psychological warfare against marginalized youth, especially Black girls and queer teens. And Zuckerberg supports projects in the Global South amounting to data colonialism, extracting digital labor and user info.

5. Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai (Google/Alphabet) — Data Extraction and Educational Displacement

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Data mining and algorithmic bias exacerbate racial profiling and housing discrimination. Google’s smart cities initiatives have resulted in gentrification and displacement, particularly in urban centers. Funding AI tools that replace workers, especially in education and service sectors employing women of color.

6. Tim Cook (Apple) — Global Sweatshops and Urban Inequality

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Apple’s supply chains unsurprisingly rely on underpaid and overworked laborers, and often in majority-Black and Indigenous countries. They drive up rent and property values near tech campuses, displacing working-class families of color. Apple also massively benefits from tax loopholes that ultimately defund public services, including schools and transit.

7. Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, PayPal) — Political Manipulation via “Philanthropy”

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Hoffman funds “centrist” and liberal campaigns that undermine progressive Black-led movements. He supports Silicon Valley policy think tanks pushing market-based solutions to public problems, gutting genuine investment in Black communities. Hoffman is also a proponent of AI and automation initiatives that will eliminate working-class jobs, especially in education and care sectors.

8. Marc Andreessen — Dark Enlightenment and Tech Feudalism

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A vocal supporter of “Dark Enlightenment,” an ideology rooted in eugenics and white supremacy, Andreessen invests in surveillance tech and private security startups aimed at controlling and policing poor urban areas. He advocates for “seasteading” and libertarian microstates—fantasies of escape from democratic responsibility.

9. Larry Fink and Stephen A. Schwarzman (Blackstone) — Evictions, Water Privatization, and Housing Displacement

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Blackstone is one of the largest landlords in the U.S., known for predatory housing practices and evictions. They buy up affordable housing, jack up rents, and leave units empty to drive prices. They invest in water infrastructure privatization, extracting clean water from Black and brown communities, and are major donors to anti-tax and pro-austerity politicians who cut public services.

10. Koch Brothers (Charles and David): Fossil Fuels, White Supremacy, and DEI Rollbacks

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The Koch network funds right-wing think tanks that drive climate denialism, disproportionately harming frontline Black and Indigenous communities. They are backers of anti-DEI, anti-CRT, and anti-immigrant legislation, and support private prisons and “school choice” movements that gut public education in Black and brown communities.

11. BONUS: J. David Donahue and Dan Gertler (GEO Group) — Private Prisons and Resource Theft

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GEO Group operates private immigrant detention centers and prisons, profiting directly from mass incarceration. And Dan Gertler profits from resource extraction in the Congo, under exploitative conditions tied to corruption and neocolonial violence.