Marching protesters hold up a sign demanding that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump release his tax returns, in Miami on Sept. 16. (AP/Lynne Sladky)
Tens of thousands of people are expected to take part in more than 100 Tax Marches on Saturday to demand President Donald Trump release his taxes and to highlight the need for increased minimum wage.
As many have pointed out, every president since the 1960s has released their tax returns, while Trump himself promised to do so on the campaign trail—and has thus far failed to deliver.
“The American people are outraged that President Trump has broken his promise to release his taxes raising doubts and casting shadows over countless actions taken by his administration,” Karen Hobert Flynn, president of the watchdog group Common Cause, said Friday.
“We have members all over the country who will be taking to the streets tomorrow to express their outrage and send a message to the White House that they are paying attention, they don’t like what is going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and they expect changes, beginning with the release of President Trump’s taxes,” Flynn said.
Joyce Statland, a Common Cause activist who is planning to march in Arizona, added, “Every American deserves to know who President Trump owes a favor to. We need him to prove he’s making decisions that are best for all of us, not what’s best for Donald Trump.”
Trump has previously claimed that no one cares about his taxes, but numerous recent polls have shown that is not the case. And the interest in his financial documents does not stop with the public—it goes up to Capitol Hill.
On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released a video organized with MoveOn.org Civic Action charging that Trump’s refusal to release his returns means he’s hiding something.
“And we know where he’s hiding it—not in a safe, not in a vault. Nope, he’s hiding it in his taxes,” Warren says in the video, which is being released in advance of the marches.
“On April 15, I hope Donald Trump looks outside his window,” she says. “Thousands of Americans will be joining the Tax March for economic justice….People will be marching to tell Donald Trump they want to know who he is really working for and for Congress to force Donald Trump to release his taxes. Donald: The time for hiding is over.”
Likewise, members of Fight for $15 will march to outline how fast-food corporations’ low wages force workers to rely on public assistance, putting a burden on taxpayers.
Priscilla Evans, a 25-year-old Wendy’s worker from Virginia who struggles to support her family on $7.25 an hour, will give remarks Saturday at the march in Washington, D.C.
While Wendy’s makes millions a year in profits, Evans makes roughly $400 a month, requiring her to seek public assistance. “Fast-food companies can afford to pay workers $15/hour—but they choose not to because they know taxpayers will pick up the tab,” she is expected to say. “That’s why I’ve been a leader in the Fight for $15—the movement for $15/hour and union—in Richmond. For the past two years, I’ve walked off the job and marched in the street to make sure that everyone from President Trump to wealthy corporations hear our demand for change.”
This work by Common Dreams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
The post Nationwide #TaxMarch Rallies Planned To Demand Trump ‘Stops Hiding’ appeared first on MintPress News.