Happy Cinco de Mayo! The holiday originally celebrated a surprising military victory in the Battle of Puebla, Mexico, on May 5, 1862. A poorly equipped, smaller Mexican army defeated Napoleon III’s 6,000-man army attempting to establish a French presence in Mexico.
The next year, Mexican Americans in California commemorated the date as a holiday and a “political and cultural moment tied to resistance and democracy.” A very fitting prompt to resisting ICE, immoral wars, and government of, by, and for billionaires, which is in full swing today.
In our time, the holiday features parades, speakers, and music celebrating Mexican communities and culture—as well as resistance and democracy.* And Mexicans who came to the US, raised families here, and contributed to the culture as a whole. But many are being torn apart by fear and violence from the MAGA government. I know an entire family clan that has returned to Mexico because a few among them do not have the full complement of papers demanded by ICE.
One thing they do have in Mexico that they lacked in the United States is universal health care. Yes, Mexico—but not the United States—has universal health care today.
Our current government prefers spending $1 billion per day on immoral and not-for-any-purpose-we-know-of war to providing health care for its citizens (3 million of whom lost health care in the past year, and 8.3 million are set to lose Medicaid this year).**
In a recent study of 130 countries in the world, 36% approve of China’s leadership vs. 31% of US leadership. Globally, 48% disapprove of American leadership, while 37% disapprove of Chinese leadership.
In Saturday’s DM honoring May Day and International Workers Day, Gianluigi (GG) gave many reasons for the stress workers are under these days. Another reason why workers are under so much stress is recounted in a recent article titled: “CEO pay soared in 2025, 20 times faster than workers’ pay.”***
We learn that from 2019 to today, real wages have fallen 12% while the wealth of the über-rich has exploded. From 2019 to 2025, CEO pay increased 20 times faster than worker pay around the world. A worker’s pay decrease of 12% is the equivalent of 108 days of free work. CEO pay increased by 54% during this same time period.
In the year 2025, billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends. This means that every two hours, the average billionaire receives more in dividends than the average worker earns in an entire year.
In the last 12 months, billionaires’ worth has gained $4 trillion. US inequality increased even more than the global average. CEO pay increased by 25% from 2024 to 2025, while workers’ pay increased 1.3%.
Luc Triangle, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, commented: This analysis exposes the billionaire coup against democracy and its costs for working people. Companies promise us a virtuous cycle, but what we see is a vicious cycle led by mega corporations [that] undermine collective bargaining and social dialogue.
They also buy politicians, Supreme Court judges, and the media. Of the latter, Robert Reich points out that “the richest man on Earth owns X; the family of the second-richest man owns Paramount,” CBS, Warner Bros, CNN. The third-richest owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp; the fourth owns the Washington Post, Amazon, and MGM Studios. Another billionaire owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.****
No wonder anger, mistrust, and threats of violence are on the rise. And algorithms that feed them and that are promulgated by social and mainline media, increasingly owned by a few right-wing billionaires.
*Jordan Smith, “How Cinco de Mayo Became a Holiday,” History.com.
** Emma Bascom, “Millions of Medicaid beneficiaries may lose coverage if work requirements expanded,” Healio.com, April 10, 2026.
***Michael Sainato, “CEO pay soared in 2025, 20 times faster than workers’ pay,” The Guardian, May 1, 2026.
****Robert Reich, “Ultra-rich media owners are tightening their grip on democracy. It’s time to wrest our power back,” The Guardian, November 13, 2025
Banner Image: “Together, We Build This Country.” Protestors speak out for immigrants on May Day 2026 at the National Mall, Washington DC. Photo by Elvert Barnes on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you sense a “billionaire coup against democracy paid for by working people?” Do these statistics about billionaire and CEO pay vs. workers’ pay tell you something about the unrest and fear and anger in today’s political zeitgeist? Does it also shed light on where a quest for justice and democracy and the common good can go?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ
Sins of the Spirit, Blessing of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision For a New Generation
4 thoughts on “Cinco de Mayo, May Day, & Explosion of Economic Inequality ”
Maybe, if we get fed up enough, we will stop using X, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Amazon; we will stop watching CBS, CNN, Fox News, and Paramount and Warner Bros movies, and we won’t read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Post. We can wean ourselves off these things if we choose and find alternatives. And we can also vote and make laws and demonstrate in massive numbers. Tides and corners can be turned.
“Small is beautiful
The higher the tree, the harder the fall
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God
The kingdom of God is within you.”
I resist injustice and exploitation,
and I have picked my side.
Yes! Yes! Hopefully all light workers and humanitarian justice seekers will prevail these upcoming elections in November and the national election in 2028 to help save our humanitarian democracy. May God’s Spirit of Love~Light~Life: Truth, Peace, Justice, Healing, Strength, Transformation, Freedom, Creativity, Beauty, Joy, Compassion, Loving Diverse Oneness… continue growing within and among Us (all physical/nonphysical spiritual beings and dimensions) in Our human evolution with Sacred Mother Earth/Cosmos and manifesting God’s Queendom~Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven….
When (and if) this political and spiritual nightmare is over, leaders–scratch that elected “followers”–we will need to break up these monopolies and return to the concepts that as high school students we learned about: anti-trust laws and other laws that kept power diversified. We also need to overturn Citizen United, the un-supreme court ruling that helped to create the mess we find ourselves in. “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
One way I look at the oligarchs is this. Even for their own souls, people like Bezos, Musk, and Trump need to repent (turn around). If they don’t begin to understand the evil they are doing in this time and place, they will need to do it in some later incarnation. I don’t know about the truth of reincarnation and I don’t know what an afterlife looks like, but I do know this: all people will see the consequences of their acts. Better to repent now than in some later life, whatever that may look like. When we yearn to see these people repent, it’s not just for us. It is even more so for them.