The Problem with Oligarchy: Global Voices Expose Bill Gates and the Billionaire Power Grab
From Classrooms to Clinics to Croplands, Bill Gates is Leading a Global Assault on the Common Good
Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to speak on a powerful international panel titled “Gates’s Global Power Grab: Building a Movement Against Oligarchy”—organized and moderated by investigative journalist Tim Schwab, whose groundbreaking book, “The Bill Gates Problem,” pulls back the curtain on one of the most powerful and least-scrutinized political actors in the world.
I was honored to join these experts in global health, food systems, and philanthro-capitalism to talk about organizing agains Oligarchy:
Gabriel Manyangadze on African Food Sovereignty - The Southern African Faith
Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI)
Nicolleta Dentico on Public Health - Society for International Development
Anuradha Mittal on Climate - The Oakland Institute
I brought a public education perspective to the conversation and drew on research I did for my book, “Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education.” And I didn’t mince words: Bill Gates has been one of the most destructive forces in public education in modern history.
For over two decades, Gates has used his obscene wealth to impose sweeping reforms on U.S. schools—none of which he was ever elected or qualified to design. Through the Gates Foundation, he’s been a driving force behind the explosion of high-stakes standardized testing, the expansion of charter schools, and the toxic myth of “data-driven” education that narrows learning to what can be quantified and monetized.
From No Child Left Behind to Common Core to Race to the Top, Gates’s fingerprints are everywhere—and so are the consequences:
Students reduced to test scores.
Teachers stripped of autonomy.
Public schools closed and replaced with private experiments.
In the last few years the people I call “uncritical race theorists” have led an all out attack on antiracist education and Black history and Diane Ravitch, one of the most respected voices in education, put it bluntly: “Where was Bill Gates?” She noted that Gates—usually eager to broadcast his views on education—had nothing to say when teachers were fired or banned from teaching honest Black history. Gates has poured untold millions into privatizing schools and pushing high-stakes testing, claiming that “education may be the hardest civil rights fight of all.” But when the real civil rights fight came—when educators were targeted by truthcrime laws and racist censorship—he disappeared. His silence speaks volumes about the priorities of billionaire philanthropy.
As Schwab powerfully put it during the panel:
“No other political actor in the last 25 years has done more to normalize, institutionalize, and legitimize billionaire power in the body politic than Bill Gates. And the way he has done this is… through philanthropy.”
This is the lie of billionaire giving: that it's generous, benevolent, and above politics. In truth, it's a form of private governance—the rich buying a seat at the decision-making table that the rest of us never got invited to. Gates calls it philanthropy. I call it oligarchy.
The panel also elevated international perspectives on Gates’s harmful influence in other sectors—from agriculture and global health to food sovereignty and patent monopolies. You can watch the full webinar here and read more about the issues discussed in this resource list.
This work matters. Because when billionaires distort public goods like education into tools for profit, we all lose.
And if you haven’t yet read The Bill Gates Problem, I highly recommend it—it’s a vital tool for understanding how power really works. Here’s the video for the book launch event.
Let’s keep lifting the veil and building the struggle.