Thank you all for signing and sharing this petition for a monthly basic income in Maui in response to the deadly wildfires! As a result of your support and your sharing of this petition, over 5,000 people have signed it now.

In related news, the People's Fund of Maui has so far enrolled 2,200 Maui residents to begin receiving $1,200 a month for an as yet unknown amount of time that will hopefully be at least 6 months according to Oprah and The Rock who both put up $5 million each of their own money for a total of $10 million.

It's been interesting to see the backlash to Oprah, with people saying she should just pay for it all herself, and spreading misinformation about what Dolly Parton did, claiming that Dolly paid for the $1,000 a month entirely with her own money, which she didn't do. Like Oprah, Dolly put in about $6 million which became $11 million thanks to other donors.

I've also seen anger about the payments being monthly and how dare Oprah do that instead of just providing everyone with an immediate $7,200, and how by not doing that, she actively wants to hurt people in Maui and buy all their land.

I look at reactions like this, with people being actively angry at Oprah for giving people in need $1200 a month, and think it's a sign of just how extreme inequality has gotten, and how stressed out so many people are about their own finances.

As stated in this petition, we can't just rely on celebrities to rescue us. It can even just piss us off to see. I don't think any of us want to be rescued by billionaires. What we need to do, we need to do at the federal level. We need the government to step in and make sure everyone in Maui gets a basic income to help recover, and as part of that response, billionaires like Oprah could perhaps just be taxed more.

Will this petition next reach 10,000 signatures? That's up to all of us.