Washington, DC – Activists from Health Care for America Now (HCAN), the nationwide coalition that led the successful fight for health reform, joined 1,500 people Sunday in Rancho Mirage, California, to protest a secret meeting of right-wing billionaires and millionaires with powerful public officials, such as House Republican Leader Eric Cantor. These wealthy activists are using the GOP to advance their corporate agenda, including the repeal of the new health care law, and are raising money to destroy the middle class. The demonstrators, representing dozens of advocacy groups, dramatically highlighted the links between the extremist billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch and the pro-Republican front groups they fund. Last year the brothers and their allies raised $30 million at a single meeting of their group, and they planned to do more of the same this weekend.

“The American Dream is being stolen by big corporations and billionaires like the Koch brothers, who use their wealth to drown out the voices of ordinary Americans and hijack our political system,” said HCAN Executive Director Ethan Rome. “The Kochs and their corporate allies are spending unprecedented sums of money to elect Republicans, including Tea Party extremists, who promote outrageous corporate profits at the expense of families, seniors and small businesses. Their agenda is to deregulate insurance companies, polluters, banks and mortgage companies so they can run roughshod over the middle class.”

Twenty-five peaceful protesters were arrested by baton-carrying police in riot gear. The protesters were led away in handcuffs after blocking the entrance to the Rancho Las Palmas golf resort and spa. No demonstration of this scale has ever been carried out in the Palm Springs area before, local officials said. Protesters, deputized as members of the “People's Center for Disease Control,” occupied the intersection in front of the Rancho Las Palmas to voice opposition to the Kochs’ funding of climate change-denial groups, far-right political candidates and efforts to repeal and defund the new health care law. The arrestees were members of a quarantine squad wearing protective suits for handling hazardous materials, holding banners and laying out yellow police tape marked, “Quarantine the Kochs.”

HCAN joined AFSCME, California Nurses Association, Common Cause, Courage Campaign, Greenpeace, the Other 98%, the Ruckus Society and many other groups to highlight the massive financialsupport provided by the Kochs and their wealthy allies to front groups likeAmericans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks. Those groups orchestrated unruly Tea Party outbursts against health reform at congressional town-hall meetings in August 2009 and are among the many corporate front groups that worked to elect pro-repeal Republican candidates to the U.S. Congress. The Kochs have also been providing significant funding to right-wing think tanks that generate an endless stream of corporate propaganda to bolster public policies that inflict harm on working families and the U.S. economy.

Past secret meetings of the Koch Brothers’ billionaire friends included secret sessions with Fox News pundits, Republican members of Congress and conservative Supreme Court justices. Several hundred extremist elites were invited to this weekend’s event, including many first-time attendees.

One of the visual highlights of the weekend was the flight on Friday of a Greenpeace blimp bearing the message “Koch Brothers Dirty Money” above the resort. For more photos of the protest, click here.