Brock Pierce, Independent Candidate for President Campaigns in Queens Today

By Yehudit Garmaise

   Brock Pierce, a digital currency entrepreneur, philanthropist, and Independent presidential candidate for the election on Tuesday, campaigned this morning in Queens by speaking with people and handing out meals in the borough’s Soup Kitchen.

  “The numbers [of people needing meals at Masbia] are frightening,” said Pierce, who started out by saying that he loved the abbreviation for BP24, which also happens to be his initials and the year for which he next plans to run for president. Pierce adds with a laugh that he has many chat groups on his phone that are already focused on his 2024 presidential campaign called BP24. “Masbia says that it has recently gone from serving 5,000 meals a week to 15,000.”

   “That is a really powerful data point in illustrating what is happening to the lives of New Yorkers. A lot of people showing up in their Cadillacs: these are people who have never had to seek food before in their lives. But people’s savings are running out, people’s jobs are disappearing. People need food, and winter is coming.” 

 “If you are blessed with abundance, it is a good time to make a donation to whatever [causes you to find meaningful,]” Pierce said. “This is a good time to be giving if you are blessed. This country is in need right now.”

   Pierce, who has lived in Puerto Rico with his partner and his two young daughters after he wanting to contribute to and help to repair and develop the area after Hurricane Maria hit in 2017, is running for president as an Independent candidate because he doesn’t hear either President Donald Trump or former Vice-President Joe Biden speak to the issues that are most pressing today.

   For example, technology is one area in which Pierce says that Trump and Biden are not up to speed. 

   “We need visionary leadership, especially on technology, which is changing the landscape of America’s economy at an accelerating rate,” said Pierce. “Technology is changing everything.”

   One way in which Pierce says that technology is changing everything are the imminence of artificial intelligence, robotics, automation taking over the workplace.

  For instance, “There are a half million truckdrivers in the country, but driverless trucks are on the roads already,” Pierce said. “Tens of millions of other jobs are going to be replaced by technology, as well, over the course of this decade.

  Pierce, who is the chairman of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency created in 2009, created in 2014, the U.S. digital dollar, which he said, “now does $10 trillion a year in transactional volume,” and it is “the most transacted digital currency in the world” because it is an instantaneous, efficient, and less expensive way to send money.

  As technological advances increasing replace middle and working class jobs, Pierce foresees an artistic Renaissance.

   “If a lot of service jobs disappear, people are going to say, what am I going to do?” Pierce theorizes. “They are going to say, ‘I am going to make art, make music, I am going to do things creative because technology is replacing jobs that people don’t want.’”

  Pierce also advocates for the legalization of hemp and cannabis, the illegality of which he calls, “outlawing nature, which I find a little odd.” 

  “So, we need to relegalize nature, or cannabis and pardon everyone in our criminal justice system for non-violent cannabis related crimes, expunging those records at the state level.”

    Pierce also says that he supports a single-payer health plan, police reform, a universal earned income, and that he is a lover, supporter, and frequent visitor of Israel.

    When asked for any of his specific feeling about the Jewish state, Pierce responded, “I am all about love and unity, so just happy to be there and happy to do whatever I can to show up.”

   Before finishing his day in Queens by stopping, for the third time in the last few months, to pray at Ohel of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, where Pierce, a non-denominational Christian, says he “just gets a spiritual call,” via “a heart connection,” “to go.” 

    Pierce says he can summarize in one word why he is running for president.

  “That word is love: Love for this country and love for the American people,” said Pierce, who added that he grew up in St. Louis, Minn, from where he still has a lot of Jewish friends and colleagues.          “We have to find a path back to unity,” Pierce said.