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Protests Erupt as Billionaire Jeff Bezos Takes Over Venice for Lavish Wedding Celebration

HeadlineJun 26, 2025

One of the world’s richest men faces a wave of wedding crashers as activists in the canal city of Venice seek to disrupt Jeff Bezos’s nuptials this week to protest what they called Bezos’ “takeover” of the famed city. Guests at the multimillion-dollar wedding between Bezos and former TV news anchor Lauren Sánchez include the Clintons, Oprah Winfrey, Kim Kardashian, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. On Monday, activists unfurled a giant banner on Venice’s San Marco Square reading, “If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax.” This is Simona Abbate, a campaigner with Greenpeace Italy.

Simona Abbate: “The problem is not the wedding. The problem is the system. We think that one big billionaire can’t rent a city for his pleasure. … We think that we need to tax the people that have a big, a huge number of money, and use this money to reduce the impact of climate change, to increase the healthcare system, to increase the welfare state.”

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