This op-ed is based on remarks delivered at the April 5, 2025, “Hands Off” demonstration in Philadelphia by Seth Anderson-Oberman, executive director of Reclaim Philadelphia.
Good afternoon, Philly!
My name is Seth Anderson-Oberman, and I am proud to be the first Black Executive Director of Reclaim Philadelphia.
I am proud to be a father to two incredible Black children and a husband to an amazing Black woman who challenges and supports me every step of our journey together. I am here today to fight for my children. To fight for their future.
For their right to belong, to thrive, to grow old with dignity, in a city and a country that sees them and values the beautiful contributions that they will make to our shared humanity.
That future stands in grave peril as we gather today. For today, we gather with one message that must echo from every corner of this nation: Hands. Off. Our. People.
Hands off our schools. Hands off our housing. Hands off our public transit, our libraries, our clinics, our dignity. Hands off our lawyers and those who are standing up for our rights!!
Hands off our city! Hands off our communities! Hands off our history, and hands off of our futures!
Because make no mistake—what we are facing now is a full-on assault from the billionaire class, led by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and a growing fascist movement that wants to turn this country into a playground for the rich and a work camp for the rest of us.
They’re slashing Medicaid and SNAP, funding for housing and education. They’re attacking science and destroying our planet. Laying off federal workers by the tens of thousands. They’re coming for all of us!
Elon Musk is no harmless tech bro. He’s a billionaire extremist born from the emerald mines of apartheid South Africa, working hand-in-hand with Trump and the far right. He’s gutting public infrastructure, taking control of government data, commanding mass communication platforms to spew hatred and division, spread disinformation, and establish a mass communications infrastructure for fascist white supremacy. He’s not here to innovate—he’s here to dismantle. To turn public goods into private monopolies. To treat democracy like a failed start-up and sell it to the highest bidder.
They are buying every lever of government power and using it to orchestrate a massive transfer of wealth upwards and destroy the rest of us, with no way to fight back.
This isn’t about budgets. This is about control.
This is about building a future where billionaires rule exclusively, where the people are silenced and where democracy dies.
But let’s be real—this didn’t start with Trump. And it didn’t happen overnight. And if we’re going to figure out a solution, if we’re going to get out of this mess, we need to accurately diagnose the problem so that we can take the proper corrective action. Right? Where my scientists at?
This “moment” is the result of 45 years of bipartisan betrayal. Reagan may have been elected in 1980, but since then, both parties have been operating under the same framework of trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the ultra-rich paid for by privatization and cuts to education, and social programs, corporate welfare and deregulation, endless war and militarism.
While Reagan declared open season on union workers, it was Bill Clinton who championed NAFTA and shipped out good union jobs, leaving rust, blight, and human suffering in its wake. And when Reagan pushed the racist war on drugs, it was the Dems who passed the Crime Bill and expanded mass incarceration.
Democrats voted for the Patriot Act. For endless war. They bailed out Wall Street in 2008 while Black and brown homeowners lost everything. They’ve stood by genocide in Gaza, and here at home, they’ve handed city after city to developers, cops, and corporations.
Fascism isn’t something that happens all at once. It happens little by little, with every accommodation to racism and corporate power, every little attack on our rights that gets bargained away in a budget bill, every act of privatization, every expansion of militarism and unchecked police authority.
Democrats haven’t fought the emergence of fascism, they’ve enabled it. They’ve cleared the path.
Right here in Philly, Democratic leaders pushed a $900 million stadium deal for billionaires—against the overwhelming will of city residents. And now, our mayor, Cherelle Parker, is pushing to eliminate the Business Income and Receipts Tax, or BIRT. That would hand $2 billion to mega-corporations over the next decade—money that should be funding schools, SEPTA, housing, mental health care, and libraries.
Instead, they want to give it away to those who already have too much while raising taxes on local business owners in our neighborhoods—barber shops, day care centers, nail salons, restaurants—the lifeblood of our communities, and at the very moment when our federal funding is being eviscerated to pay for more tax cuts for billionaires!
That’s not a budget plan; it’s a blueprint for abandonment, for more gentrification and community displacement. It’s a guarantee of austerity budgets for years to come. We should be raising local taxes on big corporations to make them pay their fair share and close the federal gap, not piling on.
And now, Trump and his fascist movement are launching a full-scale attack on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion—DEI programs, affirmative action, and every hard-fought gain won by the civil rights movements. They want to erase our stories, erase our progress, erase the people who’ve led every push for a more just America.
These attacks are not random—they are strategic, thought out, and part of a larger project of white supremacy. It’s a project that seeks to rewrite history, rehabilitate slavers, and erase the truth: That Black people have been at the center of every movement to expand democracy in this country.
The right wing knows exactly what it’s doing. They understand that while white women have statistically benefited the most from affirmative action, it’s anti-Black racism they use to destroy it. They know anti-Blackness is the most effective wedge in a country that was born from the genocide of native peoples and the anti-Blackness of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and legal discrimination. Anti-Blackness always sells.
If they can use it to undermine the rights of Black folk, they can take everything from everyone else—women, Latinos, Asians, immigrants, queer folks, veterans, those with disabilities—everyone who’s fought to be part of this country’s promise.
This is a calculated, strategic assault—and it’s working. They’re dismantling DEI offices. Banning Black history. Silencing student groups. Firing educators who dare to speak the truth.
They want to scare us back into silence and obedience. But we have three words for them, “Not Today, Satan!”
That means if we are serious about building a multiracial, inclusive democracy, we must center the fight against anti-Blackness in our efforts to build real unity. It’s not a side issue—it’s the issue. They divide us in order to conquer us. They weaponize race. They weaponize gender. They weaponize immigration, class, sexuality, and party politics—because they know if we’re fighting each other, we’re not fighting them.
But we’re not falling for it anymore. Today that ends! We see each other. We stand with each other. We know that our liberation is bound together—and that when we fight side by side, we win.
And when a party that’s supposed to represent the people refuses to center that fight—when it compromises with white supremacy, when it serves Wall Street profits, tech billionaires, oil oligarchs, and horded wealth over people, that’s how it loses its soul.
When Democrats prioritize donors over voters, they don’t stop fascism—they fuel it. They tell us to be patient. They tell us to be pragmatic. But what have we won?
We’ve won more homelessness. We’ve won lead in our schools and buses that don’t run. We’ve won heat waves and floods while billionaires plan for Mars. We’ve won a city where developers get tax breaks and kids get asthma.
That’s not progress. That’s failure, and it’s killing us. And right now, we need to name a hard truth: We need to diagnose the problem in order to find a real solution.
The Democratic Party has lost its soul and lost its way.
It has spent decades chasing corporate donors, echoing Reagan, and abandoning working people in cities and rural areas. It silences progressives. It punches left. It tries to manage inequality with more police instead of ending it. And in doing so, it has paved the way for Trumpism and the extreme right.
But we’re not giving up. We are not going back. We are done begging for crumbs. We are done pretending liberal capitalism is going to save us when it’s literally killing us, when it keeps producing crisis after crisis.
We need a new way forward—one that centers the people who actually make this country run: The farm workers. The grocery clerks. The sanitation workers. The nurses and Homecare workers. The laborers. The cooks and dishwashers. The child care providers. The bus drivers. The janitors. The teachers. The scientists. The poets and dreamers. The unemployed, underemployed, and overexploited.
Those who’s labor creates the wealth of this country, but who own not a damn piece of it! That is who we fight for. That is who should lead. That is the movement we are building—not just to resist, but to win.
So, to the Democratic Party: We invite you to this fight, we need you in this fight! But if you cannot help us deliver that future, we will build your replacement.
With joy. With clarity. And with the unstoppable power of people who know our own value and who believe in our ability to win justice for ALL of God’s children. We are not waiting, and we’re not asking permission!
Because when we say Hands Off—we’re not just saying “no.” We’re saying yes to something better.
Yes to our humanity.
Yes to our solidarity.
Yes to our dignity.
Yes to Peace.
Yes to our planet.
Yes to a future where power flows from the people—not the billionaires.
So, let’s organize. Let’s fight. Let’s build. And let it be known—we’re not going anywhere. We are just getting started. It’s time to stop imagining the apocalypse and start imagining the revolution!
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
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