By Kimberly Fountain
The #HandsOff demonstrations on April 5 included many different people, organizations, and causes, all united in an effort to stop the Trump administration’s destruction of the federal government and American democracy.
Americans for Financial Reform was among the groups that supported the effort, with a particular focus on one subject: “Hands Off Our CFPB.”
#HandsOff PA
Elon Musk and Trump’s other appointees have “all but shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is the only agency in U.S. history dedicated to protecting us from harm in daily financial transactions, big and small,” raged Beverly Brown Ruggia of New Jersey Citizen Action, while speaking at the #HandsOff event in Morristown, New Jersey.
Beverly Brown Ruggia of New Jersey Citizen Action
Among the sea of emphatic, witty, and downright hilarious signs at the protests were one from Rev. Susan Schmalzbauer in Springfield, Missouri, highlighting the CFPB’s work on student lending. From Spokane, Washington: “Hands Off Consumer Protections – #SaveTheCFPB.” And from Durham, North Carolina, a simple: “#HandsOffCFPB.”
Rev. Susan Schmalzbauer in Springfield, Missouri
Protesters held over 1,400 “Hands Off!” demonstrations at state capitols, congressional offices, Social Security’s Maryland headquarters, city halls nationwide, and at the foot of the Washington Monument, in Washington, DC. Rough estimates of nationwide attendance at the events, which took place in every single state and territory, surpassed 3 million people.
Protesters held over 1,400 “Hands Off!” demonstrations
Check out a great highlight reel here.
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The malign work of Elon Musk and other Trump appointees was not lost on speakers who, rightly, put the destruction of the CFPB in the context of the overall hollowing out of the federal government’s ability to help everyday people.
“They’ve taken a chainsaw to the very federal agencies meant to protect working class people like the CFPB,” said Chrissy Lynch, head of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said at a rally in Boston. “People who want to take out a mortgage or a student loan for their kids are going to have an easier time being ripped off by fraudsters like Elon Musk.”
The CFPB, created by Congress in 2010 after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, has mass appeal to go with last weekend’s mass mobilization. The idea of a single federal agency, devoted to protecting consumers in the financial services marketplace, enjoys broad, bipartisan support among voters. The agency has obtained over $21 billion in relief for tens of millions of people in the form of restitution and cancelled debts and tens of billions more by implementing commonsense safeguards to prevent rip-offs before they can occur.
The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents CFPB employees, turned out people around the country. With messages about the importance of transparency and accountability, the CFPB staff had its own slogan: “Protect Consumers, Not Billionaires.”
The Trump administration, with Elon Musk’s wrecking crew in the vanguard, has sought to destroy the CFPB through a series of often-lawless actions: firing the staff wholesale, dropping enforcement actions against fraudsters, and slowing or ceasing vital activities that Congress entrusted to the agency.
Through an aggressive legal strategy – which succeeded only hours before Acting Director Russell Vought would have fired much of the staff, the CFPB union managed to halt the destruction. The legal future of the CFPB now remains in litigation.
But the long-term prospects for the CFPB to survive and thrive as an effective ally of people stands or falls on its support among voters and among people willing to raise their voices. And on Saturday, those people were out in force.
Or, as Rep. Jamie Raskin said at the 100,000-strong rally organized by Indivisible at the base of the Washington Monument: “Together we told the autocrats and kleptocrats: Hands OFF federal workers, American women, HHS, NOAA, FDA, NIH, CFPB, Medicaid, Social Security, the people’s health care, American science, our data, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, our voting rights, our relations with democratic nations, and our economy, which they are crashing to the ground.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin
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