What to Know About Nationwide 'Hands Off' Protests on April 5

Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them. They're taking everything they can get their hands on, and daring the world to stop them,

the website says

This mass mobilization day is our message to the world that we do not consent to the destruction of our government and our economy for the benefit of Trump and his billionaire allies,

they said

Across the country, grassroots activists, workers, community leaders and everyday people are coming together to say that it's time for billionaires and extreme lawmakers to take their hands off our health care, our wages, our safety and our rights,

the spokesperson said

The whole theory is [that] if I have to get involved then I need to develop a lot of social capital very quickly, and it turned out that there's just tens of thousands of people who are kind of feeling that feeling—and I actually would suspect that this number actually goes into the millions,

Bryan said

One thing that's very different with us though is we are very committed to being nonpartisan, and we do have members that span across the political spectrum because we're firm believers that the fight for democracy is not a left versus right issue,

Winter said

Given the cascade of outrageous things that have been happening, and the attacks on students or seniors or the environment, whatever—people just have a lot of pent-up anger and want to get out there and express it,

Fulkerson told Newsweek

For me, [I'm concerned about] the existential crisis that the country is facing,

Bemis told Newsweek

Robert Waldamerican physicist

I've always felt as a parent it's been my responsibility,

Wald, 62, told Newsweek

The DNC [Democratic National Committee] is an amalgamation of decent people, corporate shills and cowards,

he said

Democracy is under attack in this country and there essentially is a coup taking place where you have a billionaire president and one of his billionaire friends cutting the government, the executive branch so that the executive branch will no longer actually function as such—just generally creating chaos and anxiety and fear,

he said

Fascism is a spiritual movement with the declared aim of separating from reality and constructing an alternative reality through propaganda that over time becomes the new reality,

he said

Whether they get away with any particular effort doesn't matter as much as the message that they are sending so loud and so clear, which is sowing fear, sowing the feeling of powerlessness,

said Deirdre Schifeling, chief political and advocacy officer at the American Civil Liberties Union, at the virtual gathering

This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history,

the movement's website said