Class Ruins Everything Around Me

The New Vanguard of the Working Class Is Here and We’re Coming for the Billionaires

Thirty years ago, nine young Black men from the oft-trivialized borough of Staten Island bum-rushed the gates of popular culture with a track that made hip-hop history. Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) emerged as a haunting dispatch from the underbelly of the so-called American dream. Raekwon and Inspectah Deck illustrated vivid portraits of scarcity, violence, and survival; Method Man’s refrain gave it an unforgettable edge: “C.R.E.A.M./ Get the money/ Dollar, dollar bill y’all.”

But it was never just about the money, was it? It was about what it took to stay alive in a country where your worth is measured by what you have, or don’t. The lyrics were arguably more indictment than aspiration, a coded callout of capitalism’s brutal chokehold on Black and working-class life. And yet, like so much of what comes from Black culture, the system commodified it. Stripped of its soul and context, “C.R.E.A.M.” was folded into the very capitalist pursuit it critiqued and became a soundtrack to hustle culture and the myth that anyone can grind their way out of poverty if they want it badly enough.

Fast forward to 2025, and capitalism hasn’t only failed us, it’s criminalized us. And one Black-led organization is flipping the script.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s second inauguration and the increasingly fascist turn of U.S. domestic policy, Dream Defenders, a feminist, abolitionist, and socialist organization born in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s murder, is returning to Wu-Tang’s message with a radical twist. Their newest national campaign is called “Class Ruins

Everything Around Me,” a deliberate reframe of the anthem that defined a generation and left an indelible mark on pop music.

For the folks leading the charge, this isn’t nostalgia, “it’s strategy.”

Where Wu-Tang laid bare the conditions of racialized poverty, Dream Defenders is naming the monsters and cause: billionaires and the architects of racial capitalism. They’re not mincing words, either. This campaign is both a call-out of the destructive and criminal billionaire class and a call-in to the new working class that’s rising to take its place: Black, brown, queer, trans, immigrant, disabled, poor, creative, and chronically overworked. The ones with side hustles and roommates and no retirement plan or financial safety net. The ones who’ve been told they’re lazy, when in reality, they’re holding the world together.

We are living through an era of political violence masquerading as policy. The U.S. government is gutting public education, rolling back LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, outlawing DEI and critical race theory, banning books, and launching sweeping attacks on immigrant communities. It’s now illegal to be unhoused in several cities. Climate protections are being dismantled. Free speech—especially when it aligns with Palestinian solidarity or Black liberation—is being criminalized. And record unemployment is disproportionately impacting Black women and other marginalized people.

At the same time, the billionaire class continues to hoard wealth, dodge taxes, fund disinformation or propaganda, and bankroll war while we’re told the real problem is our own supposed failures and bad decision-making. The media, elite, and government officials refuse to call this what it is: political violence and a class war against everyday, working people.

Dream Defenders isn’t just sounding the alarm; they’re organizing a cultural response. As a movement that has weathered political targeting, financial strangulation, and right-wing smear campaigns, they understand the stakes of this moment deeply. That’s why Class Ruins Everything Around Me is not just a protest or a hashtag. It’s a cultural insurgency aimed at the lies that sustain billionaire power and racial capitalism.

At its core, this campaign is about building a new common sense that repeats the truth: there is no ethical way to become a billionaire. That poverty is not a personal failure. That the working class is not just white men in hard hats—but trans poets, immigrant nannies, artisans, street medics, drag performers, teachers, tattoo artists, farmers, sex workers, and mutual aid organizers. People who keep the world turning without ever being allowed to rest.

While not everyone can be on the frontlines, Dream Defenders understand that liberation isn’t only built in the streets but in kitchens, classrooms, co-ops, studios, Discord meetings, and group chats. That’s why this campaign meets people where they are, dishing political education, validating every small act of defiance, and planting seeds of collective power.

If class ruins everything around us, then the idea is to dismantle class domination to create something new. Here’s what Dream Defenders are fighting for:

To raise consciousness in Black and brown communities about the real nature of racial capitalism, and to name the specific billionaires directly impacting material conditions as the source of our suffering (from Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk to the Koch brothers).

To build political power by arming our youth with the analysis and strategy to resist fascism through uprisings, creative resistance, mutual aid, community defense, local organizing, popular education, and local elections.

To expand our base by drawing everyday people—especially those angry, disillusioned, or on the verge of burnout—into a national movement that makes sense of their lives and gives them a home and a fight club.

To position Dream Defenders as a united Black socialist front that doesn’t just react to oppression but helps to shape a new future rooted in collective care economies, freedom, safety, and a good life for all.

Today, “C.R.E.A.M.” hits different. We can say it plainly: cash rules everything around us, and therein lies the problem. What once sounded like a mantra of survival, we can reimagine as a battle cry for reparations, redistribution, and restoration. Bare- knuckle fists raised: a new world that doesn’t rely on extraction, exploitation, or billionaires is possible.