In the wake of the George Floyd uprisings across the country, Seth Anderson-Oberman saw the need to bring workers, particularly black workers, into the fight against racism. By founding and organizing with the Philadelphia Labor for Black Lives Coalition, which takes a worker-centered approach to eradicating racism, Anderson-Oberman distinguishes himself from a more liberal approach that embraces individual access to power and symbolic gestures of representation.

The coalition now includes sixteen unions, Anderson-Oberman told me, and “is fighting for the needs of black workers, not only by calling for an end to police violence, but also by supporting black families facing evictions, for example.”

Anderson-Oberman is campaigning on that ethos to represent his hometown in Northwest Philadelphia on City Council. Born and raised in Germantown, one of several neighborhoods in Philly’s Eighth Council District, he has spent the past two decades in the labor movement as a staff organizer with several different unions, including the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Philadelphia Labor Council, AFL-CIO.