More than a thousand people gathered on a block away from the White House on Saturday to unveil their vision for the US’s future, organizers said, with thousands more attending other events around the country.
At the Next250 All of US rally, held a week before the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding, organizers will launch their Declaration of Interdependence, an art installation featuring the collective values they believe should define the next 250 years of America’s story. The pledge – a take on the declaration of independence, the country’s founding text – aims to build a country where everyone can earn a living wage, have access to green spaces and feel safe in their communities, activists said.
“This event isn’t about any one administration or president,” said Linda Sarsour, an organizer with the Next250, one of the grassroots groups that organized the event. “This is about staking our place in the historic archive. So when people look back at the 250th commemoration and ask ‘Where were the movements?’ they will see this commitment from all of us.”
To create the Declaration of Interdependence, activists held listening sessions in 36 states, Puerto Rico and even El Salvador, where they collected ideas from people recently deported from the US.
What came back, Sarsour said, is that most Americans, from workers in Iowa to undocumented residents in Detroit to Black Americans in Mississippi, agree on a set of basic universal values: economic security, healthcare, safe schools and a livable planet. “Neighbor to neighbor, we’re actually not as polarized as people want us to believe,” she said.
At McPherson Square on Saturday attenders participated in a variety of activities meant to foster community. At one end of the square, the DC non-profit organization Distant Relatives distributed food and clothing and offered medical services to hundreds of people experiencing homelessness. Nearby, others signed their names at the bottom of the large Declaration of Interdependence to signal their support for a more culturally inclusive country that guarantees rights such as healthcare and safety.
On the large outdoor stage, rallygoers watched an Indigenous opening ceremony, featuring drumming and dance by members of the Piscataway Nation, listened to keynote speeches by activists, sang along as the Morgan State University choir performed, and cheered for spoken-word artists and musicians.
Attenders traveled from across the country. “We want to show our children that this is what community is,” said Saileni Urena, the director of education and employment at Guns Down, Life Up, a community organization based in the Bronx that seeks to end gun violence. Urena traveled with a group of 20 students to attend the event. “This is a very vulnerable time for our kids who are at risk, and we’re here to join with others in the nation’s capital to find solutions to ending violence everywhere.”
Organizers used the event as a moment to convene with people across various movements. “We are the representation of what this country is, and we are what has made America great, said Suehaila Amen, a longtime organizer who traveled from Dearborn, Michigan. “I’m supporting my brothers and sisters as we stand to ensure that our rights are preserved and protected.”
Communities are being marginalized and isolated as people live in fear of immigration enforcement, Amen said, adding: “The US is bringing ruin and destruction to our ancestral homelands, too, from Lebanon to Palestine and Iran. We have to stand together against this, and we can’t build if we aren’t united.”
Aside from the DC flagship event, more than 100 Next250 events will take place across the country, from rallies to teach-ins, according to organizers. In Los Angeles, an event titled Learn the History They Want You to Forget will include a walking tour recognizing sites significant to Black, Latino, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ communities.
The event comes as the Trump administration kicked off its Fourth of July celebration, Freedom 250, on Thursday, with a Trump campaign-style rally and a 16-day “American state fair”. Next250 organizers see Donald Trump’s celebration as a partisan spectacle rather than a genuine reckoning with the country’s history, arriving at a moment when they say the most basic constitutional protections are under attack.
Freedom 250 amounts to an “effort to write Black and Indigenous history out of the national story”, a charge that lands with particular force a week after Juneteenth and against the backdrop of the recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act, said Hunter Dunn, a spokesperson for the grassroots organization 50501, a partner organizer for Saturday’s event. The counter-message of Next250, Sarsour said, is that the last 250 years belong to ordinary people as much as to any president, and that the country’s promises of free speech and the right to organize are worth defending precisely because they have often gone unmet.
“We’re the first generation in American history that has to tell a younger generation they have less rights than us,” Sarsour said, pointing particularly to the loss of reproductive and voting rights in recent years.
At Saturday’s event in DC, the Virginia-based Vietnam veteran Doyle Cook said the nation’s 250th anniversary is an opportunity to reckon with American imperialism.
“After I got out, I was not happy at all with what I did. I was used as a tool, the same way today’s military is being used in Iran,” said Cook, who was deployed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1969. “We’re making the same mistakes, and our leaders have not learned anything from history. It’s a very happy occasion that we survived the first 250 years, but we need to continue to raise our voices for justice, equality and democracy.”
Others emphasized the significance of nonviolent protest. “I believe that grassroots mobilization is an important way to bring change. We don’t always win and succeed quickly, but we can’t put all of our energy into elections and lobbying,” said Michael Beer, a DC-area resident. “We also have to get people educated, motivated, disrupting and drawing attention to important issues. With 250, we have to also talk about how nonviolent resistance movements here in this country have changed the world.”
International attenders watched the rally with cautious optimism. “We’ve always looked up to the US in terms of what we want to be as a society, said Bianna Peracchi, a Brazilian citizen living in Spain. “But our authoritarian leaders are looking at Trump for inspiration. So let’s hope upcoming elections across Latin America, and the US, show us that democracy still matters.”
Saturday is one entry in a crowded summer calendar for activists: Seven Days in DC, a week of activists lobbying Congress, registering voters and holding public demonstrations; World Cup efforts such as Our Copa, which aims to protect fans from ICE raids; and a boycott of United Airlines called Fascism Doesn’t Fly, set to begin in early July over the airline’s support for the US president’s Freedom 250 initiative. In mid-July, the Good Trouble Lives On action, in honor of the late congressman John Lewis, will draw attention to voting rights. Organizers expect the next nationwide No Kings rally to take place in late summer or early fall, Dunn said.