‘This isn’t about any one administration’: protests kick off in DC to reimagine the next 250 years in the US

Next250’s Declaration of Interdependence, a new art gallery that features Americans’ collective values and hopes for the future, will open in McPherson Square

Thousands are expected to gather a block away from the White House today to unveil their vision for America’s future.

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.

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.

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.