More than 70 anti-ICE rallies organized under a National Day of Action are set to take place across the country on July 18, demanding justice for Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, who were fatally shot by ICE agents in the same week this month. The killing of Durán Guerrero marked the 11th fatal shooting by federal immigration officials since the start of Trump’s second term, according to organizers.
The rallies, which include demonstrations and vigils, are sponsored by a coalition of national progressive organizations including the Answer Coalition and 50501. “A lot of groups are signing on because we agree that ICE is terrorizing our communities, that we need to stop ICE terror, and to abolish ICE,” said Hunter Dunn, the national press coordinator for 50501.
Organizers are demanding not only justice for victims of ICE shootings but also the arrests of responsible officers, said Paul Ramirez, a co-founder of the immigrant rights group Valley Defense, which is holding an “ICE Out” rally and vigil in North Hollywood, California. “People are tired of seeing this every single day,” he said, “but we’re going to continue fighting regardless.”
Separately, a coalition of voting rights groups has planned nearly 700 events across three days as part of the “Good Trouble Lives On” national weekend of action, honoring the late congressman and voting rights advocate John Lewis. The events are organized around the concept of “Teach! Reach! Preach!” — teach-ins, voter registration drives, community block parties and sermons focused on civic engagement and voting rights education.
“We see ourselves as building the movement that these times require,” said Barbara Arnwine, president and founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, one of the groups spearheading the campaign. “Instead of people just showing up to a rally, to an event, we want them to become voting rights activists.”
Daryl Jones, a lawyer with the Transformative Justice Coalition, said he expects the recent voter suppression efforts to boost turnout, which could reach at least 100,000 people. But a more important metric, he said, was not attendance but reach: organizers are hoping to engage a quarter of a million people through their voter education and registration efforts. “At this moment, there’s clearly an attack on the Black vote, brown vote, the Native American vote,” Jones said. “One thing we preach is that fear is contagious, but courage too is contagious.”
The campaign comes at what organizers describe as a “cataclysmic moment” for voting rights — a Supreme Court ruling that gutted the Voting Rights Act has prompted a spate of southern states to redraw congressional maps to dilute the power of Black and brown voters, according to the coalition. At the same time, the Save America Act, which Donald Trump has been pressuring House Republicans to pass, would ban mail-in ballots and impose new identification requirements on voters.
Opposition to data centers has drawn support across party lines, galvanizing people on both sides of the political aisle. In the first three months of the year, grassroots groups delayed or canceled at least 75 data center projects worth more than $130 billion, according to a Data Center Watch report.
Humans First, a conservative advocacy group, is organizing a nationwide protest against what it describes as the unchecked expansion of data centers on Saturday, with more than 100 events planned in 40 states. The demonstrations aim to “give grassroots Americans, particularly grassroots conservatives, a voice in the critical debate over policies relating to the building of massive AI data centers,” the group said in a press release.
“There is no issue that ignites anger among the conservative base more than the issue of big AI data centers,” Amy Kremer, chair of Humans First, said in a statement. “These data centers, which are often the beneficiaries of the very corporate welfare Republicans claim to oppose, are being forced on communities who do not want them.”