NAN to Be Joined by Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, and the Drum Major Institute, Alongside a Growing Coalition of Labor, Civil Rights, and Community Partners in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 2026
New York, NY – National Action Network (NAN) Founder and President Rev. Al Sharpton, together with Martin Luther King III, Arndrea Waters King, and the Drum Major Institute and other partners, announced “March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote,” to be held in Washington, D.C. on Friday, August 28, 2026, the 63rd anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
A growing coalition of national partners has already confirmed its participation, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), the National Urban League (NUL), the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), UnidosUS, the Working Families Party, Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA), Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law (Lawyer’s Committee), and Veterans Equity Project, Inc., Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., Common Cause, People Power United, United For Democracy, Vote.org, Family Equality, In the Public Square, Bet Mishpachah, Faith in Action Fund, Faith in Action National Network, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC), the Interfaith Alliance, and multiple houses of worship.
The Honorable Yvette Clarke, Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, will be joined by a delegation of Members at the march, and additional partners will be announced in the coming weeks.
Sixty-three years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and declared his dream for America, the fundamental right at the heart of that dream, the right to vote, is once again under direct assault. The 2026 March on Washington comes at a moment of profound urgency, following the United States Supreme Court’s decision to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a ruling Rev. Sharpton has called “a bullet in the heart of the voting rights movement.”
“Defending the vote means defending the foundation of our democracy,” said Martin Luther King III. “Sixty-three years after my father stood at the Lincoln Memorial, we are called to march again, not only in remembrance, but in action.”
“The March on Washington 2026 is a moral call to protect democracy for every generation,” said Arndrea Waters King. “We march to defend the vote, honor those who sacrificed for it, and ensure that every voice is protected.”
Co-chaired by Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III, and Arndrea Waters King, the March on Washington: Defend the Vote is a nonpartisan, unified mobilization that brings together labor, clergy, youth organizers, and community leaders around three shared goals: defending voting rights, securing economic dignity, and ensuring affordability for everyday people. While the defense of the vote stands at the center of this intergenerational call to action, the march unites Americans across movements to confront the systemic rollback of civil rights at this critical moment. Each organization marches under its own banner, grounded in its own convictions, toward these common goals.
Under the banner “Defend the Vote,” this year’s march will bring together civil rights leaders, faith communities, organizers, and Americans from every corner of the country to demand the protection and restoration of voting rights for all citizens. It is both a commemoration of the legacy of those who marched in 1963 and a call to action to protect the gains they fought, bled, and died to secure.
Registration for March on Washington 2026: Defend the Vote is now open. Supporters from across the country are encouraged to register today at the National Action Network website. Additional details, including program information, speakers, and participating partners, will be announced in the weeks ahead.
WHEN: Friday, August 28, 2026
WHERE: Washington, D.C. (Specific location to be announced)
National Action Network (NAN) is one of the leading civil rights organizations in the Nation with chapters throughout the entire United States. Founded in 1991 by Reverend Al Sharpton, NAN works within the spirit and tradition of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to promote a modern civil rights agenda that includes the fight for one standard of justice, decency, and equal opportunities for all people regardless of race, religion, nationality, or gender.
It is depressing to hear the call for economic and social justice mimicking the speeches of the March on Washington 62 years ago during this year’s March on Wall Street, led by Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III – as if the last four years with Joe Biden’s Justice Agenda, indeed, the last 60 years, had never happened.
Some 318,000 Black women lost their jobs in just the last eight months, coinciding with Trump’s ascendancy to a second term in office and his executive orders effectively making Diversity, Inclusion & Equity illegal – or put another way, making discrimination legal and the official government policy. It is Jim Crow not just from the offices of redneck governors and their sheriff’s offices, but from the White House, which as several noted, was built by slaves, as was most of Wall Street.
The March on Wall Street was a response to Donald Trump’s unrelenting attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and brought together a major coalition of civil rights, clergy, and labor leaders. The importance of this demonstration has only grown as the federal government threatens more takeovers of Black-led cities after the unprecedented National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C.
“We march from the African Burial Ground to the heart of the Financial District to remind Donald Trump the power of Black Americans and their dollars,” Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network and organizer of the March on Wall Street stated.
“Donald Trump’s attacks on DEI were only the prelude, as he is now dangling threats to take over American cities led by Black mayors,” said Rev. Al Sharpton, Founder and President of NAN. “If we leave him unchecked on DEI, if we do not get out and march, if we do not speak up, he will completely erase the freedoms our parents and our grandparents fought, bled, and died for.
Hundreds were expected, but thousands showed up, many driving through the night from far away places like Tennessee, Michigan and Alabama – to register their opposition with their bodies, voices and signs.
The march began at Foley Square which was across from the African burial ground, the largest known resting place of enslaved and freed Africans. Foley Square also stands next to 26 Federal Plaza, where ICE agents have rampantly arrested migrants during appearances before immigration courts. It then proceeded the mile down to the bronze bull – or more accurately, the golden calf, a symbol of the corporate greed and obsession to amass economic power, now equivalent to political power, that has CEOs kowtowing to a convicted fraudster, whose policies, from the Big Bad Bill taking away healthcare and food from those who need it most in order to accomplish the biggest transfer of wealth in history from the middle class to the wealthiest, exacerbating the biggest wealth gap since the Gilded Age, to the tariff policy which is not only pushing up prices and making goods scarce, harming once again, working families the most, it is devolving alliances around the globe, weakening the dollar, to the evisceration of due process and Rule of Law with his cruel and unconstitutional mass deportation to his sending armed military into cities which happen to be majority Black and headed by Black mayors.
“We march from the African Burial Ground to the heart of the Financial District to remind Donald Trump the power of Black Americans and their dollars,” Sharpton stated.
Trump has compared himself to a department store manager and the USA as where the world comes to shop, when the opposite is true – it is Americans who buy the products that come from around the world, Americans who pay the tariffs which are an added, regressive tax, hurting the people most who can least afford it. Trump, the most ignorant as well as corrupt person to ever hold the office of president, also does not understand that consumers drive the US economy, accounting for 70% of GDP. What is more, it is the Black and Brown people who account for $6 trillion dollars – equivalent to the eighth largest country in the world, and if you add in the other groups targeted for non-personhood and “erasure” by Trump, LGBTQ and Asians, that $8 trillion domestic product would make it third largest after the USA and China. That purchasing power could be a weapon to win back the rights stripped away by an administration determined to put power in the hands of an elite (some might say “oligarchy”).
But erasure is what Trump wants – with his revisionist history, his forcing out of people, objects and ideas from museums, universities and schools – so-called “woke” culture – to be replaced with White Christo Fascist Nationalist cultural indoctrination. Even how he has fired the CDC Director for refusing to follow RFK Jr’s insane anti-vax instructions: the Trump White House said every person in government must follow Trump’s “vision” and “policy,” rather than follow facts or their oath to follow the law and protect the Constitution.
Law enforcement has not just been politicized and weaponized – everything from disbanding the civil rights office – but so has health care, education, indeed everything that people rely on to survive, let alone thrive.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion – “DEI” (which Trump shorthands as “woke”) is intended to make up for the centuries of slavery, then discrimination and injustice from access to public education, health care, housing and voting, to equal justice before the law – instead of paying outright reparations. What is the value today of 150 years of “40 acres and a mule” promised to freed slaves after the Civil War? It was CRT (critical race theory), taught in law schools (not public schools) that showed the pattern and the result of systemic discrimination.
But the campaign against DEI – as an excuse to remove Blacks, women, Black women, cut off funding for schools, universities, research, shut down the Civil Rights office within the DoJ and end consent decrees against police brutality and voter suppression, end lawsuits protecting women’s right to emergency health care – are of a piece to transfer wealth and power to a class, instead of working for an equal opportunity to succeed. Add to this Trump’s executive order rescinding cashless bail – under threat of losing millions of federal funding.
It’s of a piece to effectively cancel everything “public” or for the “common good” – from public health and access to health care, public schools, public parks, Pell grants, school lunch, wind farms, environmental protection, clean air and water, consumer protection and product safety.
Within hours after Trump was sworn into his second term, he signed an executive order demanding an end to DEI policies within the federal government. Those have since been followed by:
Revoking Executive Order 11246. Signed by President Johnson nearly 60 years ago, this action required federal contractors to take affirmative action to prevent discrimination and ensure equal employment opportunity for protected groups such as race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
Federal DEI Staff Actions. In tandem with revoking EO 11246, Trump put all federal employees working in DEI on paid leave almost immediately. To comply with Trump’s executive orders, several agencies including the Departments of Defense, Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, as well as NASA, eliminated their DEI and civil rights initiatives and guidance.
Launching the DOJ Against DEI. Trump has used the Department of Justice to wither away at DEI, especially with the Civil Rights Division. Within just the first four months of Trump’s second term, an estimated 70% of the Division’s attorneys had either left or submitted their resignation. That came amid a flurry of memos in February from Attorney General Pam Bondi, who signaled the DOJ would bring civil rights cases against companies that implemented DEI policies.
Banning DEI in AI. In July, Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to not procure large language models with DEI embedded into their programming.
Removing Diversity in Foreign Service. In March, Trump demanded the State Department to scrub the “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility” Core Precept on tenures and promotion, as well as similar actions on Foreign Service recruitment.
Canceling $783 Million in NIH Grants. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court narrowly approved the Trump administration’s canceling of hundreds of millions in National Institutes of Health grants linked to DEI (and yet, RFK Jr. has asserted there are racial differences in “antigens” and has basically advocated a form of eugenics).
Withholding Education Funding. This spring, the Trump administration threatened to cut off federal funding to schools and colleges with DEI programs. A federal judge earlier this month halted that effort, writing that “regulation of speech cannot be done casually.”
Pressuring the Private Sector to Drop DEI. Trump has lost a pressure campaign against Corporate America to follow suit and walk away from its billions of dollars in DEI commitments. That includes a highly scrutinized agreement with the law firm Paul Weiss to water down its DEI policies, while the FCC recently approved an $8 billion between Paramount and Skydance after the entities agreed to not implement any such programs.
Pushing GOP-friendly Redistrictings. Trump has backed the highly criticized redistricting efforts to skew Congressional seats in states like Texas to favor the GOP. Megadonors including Charles Munger Jr., who have supported conservative causes, has supported the fight against a converse effort in California that would see the GOP lose its foothold in the state.
In fact, policies which “lift all boats” are what made the United States the strongest economy in the world – 25% despite being only 5% of the population – the most innovative, the superpower. Think of all the talent and brainpower lost during centuries when women and Blacks were denied entry to education, professional licenses, fair housing, health care. The work of 150 years all undone in a matter of months by a wannabe dictator whose vision is not of a country where each has an equal opportunity to fulfill their full potential, but where the rich and well connected elite to exert power over the rest.
“It’s not illegal to invest in people, and never more necessary. Diversity , equity, inclusion are not illegal,” said Deputy Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is Shaylyn Cochran.
Janet Murguía, President and CEO of UnidosUS, said, “We are marching for economic justice. Civil rights is economic justice… We can’t give in to naysayers who falsely claim changing demographics are bad – Black/Latinos are nearly 50 percent and more than half of population of those under 18. We are the future workers, customers. Spending power is the 3rd largest GDP in the world. Imagine how much more we could contribute to the US economy if we had equal opportunity. By 2030, 40% of all new mortgages will be by Blacks, Latinos and Asians. We can make choices with our spending power. Call out the tariffs, cuts to health care, education, the costly mass deportation that has hurt business and the economy.”
“We will not be erased,” declared Melanie Campbell , president/CEO, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. “We will not go back. We built this country. We are America.”
Ben Crump, prominent attorney who has sought justice for victims of police brutality, declared, “Economic justice is civil rights… Financial freedom helps make all the other freedoms more than just a dream; economic justice makes all the other justices more than a dream; equal opportunity access to capital gives us a better chance at generational wealth.”
Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights, countering the lie that DEI is responsible for hiring unqualified people into jobs, declared, “We are the qualified ones, the future of country. We know how to lead, how to create businesses. When people think they can get ahead by putting us down, when they say they are coming for DEI and accessibility, they are coming for us because we are the qualified ones, we lead, we built this country and won’t let anyone take it away.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, declared,, “We are saying to the billionaire class, to Wall Street, you need to be fairer, fight for all of us, not just yourselves – worker tax cut, health care, better jobs with better pay. We need to strengthen, not abandon public education, affordable college, affordable health care, social security. These are not radical ideas, this is what labor fought for in the 1960s.”
Newark NJ Mayor Ras J. Baraka pointed out that DEI policies aimed at leveling a playing field that had been tilted for centuries against people of color and women, was a better, more reasonable solution than demanding reparations for centuries “of slavery, decades for burning down communities and stealing housing. Every mayor should be standing up against the biggest transfer of wealth his history.” People working full time can’t afford child care, health care, decent housing.”
“Economic justice is a civil right,” stated Marc H. Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League. “In 2025, say no to tariffs that make food, household goods more expensive, for the Big Bad Bill that shifts money to billionaires from cuts to Medicaid and food stamps so we are less healthy and more hungry. Say no to smear campaigns on black women, DEI… DEI is a bridge – it’s about growth, jobs, justice. Stand up against White Nationalism. Stand for DEI.”
Everett Kelley, National President of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) who represents 820,000 employees, demanded Trump keep his “hands off our government” – the [illegal] mass firings and retaliation against employees who speak out. (My question: why aren’t people suing for defamation when they claim to fire thousands of people at a time for “poor performance” without evidence?)
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, with 1.4 million members, declared “government workers perform essential services and unions made workplaces safe, the economy fairer, democracy stronger.”
The lawsuit asserts that President Donald Trump illegally exceeded his authority in trying to unilaterally roll back a regulation that protects the rights of civil servants. Trump is trying to make it easier to fire career civil servants in order to appoint loyalists to do his bidding.
AFSCME President Lee Saunders called the Trump administration’s attacks against federal employees “a shameless attempt to politicize the federal workforce by replacing thousands of dedicated, qualified civil servants with political cronies..Our union was born in the fight for a professional, non-partisan civil service, and our communities will pay the price if these anti-union extremists are allowed to undo decades of progress by stripping these workers of their freedoms. Together, we are fighting back.”
He told the demonstrators, “62 years since March on Washington the promise of America is unfulfilled for too many. We are still fighting. If anyone can make good on that check it’s the billionaires on Wall Street,” he said, but Wall Street is compliant in the Trump administration’s ruthless in attack on workers. “Don’t separate civil rights from economic rights.”
More than compliant or even complicit, in actions that evoke China’s brand of “capitalism,” Trump has used extortion – threats of tariffs, bans on trade – to force companies like and Intel to actually give up a percentage of ownership control (10% of Intel) or revenue (15% of Nvidia chip sales to China), and ordering companies to fire their CEOs.
Pointing to the $2 trillion in black purchasing power, the millions of jobs they fill and goods and services they produce, Jennifer Jones Austin, Vice Chair of the Board of the National Action Network (NAN), sent a message to Wall Street in terms they would understand: “Roll over with Trump and risk your profit and returns. Only when all thrive, will business and the nation thrive.”
Arndrea Waters King, who is the wife of Martin Luther King III, said, “This is not a drill – democracy is on fire…. Truth is twisted, lies lifted up, power not to the people but to pursestring; we see erosion of voting rights.” Then she added, “Democracy may be on fire but we the people are the water, rise like a mighty flood and put out the flames of injustice for good.”
Martin Luther King IIII said, “62 years ago, my father on the steps of Lincoln Memorial shared a vision. But in 1963, the check from Treasury for health care, education, came back as ‘insufficient funds.’ Keep moving forward and some day, will realize the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.”
Rev. Al Sharpton, said, “Wall Street, you benefit from Trump, but your benefit days are over…Trump, get ready for the fight of your life. We won’t let you end our democracy for your autocracy.”
