Heat Strike, Forests Rising & Team Algae
Rivera Sun / Nonviolence News
(June 26, 2026) — A record-breaking, climate crisis induced heatwave is hitting Europe and hundreds of people have already died, including 40 in France who drowned while seeking relief in the water. Scorching temperatures of 110F/43C are forcing hundreds of schools and businesses to close, alcohol bans, and Pride event cancellations.
Roads are melting in Germany, political leaders are declaring states of emergency, and activists are renewing the demands for immediate climate action. Some are calling for heat strikes – a rapid response action in which workers, students, and consumers refuse to engage in usual tasks amidst extreme heat events. It’s also London Climate Week and over 1,300 events are happening, though an extreme heat conference was ironically, but wisely, cancelled due to the extreme heat.
The heat wave has everyone scrambling to stay cool. Trees canopies and green corridors in cities can lower temperatures dramatically and urban residents are starting to catch on. One town in Quebec even charges home owners a $200 fine if they don’t have a green leafy tree in the front yard to help create shade. In a different approach, another town in Quebec has recognized trees as living beings with rights and is handing out free trees to residents. There’s even an app that maps shade spots along pedestrian routes in cities. Tiny forests in Massachusetts are building mini-patches of biodiversity with up to 200 species planted in spaces the size of six parking spots.
On a larger scale, global restoration efforts have led to the heartening resurgence of mangrove groves, which offer critical protections from flooding, hurricanes, and tsunamis. There’s also a ramp up of kelp forest protection projects working to bolster the heat-stressed underwater ecosystems. To protect threatened hotspots of rainforest, Colombia has implemented a cattle traceability law that makes ranchers accountable for grazing infringement and deforestation.
In more good news for humanity and the planet, China’s switch to electric vehicles is saving over 262,000 lives each year from premature deaths related to air pollution. Meanwhile, Trump abandoned his quixotic fight against wind energy. US senators finally mobilized their outrage effectively and forced the Trump administration to reinstate a critical ocean monitoring system. US climate activists are demanding no immunity for Big Oil as the oil lobby tries to ban climate lawsuits.
As FIFA fans argue about water breaks, some policy researchers are turning to Indigenous cultural practices as a source of climate solutions. Indigenous Peoples are at the forefront of global environmental protection campaigns, such as the effort to stop seabed mining. It also puts them in the line of danger; environmental and Indigenous rights defenders were 25% of the human rights defenders killed in 2025.
Nonviolence News around the World
In Nonviolence News around the world, workers in Portugal defeated the right-wing’s anti-labor package through nationwide strikes and nonviolent actions. Zambia made free public education a universal right, leading to an upswell in child enrollment and a surge in new teacher hires. After weeks of deadly protests, Kenya’s health minister ordered a halt to construction on the controversial Ebola quarantine center that was intended to house infected people from the United States.
In Bolivia, President Paz ordered the army into the streets and declared a 90-day state of emergency to try to quell the protesters demanding his resignation. The movement is now wrestling with a choice between demobilization or a strategic pause.
In the Czech Republic, public media journalists and staff held a 24-hr strike following a thousands-strong rally in defense of public media, which is under attack from the right-wing prime minister.
Australians are creatively resisting a crackdown on free speech and pro-Palestinian organizing, challenging a ban on the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” with alternatives like “From the creek to the ocean … ” During June, global Pride Month commemorations are bringing attention to the deteriorating state of LGBTQ+ rights, culture, and movements in Venezuela, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Costa Rica just upheld the legality of its first same-sex marriage.
In Trinidad, the 19 Bullets, 19 Protests campaign against police brutality concluded its series of marches, rallies, and demonstrations demanding justice for Joshua Samaroo. In Mississippi, police tear gassed protesters who held a march and demonstration at the Walmart where police officers shot and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, after accusing his mother and a friend of shoplifting diapers.
In Santa Ana, California, demonstrators took action for 15-year-old Jaden Michada who was killed by the police. At many Juneteenth commemorations, including in Chicago, New York, and New Orleans, the demand to stop police violence was paired with calls for action to stop racist attacks on voting rights. Black activists and community members are also frustrated by the Trump administration’s dismantling of racial justice initiatives.
Most recently, the Trump administration filed suit to overturn the landmark reparations program in Evanston, IL, that placed a tax on legalized marijuana and distributed payments to Black residents. The Trump DOJ is arguing that such policies discriminate against non-Black people, repeating the spurious justifications already being used to repeal DEI policies and to gut the Voting Rights Act.
It’s been a mixed bag for Trump’s legal wins and losses. A judge stopped restrictions on mail-in ballots and ruled against a federal voter registration database. Another judge blocked the administration from requiring proof of citizenship to vote. A third federal judge banned arrests at immigration courts across the nation, pointing out the obvious: that they’re counterproductive and scaring immigrants away from compliance with the law.
ICE was also forced to release Salah Sarsour, a pro-Palestine activist, Muslim leader in Milwaukee and president of the city’s largest mosque, after a judge ruled they had violated her First Amendment Rights by targeting her.
Florida finally shut down Alligator Alcatraz amidst protests, lawsuits, and brutality. Those detained have been transferred to other immigration jails, however, and nationwide campaigns against detention centers and the immigration crackdown continue, including the 3-day march and rally at a planned immigrant detention site in Dublin, CA. This kind of resistance is having an impact: ICE recently abandoned their efforts to open seven immigration jails and will offload the properties to other federal agencies.
These victories reflect a larger pattern: Trump’s repression of dissent is backfiring. Instead of quelling resistance, it’s triggering more of it. Organizer Daniel Hunter points out that this is a good sign that we’re getting somewhere. “For our own health, we cannot let our yardstick be measured by whether we have stopped the authoritarian from doing anything. The reality is, he has the power to wake up and do awful things every day. As I’ve written before, resistance to an authoritarian regime is measured by greater unity, greater nonviolent discipline in the face of violence, greater numbers and greater ability to provoke defections.”
Perhaps we’re seeing some of this dynamic reflected in the saga of the green Reflecting Pool of scum and peeling paint that has now become an iconic symbol of the Trump administration. While it could just be a mishap, many of us are hoping it’s secretly resistance – and happily embracing the symbolism of it, regardless. Meanwhile, Trump’s fuming while inflatable frogs dance alongside it and the parks police chase Team Algae activists around the glowing green waters of the Trump Reflecting Pool.
In the Nonviolence News Research Archive, you’ll find updates on labor strikes, including Mexico’s gig workers and how Los Angeles teachers won big with the “We Can’t Wait” campaign. You’ll also find some interesting longer reads on digital security and how surveillance and digital repression are taking a toll on activists’ mental health. There’s also a very interesting exploration of the economic resistance of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Freedom Farm Cooperative. And I was heartened to hear that a museum in Dearborn, Michigan, has transported and preserved the house where the Selma-to-Montgomery March was planned. You can see Dr. King’s pajamas on the guest bed. This museum is also home to the bus that Rosa Parks sat on in her historic act of civil disobedience. Road trip, anyone?’
A Readiing List for a Changing Planet
One of my favorite aspects of collecting dozens of stories for Nonviolence News is selecting a few to read slowly and deeply. Nonviolent action is an art, science, and toolbox – one that we should all be somewhat proficient at like cooking, driving, or laundry. (If you don’t do any of those things, no judgement.) Each week, I try to learn something new about waging nonviolent struggle. In times of immense, necessary change like these, it won’t just save your life … it might save all of our lives.
Here are a few suggestions for deeper reading: a look inside Albania’s youth-led Flamingo Revolution, an analysis on how most contemporary autocrats are getting voted out of power with pressure from mass movements, the role of an upbeat jingle in Chile’s historic public referendum that ousted their dictator Pinochet, a reflective article on how US movements countered corporate power once before, and a video on the important of big tent organizing in ousting authoritarians.
And, if you’re looking for an interesting read, I recently wrote an article on nonviolent solutions for Pace e Bene and Campaign Nonviolence’s year-long program 2026: The Year of Nonviolent Solutions. Nonviolence News collected and shared hundreds of stories to support the project, including this week’s stories on tiny forests, cooling parks, Orlando’s pedestrian safety, and a trade ban that saved a rare gecko species. These stories are serving as inspiration for virtual gatherings, social posts, daily emails, and nonviolent actions – all of which deliver the timely reminder that a world of nonviolence is possible.
As I wrote in the article, “There are hundreds of nonviolent solutions: forest restoration, bystander intervention, anti-bullying, debt abolition, mediation, green corridors, reparations, universal basic income, social housing, trauma-informed policies, marine sanctuaries, unarmed peacekeeping … the list is endless. These seemingly disparate solutions are more connected than we think. Each one challenges harmful and destructive systems with a viable replacement. Each one demonstrates that the destruction, cost and ineffectiveness of those violent systems is unnecessary. And each one offers another piece of the puzzle that constructs a whole picture of a profoundly different society.
A world of justice, peace, health and well-being, equality and equity, dignity and humanity, compassion, respect, redemption, healing and transformation. It’s a culture of nonviolence … and it benefits us to see our issues connected in this way.”
In solidarity,
Rivera Sun
