On a scorching 100-degree Saturday midday on October 3, 2026, local volunteers from Culver City and Friends Rising, joined by Keep Showing Up Culver City, led a march and rally.
The demonstration formed part of a broader national week of action called the Business for Democracy Week of Action designed to urge businesses large and small across the country to take a stand in defense of voting access.
Marching alongside honking cars while holding up signs reading “Hands Off Our Vote,” organizers aimed their message directly at Sony Pictures, Apple, Pinterest, and Amazon MGM Studios.
Demonstrators argued that these tech and media giants possess multi-billion-dollar economic footprints that carry influence.
“This regime cares about what these big corporations think,” one of the organizers, Phil Ansell, leader of Culver City and Friends Rising, said before the rally, reminding participants that in this political climate “there are no sidelines.”
Civic and faith leaders added their voices to the crowd. “The largest corporations in the history of the world are right here in our backyard in Culver City,” said Vice Mayor Bubba Fish. “What we are asking today is really not that much.”
Supervisor Holly Mitchell said in a letter, “The principles at the heart of that pledge should transcend party ideology.”
Support also came from Reverend Dr. Frances Wattman Rosenau, pastor at Culver City Presbyterian Church, who declared, “any effort to suppress [democracy] negates each person’s dignity.”
Throughout the march, the atmosphere was energized by tambourines and vocal performances from The Singing Resistance of Santa Monica. Delivering chants born out of Minneapolis civil rights movements, the group led the crowd in songs declaring, “They want to take my vote away, I’m here to tell them not today.”
The objective is to get these corporations to sign the Business for Democracy Pledge, which states that they will publicly oppose efforts that would prevent or create obstacles to eligible voters casting their ballots, counting of votes, or the seating of duly elected candidates after the election.
Clara Carvalho
