Sunrise Movement

SUNRISE MOVEMENT. Incorporated in 2017, the Sunrise Movement grew as an environmental organization of mainly young people. Its proclamation read: “We unite to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people.” This all-encompassing slogan became the inspiration for the “Green New Deal” (GND), a set of legislative proposals introduced in early 2019 to address climate change and growing inequality in the United States. The Green New Deal became a hallmark of progressive Democrats committed to renewable energy policies, job growth, and public transportation --and, in its broadest terms, the Sunrise Movement. With more bravado, its website masthead proclaimed: “We Are the Climate Revolution.”

Sunrise activists played an important role in the 2018 Congressional election of four endorsed progressive candidates, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and a participant in the 2016 protest at Standing Rock against the Dakota-Access pipeline. Shortly after the election, Sunrise recruited Ocasio-Cortez to lead a sit-in at the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi where more than 250 protesters demanded support for the tenets of the Green New Deal. They succeeded in securing a promise from Speaker Pelosi to reinstate the House Committee on the Climate Crisis. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) emerged as the major sponsors of the Green New Deal advocated by the Sunrise Movement. Their agenda called for “100% clean, renewable energy and zero emissions.”

Since that time, under the leadership of Varshini Prakash, one of the founders, Sunrise focused not only on elections and governmental measures, but also on grassroots work and mass mobilizations. In September and December of 2019, activists helped build support for the Global Climate Strike. By this time, the movement claimed more than 400 Sunrise “hubs,” local organizations to adapt policies for individual states and specific communities. Hubs organized on college campuses across the United States, with California lead state.

Sunrise promoted its agenda through social media –Facebook, Instagram, Twitte and national online forums and provided detailed analysis and description in its sponsorship of the book Winning the Green New Deal (2020). The anthology of essays brings together prominent environmentalist writers (such as Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben) with spokespersons for a huge range of popular constituencies. At some points, the essays stretch beyond the GND legislative project by calling into question the goal of economic growth; however, none of the authors mentions socialism or ecosocialism as alternatives. They discuss social transformation without specifying the inevitable power-shifts. Klein, in her chapter, thus targets “unregulated capitalism” rather than capitalism tout court as the problem.

By 2020, members asked a key question: will the Sunrise Movement evolve from its primary support of Democratic candidates into a broader, distinctly Left organization? While individual leaders like Ocasio-Cortez pushed at the limits of the established Democratic Party’s politics, some in the Sunrise movement pledged to go further. By May 2020, the Sunrise Movement framed its mission as one of social justice, not simply climate change, and vigorously denounced white supremacy. In the wake of the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, Sunrise joined forces with the Movement for Black Lives.

The 2020 election, however, swung the strategic pendulum back toward electoral politics. Especially in local primaries, Sunrise activists played pivotal roles. In Massachusetts, they supported the successful candidacy of incumbent Ed Markey against the challenge by Joseph Kennedy III. In Missouri, Sunrise helped to secure the election of progressive Cori Bush; in New York, activists rallied behind the victorious Jamaal Bowman.

Early in the 2020 national campaign, the Sunrise Movement endorsed the candidacy of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who was running for president on the Democratic ticket. After Sanders lost the nomination to former vice-president Joe Biden, the movement cautiously shifted its stance. Political scientist Leah Stokes, a prominent supporter of Sunrise, when queried by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman at the end of a 10 September 2020 interview, endorsed Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, putting aside his weak “environmental plan,” his refusal to oppose fracking or to decline donations from the fossil fuel industry, for the necessity of defeating Donald Trump. Leading up to the 2020 election, the Sunrise Movement invited members to organize to campaign for environmentally-friendly candidates at all levels and the rally Democratic voters in swing states. Local hubs mobilized to support “green” candidates; Sunrise Providence (Rhode Island), for example, endorsed a dozen candidates state-wide who supported the Green New Deal and hailed those who won their office. The movement also sponsored training programs to secure the outcome against Republican maneuvers, legal and paramilitary. Local hubs rallied under the slogan “Our Futures Count.”

The Sunrise Movement claimed credit for enlarging the vote count for Biden. The youth vote increased by 10 percent over 2016, with 61 percent between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine choosing the Democratic candidate. Especially in the swing states, young people of color proved central to securing the election for Biden. Varshini Prakash interpreted the historic trend as delivering a “climate mandate” to the next president.

In general, the Sunrise Movement emphasized alternative sources of energy rather than the reconfiguration of human activities and culture to reduce energy inputs. Despite its limitations, the movement harnessed the power of organized youth and put climate change on the national agenda.

Blumenthal, Max, “‘Green’ billionaires behind professional activist network that led suppression of ‘Planet of the Humans,’” https://thegrayzone.com/2020/09/07/green-billionaires-planet-of-the-humans/

Gibbs, Jeff (director), Planet of the Humans (2020), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE

Prakash, Varshini, and Guido Girgenti, eds. Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020.

Website Sunrise Movement, https://www.sunrisemovement.org/