The Exchanges

Q also about things like this. Building a mass movement can't happen spontaneously. You can't just say to everybody, hey, let's show up here at five o'clock. Like, there is real hard work To organize people, right? Because once you organize people, then you amplify an idea through 1010 of thousands, hundreds of thousands of voices. So how do you begin to organize people from one cell, one small group to

A Yeah, I mean, I will say the beginning days of Sunrise were not nearly as pretty as the actions at Pelosi's office or whatever else that people might know us from. Um, we had literally six of us or eight of us at the beginning. It was all over the country, so some of us were based in Kentucky, some in Michigan, some in California. Um, all over. And the first thing that we ever did as Sunrise, um, was we took 15 of our friends and we canvassed. We went and talked to, like, over a thousand people at the People's Climate March in April of 2017. Two months later, we brought together 20 of the top leaders that we had worked with in the climate movement up until that point to Pennsylvania, to Philly, where we trained them in the basic sort of theory of change, the strategy, The story that encompasses Sunrise Movement and Issued a call to action. Like, we want you to go back to the communities that you came from, and start a local chapter in Sunrise, and start pushing your politicians to get off of fossil fuel money, to put forward climate plans that are commensurate with what the science is mandating. And that kind of grew and expanded, and we did trainings. I remember, like, sleeping on the floors of, of just people I barely knew In Colorado, or, you know, going out there and doing some trainings that, like, three people showed up to in the beginning days, because no one knew who we…

AI assessment note: “we had literally six of us or eight of us at the beginning.”

Q insane, but that's the reality. So opponents of what you do, of what you're trying to do, they have played a very powerful game of Seizing power and pursuit of power at the expense of things like bipartisanship and compromise. Do you now believe that people in your generation and people with your political values have to actually do the same thing, but from the other side of the aisle?

A Yeah, absolutely. I think we realized very early on, we cannot continue to just rail against a set of people in the political establishment who do not come from our communities, who do not hold our values. We have to kick people like that out of office, and we have to replace them with people who will fight for our communities. And that might not happen in the next two years or the next three years, but we are showing right now that young people You know, people in general are ready to get politically activated. There are lots of Democrats who, while they may purport to understand the science, have not taken action or heeded the dire warnings and are not fighting with, with a deep understanding and visceral understanding of what the calamities are ahead of us. And so, you know, we saw Jamal Bowman oust Eliot Engel in New York. Sunrise teenagers, literally teenagers, made 850 Thousand of the 1.3 million phone calls that were made to voters in his district, ultimately helping him defeat Elliot Engel. Like I'm watching fourteen-year-olds who can't even vote in this election, who are training and leading hundreds of other young people in how to get politically activated. So this is a possibility. I feel a lot of hope around that, and I think our next generation is, is fully activated.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, absolutely. I think we realized very early on, we cannot continue to just rail”

Q But by doing something dramatic, going to Nancy Pelosi's office, sitting in there, you got a lot of media attention, and that essentially enabled you to attract enough attention where a lot of other young people were like, well, what is this thing? Let's check it out.

A Right, exactly. And so it's, it's coupling these big viral moments that garner media attention, but also just spread the word organically to potentially millions of people who have never, um, Heard of a movement like this before, but would totally want to participate in one, and then giving them routine, consistent opportunities and structures within their own communities that they can take action on the day to day. So it's like, yes, come to D.C. We issued the call and over a thousand young people came to D.C. within 10 days, three weeks following this action at Pelosi's office, and then they went back to their communities and started local chapters where they could continue the work. And so I think, you know, both combining the viral moments, but also the brass tacks day to day grassroots organizing, that is what builds power in local communities.

AI assessment note: “Right, exactly. And so it's, it's coupling these big viral moments”

Q your house faster with a lot of, you know, right. Or like how to get a pizza robot made. This is about like our lives and the lives of our children, what you're trying to do. So do you, do you look to those models for kind of inspiration on how to, how to scale what you're doing to, to something that is so big that it cannot be ignored?

A Absolutely. I mean, that, that has to be the plan. I think for us, we are also recognizing when you consider the expanse of what it means to tackle the climate crisis. It isn't just, you know, okay, we decarbonize or whatever. There is a whole, I mean, we probably have to pass dozens of pieces of legislation at the federal level over the next decade of time, which means that people with our values have to govern and hold on to governing power For perhaps a decade or longer. I mean, growing up sort of at the line between Uh, the death of bipartisanship and the birth of political tribalism. And it is almost inconceivable for me to even imagine the federal government being able to pass that level of policy. So for us to exert the kind of pressure both outside the halls of Congress, as well as electing the kind of people who can exert internal pressure, that will require a movement of millions. Um, and what Sunrise is attempting to do is You know, taking direct action, but also, ultimately, we are going to have to create a movement that has millions of people that can quite literally bring business as usual to a halt in this country, that can say, you know what, like, our institutions, our governments, our towns, our cities, they cannot continue to operate as though this crisis is not upon us, and that will require many, many more millions of people being in the streets.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. I mean, that, that has to be the plan.”