What would it take to make politics core to the cultural fabric of the United States?

“Imagine if we got this many people organized to fight billionaires, fight against data centers and climate change, and fight for a thriving wage for healthcare… an organizer's dream. The past week in NYC has been an insane and electric time. But I can’t help but ask the question, “How in the hell do movements do this?” Get people to get up at 3 am to stake out for a spot, call off work, and wait for hours in sweaty, hot crowds surrounded by other people. And what might be possible if we could?” - Me, June 18th, Instagram

​I’ve been in a state of despair around organizing and movement building. For the past 7 years, I’ve, through Sunrise, a youth climate movement fighting for a livable future for all, tried to figure out how to build the power and numbers to push the government to act on climate change with the scale and urgency it demands. (In addition to climate, at its core, we’re fighting for a world where people and the planet matter over profits and corporations.)

​In my 7 years or so in Sunrise, now, it’s getting harder and harder to believe that anything - the phonebanking, the door-knocking, the direct actions, the arrests- is worth it, or shifting the balances of power in society. I’m a bit… jaded. I’ve seen us struggle to bring in new members. I’ve seen us struggle to organize beyond the bubble of young people who already believe what we do. I’ve seen us struggle to… build power. We have not set out to stop climate change; in fact, the effects of climate change, in the form of increased wildfires, increased storms, increased flooding, are coming at us full force across the globe.  

​And yes, it’s not all hopeless. There has been an exciting wave of candidates, from Zohran in office to Will Lawrence, Darializa Avila Chevalier, Abdul El-Sayed, and Melat Kiros, very progressive candidates, winning primaries. But what I really think is necessary is sustained, long-term commitment and sacrifice of millions of people across the country to birth a new nation, one that is not run by the billionaires and the corporate elite. And movements haven’t figured out how to do that. So I’ve been trying to look to other places for inspiration.

Olivia Dean playing a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden. August 17th, 2026. Dejah Powell.

​Over the past month, I sat in a crowd of 20,000-ish people at an Olivia Dean concert at Madison Square Garden. I went to a Chance the Rapper concert in Central Park, packed with people bonding over their love of music. Earlier in the summer, I stood packed in Habana Outpost, watching thousands of New Yorkers watch the playoffs. I watched as thousands of New Yorkers descended upon Lower Manhattan, some getting up as early as 3 am,  to celebrate the Knicks’ win. I sipped cider in crowded bars, celebrating and cheering on my favorite team (that was constantly changing with each loss or upset) in the World Cup.

In each of these moments, I’ve been so curious: if this many people can be mobilized for concerts, for soccer matches, for artists, why can’t they do the same for politics? Especially when the stakes – of winning livable wages, healthcare for all, of getting data centers out of our communities - are so much higher? 

​And this is the question - as an organizer, as an artist - that I feel deeply called to explore. What if artists used their platforms to not just re-post or uplift causes, but build real power by partnering with social movement groups? Inviting their fans to join direct actions, donate, or get involved with movement organizations?  What if artists actually stood up to corporations and used their platform and leverage to get wins for everyday working people? One example is Olivia Dean, who called out Ticketmaster for their wild resale prices; as a result, Ticketmaster capped future resale tickets and gave funds to those who overpaid for resale tickets. It didn’t stop ticket scalpers on other sites, but it was a start. 

As I reflect on my journey organizing over the past 7 years, and look ahead to where I feel my interest is being called, I’m so intrigued about what exists at the intersection of arts & social movements. So much so that I feel a calling to explore what might be possible if more artists used their power, leverage, and resources to uplift movements, organize more young people, and fight back against corporations to achieve wins for their fans.

​I always come back to this quote by Toni Cade Bambara, “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” I’ve been dreaming about a new project (that sees artists as a constituency to be organized) that gets to the question of how to make politics core to the social fabric of this country… and it begins with artists. 

Core Diagnosis

• From the rising cost of living to AI to climate change, society faces several interlocking existential crises

• In response to these crises, society has chosen to remain “complicit in our demise”

• Though a small sliver of society- organized groups in social movements- is responding, they have failed to expand their membership and bring masses of the public into sustained mass action

• If we are to build a world where people and the planet thrive, not profit and corporations, a world worth living in, we need millions of people in the United States to rise up and disrupt business as usual

• I believe artists, people in society who are effectively organizing the public, have a critical role to play in bringing about social change.

The goal: To organize artists to use their talents, work, and platforms to push for radical social change in society.

Artists have immense power in society.

Power in their work.

Power in their influence.

Power in their fans. 

Can we leverage that power to push for massive social change?

The project goals would be to:

• Training: Run a training program for artists that builds community amongst artists, grounds them in the history of art as political, teaches them core organizing skills, and connects them with movement organizations whose efforts they could support 

• Creation: Support artists to create work that aids in building power for working-class people and connect with movement orgs who could use artists' skills to expand their work 

• Campaigns: Run campaigns with high-level artists to enable them to use power (platform, fans, resources) against the rich and powerful 

• Organizing: Enable artists to use their platforms to drive more of the public towards organizing & movement efforts

Thanks for exploring my mind and thoughts. Please share any thoughts, ideas, or reactions; I’d love to engage with them.

“If we want life on this planet to become more just, more free, more equal – if we want all people to live full, safe, dignified lives; if we want an economy and political system that work for the many and not just the few; if we want to undo the core systems of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism that make up empire and shape the values and institions that govern our lives – we will need movements.

There is no path towards the world we all deserve without massive numbers of people taking serious, steady, long-term action in organizations, in the streets, in their neighborhoods, in their workplaces; contesting for power there, in the economy, and at all levels of government.”

Yotam Moram, For Louder Days

What is one to do?

I’m writing this on October 2nd, a day when the government has been shut down for two days because Democrats have finally found a spine and refuse to accept a spending bill that would impact access to healthcare for millions across the country. 

I write this as a flotilla is being intercepted by the Israeli Defense Forces, and videos surface of men in army gear and semi-automatic rifles surrounding and advancing upon a boat carrying nonviolent peaceful protestors looking to get to Gaza. 

I write this the morning after an ICE raid took place on the South Side of Chicago, where over 300 federal agents stormed an apartment complex, destroying homes and zip-tying families, including children. 

(There is no end. The National Guard in Chicago and Portland. The convening of  military generals. The attacking of progressive organizations, including the one that I work and organize with, and calling them domestic terrorists.) 

I also write this on a plane to Utah, pretty giddy and excited, to celebrate a very close friend getting married. 

Times are bizarre. I feel like I’m living through a dystopian horror movie that has accidentally been edited into a 20-something coming-of-age film, glitching between scenes of chaos and devastation… and scenes of laughter, connection, friends, and joy… the small intimate moments that make everyday life feel meaningful.

 ​It is strange. 

A few weeks ago, I was at the U.S. Open surrounded by thousands of people, and couldn’t shake how peculiar it felt. ​As we struggled to figure out who to cheer for in the Osaka vs. Gauff match, as we admired Reilly Opelka’s serve (well, at least I was lol), as we waited in hopes that a camera might plaster our face to the jumbotron, as we sipped on our second overpriced honey deuce… a war was (is) ramping up in the background.

​I don’t have to continue to list all the things that Trump, a fascist, an authoritarian, a wanna be dictator who might get his way if we continue to treat this as a scene from a dystopian drama happening somewhere off in a faraway land, has been doing as of late. I hope you are awake right now to what will go down as one of the most pivotal moments in U.S. history in the past 50 years, hell 100.

​If you are awake and if you are paying attention, you, like me, might be asking, what am I to do?! 

​I am an organizer. I spend most of my waking hours in Sunrise, a youth climate movement that is now taking on authoritarianism, thinking about how to build movements of people with the courage to act to make the world a better place. And even then, at times I feel helpless, stuck and confused.

​I can’t help but think (I know I know, I’m thinking a lot… but not acting enough!!!) about what life might have been like in the moments leading up to Hitler’s rise to power, where he eventually carried out the state-sanctioned mass murder of over 6 million Jews. Think about that, 6 million. That’s nearly all the people living in the entire metro area of cities like Houston or Miami. 

This was not in the 1800s; this was in the 1940s. If you have a grandparent 85 years old or older, they lived through this. 

Photo courtesy of African American Civil Rights Museum.

​I also can’t help but think about the young students in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), who sat in lunch counters across the South, sat through white supremacists yelling in their faces, throwing food at them, and burning lit cigarettes into their skin, to protest segregation. Later, these young people  rode buses (called Freedom Rides) into the South, facing brutal violence from white segregationists, including bombings and murder (several lost their lives), to fight to desegregate interstate buses. 

​Instead of sitting, watching, and thinking, they did something. They chose courage over complacency, bravery over cooperation.

***

I’ll close this internal monologue by saying, I’ve been thinking a lot. About values and morals and integrity. And in all of this, I can’t help but be haunted by the question… while the world is falling apart, who will I be? If in 2 years, the U.S. has fallen fully to fascists, to a dictator, to Trump, will I have wish I had done more? 10 years from now, will I sit proud of the human I chose to be at this moment in history?

Ahhh don’t know how to end this, but I’ll say to the last question, I hope so.

P.S. I did not answer the question in the title. To be honest, I’m not sure yet. But I do know two things. One, it will take masses of people coming together to speak out, stand up, and resist Trump. And it will be movements and organizations (including Sunrise and many others) that will play an active role in making that happen. If you wanna learn more about what we think, check out the pieces here and here and here. 

PPS. I hate to be an alarmist, but despite how normal things may feel now for you or for me, things are bad. 

Dejah 

Why a documentary film on Black and Latine young climate organizers?

Overview

In December, I launched a fundraiser (I’m working to raise $20K), and over the next few weeks, I will explore a few of the projects I am raising money for and why. 

When people often ask me what I do with my life and time, and I tell them I’m an organizer, they usually have no clue what that means. No, I don’t organize closets (yes, ppl have asked). And yeah it’s activism, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what movement building is. (You build teams and organizations and navigate conflict and get good at jail support and you take risks together and sleep on couches in Airbnb’s for elections or better, church pews for actions it’s good stuff.) 

Because of this, I’ve been spinning on the question of, how in the hell do we, especially given the worsening crises we face as humanity (caused by capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, etc.), get people to wake the fuck up and stop being so complicit in one's own exploitation, oppression, and demise? And get more of the masses of people organized?  The questions.

Also, organizing has been life-changing for me. The sense of power, agency, joy, freedom, and creativity I’ve felt from organizing goes unmatched. Movement has been my muse. I deeply believe that the planet would be a more healed place if more people tapped into their inner source of power and felt true agency over their lives. Also, in a time where people are so isolated and disconnected, there is something deeply connecting and spiritual to be found in movement. 

Finally, it’s also in my self-interest. In my role, I have a mandate to help grow the movement. What better way to do that than to show the world what it means to be in movement? 

One other thing. There’s an amazing book. The Romance of American Communism (if you haven’t read I highly recommend!!), that really captures the essence and spirit of what it means to be in movement. The love, the joy, the heartbreak, the highs, the lows, of organizing. I hope to do, someday, through film, what that book did for me. 

So I will drop the log line and a few other blurbs about the film below. And donate or share with ppl you know who might be interested in supporting 💛

Logling & Story Synopsis

Logline: In between navigating their twenties as young people under Trump’s America, at the heart of the current youth climate movement lie the untold stories of Black and Latine organizers working to push our government to act with the scale and urgency with which the climate crisis demands. This project aspires to tell the stories of these young people. What motivates them, how does climate change affect the people they love and the places they call home, what are they up against, and what’s at stake, if they don’t win?

Story Synopsis: Society faces an existential crisis around climate change. We must either work to address climate change at the scale and urgency it requires, or we face extinction as a species. With Donald Trump set to be our next president, the task feels even more impossible. 

In the U.S., what is needed is a mass movement of people, across race & class, organizing to push the government to act on climate. While historically, the environmental movement has often been branded as white, it is clear that the communities hardest hit by climate crises and disasters.

At the heart of this film is a story about young people fighting for a world where they take care of their families, fall in love, spend time with friends and fight for a world not at the brink of collapse.

The stakes are high, and I want viewers to be brought into what’s at stake if we all don’t lean in and take action towards pushing the government to stop climate change. Though the stakes are high, in this piece I want to highlight themes of joy, resistance and power. That young people can come together and demand our government do big and bold things.

Toni Cade Bambara says, “The role of the artists is to make the revolution irresistible.” I hope this project provides a peak into the lives of young people sacrificing so much for their homes and communities and makes organizing and movement so irresistible that every person experiencing these young people’s stories can’t wait to step off the sidelines and join the movement to stop the climate crisis. 

Donate here to bring this doc film to life :)

We also have a fiscal sponsor, SIMA studios! So if you want to donate more formally, and get tax exemption, visit our page here.

Capitalism is to blame for the wildfires in LA.

“Capitalism can’t provide a solution to the climate crisis because capitalism is the crisis: capitalist production always and necessarily places profit over people and the planet.”

Socialism is the answer.

Wildfires are burning across California right now and it’s intriguing to watch people tip-toe around the truth about what’s happening and why; our current economic system, capitalism. 

The deep failings of capitalism are bearing themselves publicly through the manifestation of not only the LA wildfires, but also the metaphorical fires burning in society of student loan debt, massive inequality, and the healthcare and housing crisis.

What is capitalism? 

Because when I get into heated debates with ultra-capitalists about the deep flaws of capitalism, we’re often speaking past each other, and not coming from a shared understanding of the definition of what I mean by capitalism.

So, a few notes, including some quotes pulled from Socialist Reconstruction, that touch on the essence of capitalism: 

• Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. (Thanks Wikipedia) 

• “So-called “free markets” are managed by central banks and elements of the state to protect corporations and maintain the position of the ruling class as a ruling class. In a way, this protectionism is already a kind of socialism, but it’s socialism for the rich.” 

• “Under capitalism, the majority of us spend most of our time doing work we hate so that someone else can get rich.” 

• “The capitalist system confronts the world with problems that capitalism is unable to solve: mass inequality, climate change, and war.” 

While we all submit, rather obediently, at the feet of capitalism, we’re also being led down a suicidal path of death, of planetary destruction (as we say playing out right now in Los Angeles) and society will collapse if governments and people and leaders are not able to call a spade a spade; the root of the problem is capitalism, and if we do not imagine an economic system beyond it, society will collapse and humanity, likely, someday will die. As said in the book, “Decarbonization, eliminating our dependence on carbon-emitting energy sources, is necessary – an absolute imperative if there is to be a future in which the majority of the world’s people and species will thrive.” 

And it’s so sad. As someone said, “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” 

It’s time to imagine anew. 

So what’s the alternative? 

Revolutionary conditions are brewing. The inherent failings and contradictions of capitalism will force the birthing of something new. They must. 

One of the best books I’ve read this past year, Socialist Reconstruction, paints an incredible picture of the possibilities. Of a socialist reconstruction of the United States.

Of a country where governments place moratoriums on fossil fuels to avert climate collapse. Where they invest in decommodified, clean, renewable energy systems and people aren’t paying exorbitant amounts of money to local utility companies who jack prices for profit. Of a country where we’ve invested in mass public transit systems that are efficient, invested in, and that can get people out of cities, safely, when climate disasters strike. 

As said in Socialist Reconstruction, “Life under socialism will be better as everyone will be able to count on free health care, education, transportation, utilities, low-cost housing, more free time, and deeper engagement in determining our common futures.” 

So. I feel a bit annoyed and frustrated and that’s why I wrote this.

We will not solve climate change under capitalism. 

So towards a socialist reconstruction. 

“The vision of socialist reconstruction presented here supplies a framework that demonstrates how socialism enables us to get beyond the contradictions of capitalism by decarbonizing and deprivatizing the economy and by reorienting production around universal basic services, meaningful work, and greater time to do with what we will.”

Other juicy quotes from Socialist Reconstruction:

• “Sometimes the best way to measure the strength of an idea is by the ferocity of its opponents. By this measure, socialism is clearly resurgent: all the forces of the capitalist establishment are aligned against it.” 

• “Political shifts result from collective struggle.” 

• “It is important to grasp how what is considered legal or illegal changes from one society to another. Under capitalism, some of the most gratuitous forms of theft – daily exploitation at the job, usurious interest rates, bank bailouts (the theft of public resources) – are legal and perpetrators are in fact rewarded.”

• “While corporations that ruin millions of lives go unpunished, a massive legal apparatus exists to catch even the tiniest of drug dealer.”

For further learning on the topic:

Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States 

Reconsidering Reparations: Why Climate Justice and Constructive Politics Are Needed in the Wake of Slavery and Colonialism

Video by The People Forum on Socialist Reconstruction

Video on  Why Capitalism Can't Handle Climate Change

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

How to grow a movement in the millions?

I don’t know, I haven’t done it. BUT. 

In my role at Sunrise as Membership Director, I think a lot about how to do this. I want to do this, we must. 

I can’t forget a conversation I had a year ago in New Mexico with a leader in one of the biggest environmental non-profits in the world. He mentioned how one of their member organizations (in a Nordic country) had ¼ people in the country identify as members of the group. 

I first thought, no way, impossible. And then I thought, wow, the scale, the reach. Truly, goals. How amazing would it be if even 1/11 young people in the United States knew of Sunrise and identified as a member of our movement? 

And why so many people, why millions? 

In Sunrise, our core theory of change is building people power and political power to create the conditions necessary to stop climate change. More specifically, over the next four years, we want to organize mass student strikes, mass noncooperation, and civil disobedience in key cities across the U.S. That’s going to take a shit ton of people.

More specifically, the vision is to:

Build up to society-wide strikes and mass disruption to fix our political system on the scale needed to stop the climate crisis. 

Build a mass youth movement that spans race, class, and geography in order to popularize a Green New Deal: a digestible vision for how we can make our government work in order to tackle the climate crisis and improve people’s lives. 

This will require escalating levels of direct action to create triggers (2025/2026) leading to student strikes and local takeovers (2026/2027). These set the tone and energy for a general strike (2028) and unprecedented sustained mass disruption. We do this to win concessions from the federal government, win a Green New Deal presidential candidate in 2028, and pass a suite of policies in 2029 and 2030.

Ok. 

Second, we’re also going to need resources to support our work. Especially as we lean into more disruptive tactics, we’ll need more of our movement funded by everyday people and not philanthropy, to give us the flexibility in tactics to do what is powerful and necessary. 

Finally, we need the public on our side. The more people in relationship with Sunrise, the more people who are sympathetic to our causes, our tactics, our efforts, and our messaging, the more successful we will ultimately be. 

So. 

In my role at Sunrise, I think a lot about how we build a mass movement across race & class that will build the power necessary to stop the climate crisis and win a Green New Deal.

Which also really means, how do we take the masses of young people who are not organized, who are not thinking about social movements, who don’t think they need a political home, and help them find one in Sunrise?

In my 6-ish years organizing in Sunrise, I’m learning A LOT. This is my own personal assessment, it’s based on reflections and isn’t rooted in any sort of comprehensive study or analysis of movements that have scaled in the millions. 

It’s all vibes here. 

So. How do we grow our ranks and get young people, en masse, to join the movement? 

Conditions & ingredients for building a mass movement 

1. Momentum + absorption

2. Compelling vision, strategy, plan to win

3. Rigor & craft in organizing

4. Culture & relationships

5. Infiltrate current institutions

6. Leadership

7. Offer services that bring general public into movement

Momentum + Absorption: First, you need momentum. Sunrise was founded in 2017 and sprung out of Trump’s first presidency. After sitting in Nancy Pelosi’s office, the movement grew from somewhere under 10 hubs to over 200 in the span of weeks. 

Once you have momentum, you need the structures in place to absorb people into your movement. This includes having structures (e.g., Sunrise has hubs/chapters that people can form or join to carry out their organizing) that enable people to continue carrying out meaningful work and do things that build towards the movement's broader goal.

Another element of this includes structures that enable, not inhibit, scale. In Sunrise NYC, we just launched neighborhood teams, and are set up, in the case that 1,000 people wanna join, to absorb them into our structure and give them meaningful organizing to do. Many folks are actually not set up or ready for this level of people knocking down the door of their hub or organization. If we wanna grow our movement into the millions, we need to be ready for millions. 

Compelling vision, strategy, and plan to win: This is simple; you need a compelling vision of society that motivates people to get off their asses. You need a strategy, a plan!, that people believe can work to win. I felt this in the vision of the Green New Deal. I also feel this more broadly about socialism.

Rigor & craft in organizing: We won’t always be in moments of high momentum. Things ebb and flow in movements and I’ve seen this during my 5-6 years in Sunrise. When there isn’t momentum, your organization must be filled with organizers who hold discipline around rigor and craft. This means having consistent systems of outreach and recruitment (e.g., ongoing canvasses, class raps), holding rigor with 1:1s, making hard asks, and doing follow-ups. And one of the key ways to do this, develop craft in organizing, en masses, is through a mass training, coaching, and leadership development. And for trainings, there are a variety of institutions, from Momentum to Training for Change to Midwest Academy to People’s Action to Re:Power, who do this.

Culture & relationships: The saying goes that culture eats strategy for breakfast. What does this mean? Shit should be fun. People want to go to places where they can have a good time, where they can learn, and where they can be in community with people they enjoy. Now, movements shouldn’t only be about community and vibes. That’s what social clubs and friends are for. For me, Sunrise is a political organization that seeks to build power to stop the climate crisis through organizing, direct action, etc. And everyone who joins is expected to engage in that work. BUT, the organizing should also be fun. In Sunrise NYC, we organize community care events that include socials, park picnics, hikes, etc. and they do a really good job of bringing people together + deepening relationships across the hub. Relationships are the foundation of organizing and you’ve gotta like the people you organize with. 

Infiltrate current institutions: If we wanna organize en masse, we need to meet people where they are organized. This means we should be organizing more heavily in community colleges, high schools, in run clubs (so big in NYC), online gaming communities, celebrity fandoms, community rec centers, sports clubs, etc. Young people are organized! They’re just not using their organization toward political aims. 

Leadership: You need leadership, at every layer of the movement. Marshall Ganz defines leadership as “... accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.” 

For movements to scale, we need leaders who are willing to take on the responsibility of carrying out the elements listed above. Of building a strong culture in our movements, of holding people to rigor when organizing, of setting, with members, campaigns, and strategy that feel energizing. Leaders must also develop others (no lone wolf leadership tendencies here in movements, though I’ve fallen victim to these in the past), be accountable/admit when mistakes are made, and finally hold space for reflection and debriefing so we’re constantly learning from our organizing. 

Offer services that bring general public into movement: Finally, this is one I recently added after reading an article, The Secret of Scale. The essence of the paper is that some of the leading organization with mass membership — think the National Rifle Association (NRA) — have huge membership bases because they offer services and programs that address the needs of their members. These offerings include “access to their local hunting clubs, shooting and safety classes, kid and family programs, gun insurance, free subscriptions to the NRA’s magazines, discounts at thousands of gun, sports, and outfitter shops, and, yes, accidental death and dismemberment insurance.” They use these services as a hook, and then have intentional engagement programs to move their volunteers into deeper and more active engagement within the organization, which feels crucial.

The NRA also brings in $100M in membership dues and $30M from businesses who pay to be a part of their network. Combined, about 2/3 of their revenue come from member dues and earned revenue.

“This is the true secret of scale: offering benefits and services that build deep and lasting relationships with members, and then activating those members for long-term, systemic change goals. This is the key to effective functional organizing.”

What does this mean for movement organizing? We could be offering stronger incentives for people to commit to membership + run programs that turn that interest into engaged organizers/activists. These incentives could include discounts on key places youth shop, high school coaching or tutoring, job application support, etc. What do young people, especially young people not thinking about organizing or joining social movements, need? And how could we offer that as an on ramp into Sunrise? One idea we’ve also talked about in Sunrise is building out a sort of mutual care network, and letting every member know, one you’ve join, you’ve got a couch or guest room in many cities across the U.S., because we have members everywhere.

So. 

My brain dump of ways we grow our movements to millions. It’s not complete. But given the mandate ahead and the crises that are piling up, nothing short of mass movement is required. 

A Trip to Cuba - Brigade, Summer 2024

‘Y todo lo que parecía imposible fue posible.” - Fidel Castro

"Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me." - Fidel Castro 

When you hear Cuba, what comes to mind? Maybe it’s the classic old Ford car on the streets of Cuba, painted a vibrant red or blue or pink. Maybe it’s the common sentiment that taxi drivers are paid more than doctors in the country. Or maybe you think of Cuba’s revolutionary leaders, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara, who carried out a revolution that led to the overthrow of the dictator Fulgencio Batista and transformed Cuba into a socialist country that prioritized agrarian reform, universal healthcare, and massive literacy campaigns for its people. 

This summer, I got to confront these preconceived notions of Cuba head-on when, in June of 2024, I traveled alongside several organizers in Sunrise and 100+ other young organizers from organizations across the country to attend the 2024 Youth Brigade in Cuba. The brigade, hosted by the International Peoples’ Assembly, exchanged with Cuban youth and worker leaders, building bridges between organizers in North America to stand against the U.S. Blockade of Cuba and experience Cuban socialism in practice. 

During our trip, we got to visit the Casa de las Américas, an organization founded by Haydée Santamaría, one of the few women directly involved in the revolutionary brigades. Under her leadership, it became, over the next two decades, a physical and cultural refuge for artists and writers who had been persecuted in their homelands for their advocacy of social justice and opposition to military dictatorship. We spoke with workers from the Melia Hotel in Havana and workers from the Blas Roca Contingent of the Construction and Hydrological Workers’ Union about their experiences. 

We learned about the efforts to combat racism from an Afro-Cuban Community Network Association and the history and ongoing efforts to confront racism in Cuba. Finally, we visited medical institutions, including a vaccine institute, where we learned about the advances being made in medicine in Cuba despite the restrictions imposed by the blockade. 

We did a lot; and in addition to long, intense, but beautiful enriching days, my experience and time in Cuba brought up a lot for me, and want to translate those thoughts into a few reflections:

Reflections:

• Revolution is just as much about spirit/culture as it is about theory; we saw this in the graphics and murals of Che and Fidel across the country, in the Revolution Square, and in the commitment to art & culture that was revolutionary (e.g., through Casa de las Americas) 

• The United States as violent, ruthless, paternalistic:  We learned about the all-encompassing impact of the U.S. blockade on Cuba, and its relationship to broader anti-imperialist struggles. The importance of unity and collective action, and culture in sustaining revolutionary consciousness was stressed constantly, and the role of popular education in fostering mass participation was highlighted throughout the program. We came back with a sense of urgency in us, as well as clarity regarding the need for deeper political education and stronger solidarity networks. The brigade reinforced the idea that international solidarity is not just a sentiment but a shared strategy that requires continuous effort and engagement. And building a revolution requires both broad-based support and deep, sustained efforts. It's our duty as organizers to get people to see their conditions and organize and fight for themselves. It’s hard to think about even reaching that point and it’s very very slow but it’s what we need to win. 

• Solidarity: Even with such few resources, Cuba has strong embodiment around solidarity, whether it be protesting and standing in solidarity with Palestine or sending Cuban doctors abroad. Solidarity is not about whether it’s strategic or not, or whether we have the resources or not, there's a deep seated belief in standing up for and supporting oppressed people. 

• Democracy in Cuba: My conceptions of democracy were challenged while visiting Cuba. In the U.S.., I associate democracy with elections, congress people and senators, with a two party political system. But is the U.S. a democracy if many Black and brown people have been excluded (through felonies) from the voting process? When we have an electoral college and Senate that gives more power to rural white states? When we have a government that is totally captured by corporate interest and the ruling class? Fidel Castro is often portrayed as a dictator when in reality one must be rigid when fighting the forces of global capitalism and imperialism. In Cuba, there is one party, the Communist party. (This is seen as un-democratic, which is interesting of the U.S., to talk about given how similar the Republican and Democratic party are at its core; parties of the ruling class.) They had massive worker engagement through mass organizations, some of which we talked to on our trip. 

• Conflicts & Tensions: Cuba is not a utopia, in part due to the blockade, as well as the fact that the Revolution is only 60ish years in the making, with almost all of that being within the context of the blockade. The Cuban people that we spoke to admitted the faults of their country/society, and grounded us in the reality that it would be almost impossible for centuries of patriarchy and racism to be overturned in a little bit over half a century, let alone with limited resources. Many also spoke to the high amount of young people leaving the country, especially because media from the U.S. can leave Cuban youth wanting a life that they can’t experience while living in Cuba.  

• Race: The conditions around race in Cuba are very different from what we experience in the U.S., and people from the U.S. do not realize the extent to which we project our experience onto other places. Cuba’s revolutionary history has historically been tied to rebellions by people who were enslaved, and Cuban identity has been forged by a commitment to struggle against repression. While colorism and discrimination still occur, they are not institutionalized in the ways that we see in the U.S. and other parts of the West. 

My time in Cuba was immensely transformative; getting on the ground was both a testament to the fierce commitment Cubans have to socialism and an economy planned around the dignity of human life and a vicious reminder of the impact of a 60+ year-old blockade on Cuba, which makes it difficult for everything from key medical supplies to food to equipment and makes it nearly impossible for other countries to trade and do business with Cuba. 

My trip to Cuba in June made clear that we must not only demand Cuba’s immediate removal from the US “state-sponsor of terrorism” list but also demand an end to the blockade that, since 1959, has strangled the Cuban economy and deeply affected the quality of life for Cuban people. 

“Abajo, abajo, abajo el bloqueo. 

El mundo socialista es el mundo que queremos.”

What if Trump wins?

Over the past week, I’ve been canvassing all across Philly, talking to undecided Black male voters, middle-class white loyal Democrats, and white, working-class voters who turned from Obama voters to Trump loyalists. I’ve seen the FULL range of feelings and emotions that Pennsylvanians have about the upcoming election. (More on that in another post I hope to find the energy to muster to write!) 

The more I talk to people, and the more the days pass, the more the weight of the upcoming election begins to bear on me. And while, for the past few weeks, the 2024 election has felt incredibly abstract and far out, I am starting to sit with the question of…  

What if Trump actually wins? And what are we as organizers, as movements, as bystanders in a crumbling democracy, to do? 

So. Here are the 4 things I think we do if Trump is elected president.

And I caveat this by saying, this is no perfect analysis. It’s me trying to wrestle with strategy through writing. I encourage people to engage with me in this discussion about where movements and organizations go if Donald Trump wins. 

One. We must take to the streets and engage in mass protest, mass organizing, and mass action. 

In 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president, he moved swiftly to enact a suite of executive orders, from the Muslim ban to removing the United States from the Paris Agreement, to carry out his agenda for America.  

If Donald Trump is elected president, luckily, we have a blueprint for what he aims to do, and much of it has been laid out in Project 2025, a plan for the next administration created by the Heritage Foundation, an uber-conservative think tank. 

If Donald Trump is elected, we must make it clear that we will not accept authoritarianism, we will not accept fascism, and Americans will not accept a dictator.  And that every turn of the way, whether Trump is working to gut key government agencies that provide real benefits (NOAA to EPA to IRS) to the public, working to expand oil and gas drilling at a time when warnings about the climate crisis sound off, or working to remove women’s rights to an abortion, we will resist.

 Two. Push for massive democracy reform. I get frustrated when people say that nearly half of America voted for Donald Trump. This is not true. In 2020, 74,224,319 votes were cast for Donald Trump (and 81,284,666 votes for Joe Biden.) The population in the U.S. in 2020 was 331,449,281. This means that just roughly 22% of the country voted for Donald Trump. The more startling statistic is that many Americans (36%, though in previous election years turnout has been lower, hovering around 50 to 55%) don’t vote or engage in our electoral process at all. Why? Because many feel that their vote doesn’t matter, their vote doesn’t count, and that both political parties are corrupt and beholden to corporations, not the people.

Our democracy is deeply broken in this country, and as a result, many people tune out of the process altogether. We have an electoral college system that often defies the will of the people, as was the case in 2016 with Donald Trump winning the election through the electoral college, though he lost the popular vote against Hillary Clinton. 

We have a Senate that disproportionately gives power to rural states. We also have the filibuster, a political procedure that requires essentially a 60-vote majority for any legislation to pass through the Senate. As written in Tyranny of the Minority, “Sparsely populated states representing less than 20 percent of the U.S. population can produce a Senate majority. And states representing 11 percent of the population can produce enough votes to block legislation via filibuster.” 

We have a judicial system where Supreme Court Justices serve unlimited term limits. (The U.S. is the only democracy in the world with lifetime tenure for justices. Most countries either have term limits, mandatory age requirements, or both.)

We have laws that enable corporations (post Citizens United) to spend unlimited amounts of money in elections. (This enables corporations and corporate PACs, from the Koch Brothers to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to spend a shit ton of money essentially buying out politicians and elections.) 

And due to the veneration held around our Constitution, a document that was written 237 years ago, and could no way predict the current political moment we’re in, is incredibly difficult to amend. You must have ⅔ of the House and Senate, and ¾ of the states, to ratify an amendment to the constitution. 

We are trying to push for a win in a game/system whose rules have been so deeply rigged against us; that the idea of a multi-racial democracy is quite the threat to white supremacists and the wealthy, they will do anything they can to maintain our current democracy that allows for minority rule. (And also shift the rules of the game in their favor.) Given the increasing challenges facing society - from the genocide in Gaza to climate change to the cost of living crisis in this country, it’s clear that we need government institutions that bend to the will of the people and popular opinion, not to corporations or a small minority in this country. 

Three. We must place the blame for a Trump presidency on the Democratic party and demand new leadership. I don’t know who the political strategists or advisors are for the party, but they ought to be fired. From running Biden for a second term, continuing to pledge allegiance to him after a disastrous presidential debate, to fumbling the ball miserably on Gaza to seeking out Dick Cheney endorsements to pushing a milquetoast vision for America (though she’s been saying “We’re Not Going Back”, which really is not a compelling vision for this country), appealing to moderates and white, rural, conservative voters instead of energizing the growing base of young people, whose votes could be the margin of victory in key swing states). 

The Democrats, if Trump wins, will place the blame at the foot of the left, for their refusal to vote for Kamala Harris given the genocide in Gaza. They will blame the Uncommitted Movement and Arab and Muslim Americans. They will blame young people for low turnout or for voting third party, and they will blame Black and Latino men for moving to Trump, when at the end of the day, their poor and awful political strategy will have been the reason the Democrats lost this upcoming election. 

Four. All is not lost, and under a Trump presidency, we ought to go on the offense and push local governments in Blue cities as far left as we can. Trump will likely go after immigrants, go after climate, go after government agencies. This is a time when blue cities should be passing progressive immigration reform and declaring themselves sanctuary cities for immigrants. Cities should be passing local Green New Deals to the fullest extent, prosecuting and going after Big Oil, and strengthening their democracy at the local level. Cities should make clear to the Trump administration that majority of the public and the majority of people do not want fascism, do not want an authoritarian leader, and that progressive policies are popular and winnable. This will also lay the case for the Democrats on how they ought to lead and govern coming out of the rubble of a Trump win scenario. 

Ok. Again, this is not meant to be a perfect analysis or assessment. I’m doing a lot of reading these days, and a lot of organizing, and I wanted to cohere a mess of thoughts together into something a little more cohesive.

I hope you enjoy and please engage me in these ideas! It’s meant to be the start of a long conversation about how we resist Trump, resist the specter of the Republican Party, and build a multiracial democracy for all that will tackle the biggest issues affecting all of society. 

Black Bodies and the Fight for a Green New Deal.

Dreaming of Black Liberation and the Green New Deal

In a society hellbent on destroying Black bodies, for me, the Green New Deal represents one of the most comprehensive visions of society that not only strives to address the single most existential threat to humanity -- climate change-- but also liberate Black bodies in this country. Here’s why I will spend the rest of my life fighting to make the vision of the Green New Deal real for Black people across America. 

My grandmother, LaVerne Dial -- known as Nanny by the family -- was born in 1941, in Atoka, Tennessee. Her parents, sharecroppers, raised eleven children. Their bodies toiled the land; being Black and poor, she shares stories of how at times, when the family didn’t have money because the white landowner milked them of their profits, they’d eat mud to satiate their hunger. 

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My parents, Sedrick and Kaeva, met at FedEx. My mother, all 5 feet of her, was known for getting a package where it needed to be on time. My father, a barber, used his hands to cut hair and his mouth to share stories with Black men who were eager for an outlet to talk, to joke, to connect. When he wasn’t cutting hair, my dad spent his time off fishing in lakes across the Midwest. Occasionally, he’d take me along, pink Barbie fishing rod in tow and on these trips, I developed an immense love for nature and the water. Later, his hands would go on to put bags onto planes, in below zero degree weather, for a corporation that did not value or see worth in his body, only saw it as property to be exploited for profit. He currently has four herniated disks to show for it. 

My body, a body so deeply drawn to the magic of the Earth, a special tethering likely a result of our shared trauma; my ancestors and Black bodies today, like the Earth, have been pillaged at the hands of white supremacy and capitalism.  

My body, a body with more freedoms granted than the Black bodies before me. And still, I dream of the day where I can wander the streets at 3 am without fear of violence or assault. Where I can take feet to the pavement of my hometown, without fear of shootings or of gun violence. 

It wasn’t until I joined Sunrise, a youth led movement fighting to stop the climate crisis and win a Green New Deal, that I began to see and truly feel the possibilities of what my body could feel. It was in the trainings I attended with Sunrisers from across the country, in the bonfire circles scheming about how we’d bringing in young people en mass across race and class. It was in getting arrested for the first time in Delaware alongside 20-something other organizers and in the jubilee of singing movement songs, that I felt a deep solidarity with the many young organizers I met who knew that collective action was needed to address not just the climate crisis, but also build towards a world in which all life, all bodies, mattered.

In Sunrise, I learned about the Green New Deal (fun fact, one of the key architects of the GND is Rhianna Gunn-Wright, a Black woman from Southside of Chicago), about the promise of good union jobs and safe neighborhoods for Black people on the South Side of Chicago. I saw a world where Black bodies were not riddled with cancer because of the Chevron’s and Exxon Mobile’s of the world who see Black bodies as collateral damage for their oil and gas profits. A world where my own children's bodies could breathe in fresh air without fear of asthma. Where they could laugh, play and rest, without fear of crisis after crisis after disaster. Where they aren’t threatened by the trigger of a white police officer’s uncontrollable temper. Where their bodies can work dignified jobs and have a hand in the collective project of transitioning our country away from fossil fuels, away from capitalism, and towards a future where people and the planet thrive over profit and corporations.

In the spirit of Ella Baker, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Black Panther Party, Black bodies who fought for the liberation of Black people, I fight for a Green New Deal for the millions of Black bodies that are and that are to come. To experience love, to experience joy, to experience life, to experience true freedom. Because every body deserves that.  

So I invite you to sit with more for a moment and ground in your body. Really feel what might be possible in your body, if we lived in a world where the Green New Deal was our reality? In a world where your body might release, exhale, and soften in this world, instead of restrict and tighten? And I invite you to ask yourself: What are you willing and ready to do to bring that future about?

And if you want to make the Green New Deal real, join Sunrise or support our movement here :)

Strengthening Organizing

In January, I attended a retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico with a little under 20 other organizers across the movement ecosystem (immigration justice, labor, community organizing, etc.) We were all gathered to discuss the state of organizing & basebuilding.

In spirit of reflecting on my learnings, sharing a few takeaways from the retreat below, things I’m tossing over in this little mind of mind, post retreat.

Core Questions

• [Framing in context of social movements + left organizations] - What are we trying to win and what do all the pieces add up to? How are our movements and organizations aligning and working towards some unified vision of society? 

• Need for unifying campaign

• Skepticism around coalition work; how do powerful organizing collectively

• How are we organizing the unorganized? How are we meeting people where they are (e.g., online, on YouTube, on video game platforms) and organizing them  

• What does sustainable leadership within our movements and organizations look like? 

• We are not building power and winning; what are we doing wrong and what, as movements and organizations, must we do differently? 

Core Learnings & Takeaways

• Thinking about critical vulnerabilities of our opponents (where are they vulnerable, how can we build power to make them crumble) 

• We’re very reactionary, don’t have clear plan or offense game for our opponents 

• We need more creative funding models for our organizations that don’t just rely on philanthropy. Thinking about how someone can seed an ecosystem of businesses that directly send profits toward movement work. 

Core things I’m thinking about 

• We’re all running up against the limitations of our political system; that rules of the game are stacked against us. We’re in need of campaigns/work around democratic reform (e.g., getting rid of Senate, filibuster, partisan gerrymandering, electoral college, we need automatic voter registration + push for online voting, we need publicly funded elections)

• The role of labor; UAW has been talking about 2028, mass strike; thinking about the ways in which we build organizations that can organize up until that point. And about ways labor and social movement orgs need to be in deeper relationships with each other. 

Meaningful Quotes

“ The way we raise our children will matter in a hundred years.” 

“Keep hope as a North Star”

“Less ego more impact” 

“How do we use a crisis as an opportunity?” 

“We are in a street fight and we are getting fucked up.” 

Half-baked thoughts on where the Movement for a Green New Deal should go next.

On the Green New Deal.

I have committed the rest of my life to the project of stopping climate change and winning a version of the Green New Deal I saw in the AOC Video. Though deeply passionate and hungry for a world where a GND is made real, at present, I feel a deep lack of direction and strategy around what happens next for the movement for a Green New Deal.

In the gap, I wanted to make some meaning for myself, on what are the challenges in the way of winning a Green New Deal, and how might we overcome them to win? 

I’ll preface this by saying that, given the sub-header, these are half-baked thoughts. I don’t have the time to spend weeks researching, editing, and fact-checking all of these assessments and ideas. I’m not a journalist, I’m no policy wonk. I’m just an organizer trying to think, day in and day out, of how to create the people power & political conditions to win massive revolutionary policy at the federal level on climate. (Which, when I say climate, to me, also means massive investments in the public sector, in housing, in transportation, in education, in energy.) If you pull back the curtain on how I define climate, what I mean is fighting for a world where people and the planet thrive, not corporations and profit. A visionary climate future is also a future of economic and racial justice. 

So. This piece will include a simple assessment of some of the major barriers in the way of a Green New Deal, and then share some ideas, based on that assessment, on where the movement for a Green New Deal could go next. 

Assessment & Diagnosis

So what’s wrong? What’s standing in the way of the Green New Deal? 

• The Green New Deal as a floating signifier: First, the Green New Deal has become a floating signifier of sorts, both for the left, for the far right, and for centrist Democrats like Biden. 

• I don’t think this means we shift towards something different; I just think we need to get a little bit more specific; what are we trying to win by 2030? The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), was not, by any means, the Green New Deal. So what massive federal GND policy/legislation is? How will we know when we have won? What policy are the milestones to indicate success along the way? 

• Lack of adequate plan to weaken the power of the Fossil Fuel Industry: It is clear that the fossil fuel industry still holds an immense amount of power over our government. From the imprints of industry on IRA to the role they played on the global stage at COP, we have to reckon with the fact that, if we are to pass a Green New Deal, the power, the money, the lobbying of the fossil fuel industry, must be diminished.

• Inability to build a Multi-Racial, Cross-Class, Cross-Geography Mass Movement: We need a mass movement ready to protest, disrupt, take action, and turn out at the polls to win a GND… in strategic places, and everywhere. We must figure out how to organize the unorganized. Or organize people, where they are organized (e.g., artists, sports teams, video gaming) towards political action and mass disruption around the Green New Deal. And at least get more people doing something (whether it be giving money, giving time, speaking out, joining protests, etc.) on climate. 

• Weakening Democracy and government that is unable to pass policy & solve society's core problems: We don’t live in a democracy, we live in an oligarchy; the rules of the system in the U.S., have been built around white supremacy and around the wealthy/elite/ruling class. With that, our government doesn’t govern to solve problems. And I don't need to underscore the severity of the stakes. The total collapse of society as we know it sits on the other side if bold and big action on climate isn't taken. 

• Other things. Public opinion on the side of climate, yet nothing changes; don’t have a government apparatus accountable to the people and public. Must shift. How? 

• While organizations and movements fight to pressure, someone, somewhere, must also be pressuring to change the roles of the game. Abolish the Senate, the filibuster, and the Electoral College. Pack the court with liberal justices, so we can do things like overturn Citizens United, which gives unprecedented levels of power to corporations to lobby our government. End gerrymandering. 

• Move to offense; we have fossil fuel corporations passing policies in states across the country, preventing civil disobedience and classifying activists as terrorists. We must be pushing policy to define fossil fuel as terrorist; and play with the rules to our benefit and advantage, as they do. 

• We don’t have mass media telling the story & vision of a Green New Deal future: There is a vision and alternative to the nightmare and hellish reality we live in. We need to harness the power of art, media, and culture to inject the vision of a Green New Deal future into the hearts and minds of the public. People need to feel and want the Green New Deal so badly that they’d be willing to get it, by any means necessary. AOC video is one example; we need more artists jumping in to paint the vision Green New Deal future for the masses.

The one final thing I want to note, though I haven’t included, is the role of the military and war. Given two massive wars, one happening in Ukraine and one happening in Gaza, and oil sitting in the backdrop of both (geopolitical), have more questions than answers around the intersection of the Green New Deal and war/imperialism. 

So with that assessment. Here are 5 things I think the Movement for Green New Deal should be oriented around: 

• Clear GND policies that both push towards decarbonization, help to deliver a death blow to the fossil fuel industry, and deliver massive wins for the public: Clear visionary policy that is popular, weakens the power of the fossil fuel industry and delivers wins to the public. One example of this could be a Green New Deal Universal Basic Income Program, a policy that creates a carbon tax (tied with emission reductions that need to happen), and all funds raised are delivered in universal basic income checks to everyone in the country.  

• The vision of the Green New Deal, everywhere, all at once: Imagine, a leftist Green New Deal comms shop with its own news Podcast, a suite of artists, its own set of writers and filmmakers, TikTokers, Instagrammers, flooding the masses and public with a powerful vision of the Green New Deal. 

• Fossil fuel offender list: Pledge calling on institutions to refuse to do business with the fossil fuel industry, especially tech (given the role, relationship, and power Big Tech could have over Big Oil) and advertising. Also, push for legislation creating an offender list for fossil fuel leadership. They are committing crimes against humanity and should be treated as such.

• Seed a Democratic Organization within the movement ecosystem: We need someone working on changing the rules of society so that it's easier to win on our demands. This could include both pushing for legislation that does things like Abolish the Senate, creating publicly funded elections so working and poor people can afford to run fo office, end gerrymandering, end the filibuster, etc. This means pushing for automatic voter registration for all people. And hell, why not mandate online voting to decrease the barriers around voting. Folks in the military who are overseas and folks with disabilities already vote online. 

• Also, this means pushing for policies that enable people & the public to have more time to organize and participate in civic life. Imagine universal healthcare, universal childcare, universal paid time off (e.g., everyone is guaranteed a 1 - 2 month vacation in this country, time for leisure and play), etc.

• Experimentation around mass organizing of unorganized: The movement for a GND, right now, is a very tiny sliver of the population. For us to win the full vision of a Green New Deal, we need more political power and more people. We have to get sharper at organizing people where they are, whether it’s gamers on Twitch, fans at concerts (+ organizing celebrities to use their platforms to guide young people into our movements), sports leagues, etc. We are not growing our bases; to push the government to act on climate with the scale and urgency with which it demands is going to require massive organizing of hundreds of thousands of people in this country. 

So. I’m excited about winning a Green New Deal in this country; I want it badly, for myself, for my nephews, and for my future children. To live in a world beyond the climate apocalypse we are headed towards. My hopes in writing this are to open a convo with my peers on what’s in the way of winning a Green New Deal, and what it’s going to take to make it happen.

*P.S. Yet another disclaimer. These are half baked thoughts. Some of them are imperfect, some of these are out there ideas, and you may have plenty of counter arguments! Engage with me, and write thoughts and responses in the comments :)

For humanity to thrive, we must abolish the fossil fuel industry.

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Despite the glaringly obvious signs that we’re in a fucking climate crisis, several weeks ago, Joe Biden broke under the pressure of the fossil fuel industry, and approved ConocoPhillips with a permit for the Willow Project, the single largest oil and gas project proposed on US public lands. It’s an $8 billion fossil fuel infrastructure project in Alaska, funded by ConocoPhillips, that’s a disaster for many reasons. It would threaten Indigenous Alaska Native communities, destroy wild landscapes north of the Arctic Circle and erase nearly all of the climate benefits of Biden’s renewable energy projects on public lands. 

Why does this matter?

We’re living through an unprecedented climate crisis that will wreak havoc upon the lives of billions of people across the world, and for generations to come. Not only are we in a climate crisis, but we live in a society where profit and corporations rule over people and the planet. Whether you are on the Southeast or Southwest side of Chicago, battling toxic and polluting industry, in East Palestine, Ohio, dealing with the ramifications of a train derailment that has dumped tons of toxic waste into your backyard, or in Jackson, Mississippi, where managing a water crisis caused by government disinvestment and privatization, it is clear that the system is, in fact working exactly as it was designed. It works for the wealthy, the elite, and the corporations who get to profit off of the destruction and exploitation of people, our communities, and our planet.

The fossil fuel industry, specifically, (e.g., ExxonMobile, Shell, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, etc.) has a death grip on our government. It is one of the main reasons why we’re not seeing solutions that meet the scale of scope of the crisis we’re in, all while the profits of the fossil fuel industry just get bigger and bigger and bigger. They’re on a joyride, profiting off of the destruction and exploitation of our people, our communities, and our planet. In the ultimate showdown, it’s us, vs. the fossil fuel industry… and right now they’re winning.

Following the decision of the Willow Project, as I scroll through my social media feeds, filled with people young and all, in despair, one thing is obviously clear; for humanity to thrive, we must abolish the fossil fuel industry. And we need a shit ton of power to do so. 

So, what must be done?

So where do we go from here? While many young people are being incredibly politicized over the Willow Project at this moment through social media platforms like TikTok, what’s popular online does not always translate into power. Power to stop the Willow Project. Power to stop the climate crisis. Power to pass the Green New Deal. 

We need to build enough people power to defeat the fossil fuel industry and win transformative climate legislation in this country. We deserve a Green New Deal. A world without fossil fuels and pollution, a world where all communities have access to clean air and water, and where all people have access to good, union-paying jobs, playing a key role in decarbonizing our society and transforming every industry, from transportation to housing to schools.

Sunrise is organizing to make that happen. We’re building a movement of young people across race and class to stop the climate crisis and win a Green New Deal. We will force the government to end the reign of fossil fuel elites, invest in Black, brown and working class communities, and create millions of good union jobs. We’re on a mission to put everyday people back in charge and build a world that works for all of us, now and for generations to come.

We build people power by organizing thousands of people to campaign for Green New Deal policies, by taking direct action that disrupts the status quo in ways that build public support and/or force those in power to meet our demands, by building mass public enthusiasm across race and class for the Green New Deal by connecting it to peoples’ lives. We build political power by shifting what the public thinks is politically possible, by electing Green New Deal champions at all levels of government who will not be bought out by the fossil fuel industry, and by passing policies that advance the Green New Deal and improve peoples’ lives.  

We need real power and leverage that our movements do not have right now. Many are throwing their hands up, proclaiming that the government does not work, that Biden’s choice to move forward with the Willow Project is proof of the inadequacies of our government. Biden’s choice is proof that the fossil industry is winning. The fossil fuel corporations have spent decades building the type of power to control our government; we must get serious about doing the same. It’s a tug of war, and for us to win, we need as many hands on the rope pulling towards a livable future. 

So… what can you do? Join Sunrise. Join other movements and organizations that are working to put an end to the era of fossil fuels. I believe in pluralism and that what’s needed is a diversity of strategies; it is a war on all fronts. It is going to take as many tactics, of organizing to elect climate champions to office, of labor using it’s disruptive power to demand action on climate, of running campaigns in cities that decarbonize and address issues connected to housing, transit, energy, of running fossil fuel divestment campaigns , and of engaging in direct action work to prevent and show down fossil fuel projects. All of it matters for us to win a shot at a livable future. 

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My anger and desire to see the fall of the fossil fuel industry is fueled by my desire for life, something they obviously don’t value. I deserve a right to a life where I’m not dodging heat waves, excessive storms and flooding and other climate disasters. A life where I can swim in oceans that are teeming with life. A life with children of my own, who can run around breathing in fresh air, and play with dirt that does not harm or poison them. 

At the rate we’re headed, I won’t be able to have that and neither will you. Their actions are a blatant fuck you, to our hopes and dreams and desires… of life. I’m quite shocked that these people aren’t being dragged out of their homes, out of their fancy office buildings, and being forced to witness the level of destruction and disaster they are wrecking upon the world. 

And so, we must reckon with the need to completely phase out our dependence on fossil fuels and abolish the fossil fuel industry. We must build the power necessary so that we have the people, the leverage, and the power to say no more, to lay to rest the fossil fuel industry. Or the fossil fuel industry will lay rest to humanity. 

Building a Multi-Racial, Cross-Class Youth Movement

Read the full report, Sunrise Reflections, Lessons & Learnings on Multi-Racial, Cross-Class Movement Building, here (Google Doc) or here (PDF). The report was supported through a Microgrant from the Climate Advocacy Labs.

Sunrise Movement is a youth-led movement to stop the climate crisis and create millions of good jobs in the process. Through my organizing work at Sunrise, I’ve been most drawn to the question, “How do we build a multi-racial, cross-class movement to win a Green New Deal?” 

I started organizing with Sunrise in January of 2019 and found Sunrise in a moment where I both craved a movement and community of people taking action, but struggled to find a place that wasn’t mostly white people, and/or demanding climate policy that didn’t resonate or excite me. 

Sunrise was both the place with bold young people calling out those responsible for this disaster we’re in (fossil fuel executives) and putting forward ambitious visions (Green New Deal) that went beyond carbon taxes and cap and trade policy. 

But soon enough, I realized the same flaw that pushed me away from other groups began to show up in Sunrise; it was mostly white kids engaging in the organizing work. As a 20-something-year-old Black woman from Chicago, who saw how powerful a Green New Deal could be for my community, family, and home, I couldn’t figure out why the number of Black volunteers engaged in the hub, or Chicago natives for that matter, was so low. Why hadn’t we built a hub across race and class? What could we do to bring other Black and brown youth into the hub? (I wrestled with some of these questions in a piece, A Letter to White Climate Organizers, written in The Trouble.) 

While this personal reckoning was happening within myself, staff and those orbiting closely to the National Organization were also noticing and asking similar questions.

These reflections came to a head in December of 2019, when a Justice, Equality, and Anti-Oppression (JEAO) retreat took place at a retreat center, Earthseed Land Collective, in Durham, North Carolina. A mix of volunteers (including myself) and staff leadership came together to discuss our own relationship with race and class, to discuss and reflect on Sunrise’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to JEAO, and chart a path forward. There, the National organization made a commitment (and intervention in our organizing), to multi-racial cross-class movement building. It was not enough to organize young white, and middle to upper-class folks around the climate crisis and Green New Deal; we wanted to take responsibility for building a movement that would recruit, retain, and deeply invest in Black and brown youth membership and leadership as well. 

And so, the real question became… how to get there. 

Much time has passed since that commitment was made, and much has been learned about our attempts at multi-racial cross-class organizing; where we’ve made strides, where we’ve failed, and where we must go. 

The focus of the Climate Advocacy Lab Microgrant will be a deeper dive into those attempts, including the strides, failures, and lessons for moving forward.

First, I open this reflection with a timeline & definitive history of Sunrise, specifically tracking events that have had implications on our organizing across race, class, justice, equity, and anti-oppression. 

After, I take each of these core moments and distill the lessons into a list of the core challenges Sunrise has faced around multi-racial, cross-class movement building.

Since Sunrise has also run exciting programs, projects, and created resources to get us closer to multi-racial, cross-class movement, I lay out the things that have worked around building across race and class. 

From there, I close with core lessons, learnings, and recommendations, both for Sunrise  and for other organizations looking to incorporate multi-racial, cross-class movement building into their strategy, structure, culture, etc. 

One final note; though I was a volunteer in Sunrise from January of 2019 - February of 2020,  much of my perspective in this report comes from the vantage point of Sunrise’s National Organization. While this means I’ve been able to capture, from the National perspective, much of the learnings around race & class, it also means I’m not fully capturing all the incredible work and learning hubs within our movement have around how they have done the work to build multi-racial, cross-class movements and hubs locally. 

Read more on the report Sunrise Reflections, Lessons & Learnings on Multi-Racial, Cross-Class Movement Building here.

Thoughts on strategy: it’s time to get serious on what must be done to win a Green New Deal.

BEFORE YOU READ: Just a disclaimer. This piece is a stream of thoughts that came together during a period of time when Sunrise was assessing its overall strategy and path forward. Looking back, there are definitely some gaps in my analysis, or things missing. (I’m growing as a strategist :) But sharing as a way to bring you into the thinking behind Sunrise, and where we go as a movement to win on the Green New Deal. Also, for context, the audience of this piece, at the time, was the Strategy Team, a team of folks helping chart out the broader strategy in Sunrise.

Audience: Sunrise frontloading strategy team (in case folks aren't on that team but reading!) 

I’ll try and keep this as brief as possible. But as my mind has wandered towards strategy, and winning a Green New Deal and how we do it, I thought I’d lay out some thoughts and things coming up for me. Also, the second thing I wanna say is, I wasn’t in strategy convos. So this is more of a way of me trying to do the exercise of thinking about strategy. It may be duplicative, y'all may have already thought about this, but my brain needs a way to see pieces together, so this is that! 

In the following mini-piece (looking back, it’s not looking so much like a mini-piece), I'm going to lay out reflections on what we’ve done really well in Sunrise, why we’ve failed, how we can get sharper on the solution to the climate crisis (the Green New Deal) we’re championing, and a road ahead for how we win (theory of change) and how we do so within the fabric of the movement ecology.  It’s also helpful to note, this is my assessment and reflections, building already off of where we’ve landed with the Sunrise 2.0 strategy & DNA. 

One final note. I know big questions around the rise of fascism and the threat of democracy have come up as key barriers to winning climate legislation. I don’t feel equipped to respond to that question, so I will leave it aside. (Actually, because it’s hard for me to leave things aside, I put a section in the appendix on thoughts.) 

What we’ve done well 

We’ve mapped this out already! One of the core strengths around getting closer to passing federal climate legislation in Sunrise is that we have played a major role, nationally, in shifting the common sense around climate change, and positing the Green New Deal as the solution to meet the scale and urgency of the crisis.

To throw in another strength, we’ve also developed a political savvy that has allowed us to build relationships within the halls of Congress, to get core parts of our agenda into major legislation. (Say, with climate being one of the major components of BBB that didn’t shrink, but actually expand.) I do want to caution that this tactic is a shortcut. And I don’t want us to see this as a steady foundation with which we seek major, long-term, transformation in this country on climate. 

Why we’ve failed at winning federal climate legislation 

Some of our failures as a movement on passing federal climate legislation (there are a lot of barriers! Lol so don’t wanna put it all on us. Rather wanna get clear on how we can organize smarter)  is connected to our 1.0 theory of change. First, we set out on building political power, and didn’t build enough to carry us towards a Green New Deal. We elected some Green New Deal champions, but the House and Senate support behind the Green New Deal wasn’t enough to get it passed. We backed Bernie Sanders, and then scrambled or struggled to have a clear plan of action when he lost. A great analysis on this comes here. 

Despite our learnings and failure, we must win governing power to enact and maintain the Decade of the Green New Deal. We must have politicians in office who would both push and implement our political agenda. Also, we must orient to elections as a tactic, in a broader campaign to win Green New Deal legislation. The election is not the end, but the means, to getting what we what. Elections are key opportunities to both grow our membership and base (moments to absorb into our structures!), develop the skills of our membership and leadership (e.g., canvassing, phone banking, etc.), and make specific narrative interventions/push to make our ideas, vision, and platforms popular by pushing candidates to adopt them (e.g., popularizing Green New Deal through folks like AOC and Bernie Sanders talking about it to their supporters and in debates.)

Secondly, we’ve failed to have a power map that lays out the clear enemies and blocks on climate legislation. (And the fossil fuel industry is not specific enough.) Because while Democrats and Republicans fail to act on climate legislation, there are bigger forces moving behind them; the elite and ruling class. And those forces have names, faces, addresses, and corporations that we must disrupt, vehemently, to get what we want. As Frederick Douglas once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” We must make the right demands of the right people in power.

If we had a clearer power map of the people, corporations, and politicians who stand in our way, we might realize that banner drops, high school climate strikes, Wide Awakes and direct actions were not at all effective in moving those powerholders. (Yes, they may have targeted the public in powerful ways, but if winning material shit, not just shifting the common sense, is a core part of our theory of change, we must get clearer on how we think we build the power to win shit.) 

The final mistake we’ve made, and are continuing to make, is around people power/collective power. In Sunrise 1.0, we said we needed to build people power. But who? What kind of people power? How do we wield it? In frontloading, we’ve gotten better at trying to answer this question, but we’re still missing the mark. 

People, when organized, in society and our democracy, have power in several different ways: (I’ve laid out three, but feel free to challenge or push, may not be total.) 

1. Mass protest & mass noncooperation

1. Example: Gandhi Salt Marches

2. Strategic disruption (strikes, boycotts, etc.)

1. Example: United Auto Workers engaging in sit-down strikes in Flint, Michigan 

3. Through democracy & electoral system (mobilizing at the voting booths) 

1. Example: AOC ousting Joe Crowley and getting elected to Congress (through the support of mobilization of working people at the ballot box). If an elected official isn’t accountable to the constituency, can try and re-elect them.  

We must do all of these better! And by running local campaigns that tie to federal legislation, we can definitely achieve #1 and #3. But more specifically, we’re making a HUGE mistake by not thinking deeply about the working class movement we need to build, and what power we can leverage from the constituency. For, building a multi-racial, cross-class movement for the sake of building it, is not strategic or powerful. We should want to build a MRXC movement, with working class members, because working class people have the power in society to withhold their labor and disrupt capitalism. And that gives us and our movement leverage, to seek out successions on our demands. We must think deeply about organizing young workers, and doing so in strategic places that disrupt power holders who can give us what we want. A Green New Deal. Real, sustained, transformation in this country can only come from organization of the working class. 

What should we be demanding of the Green New Deal

For a minute, I've been asking the question, What is the Green New Deal we’re fighting for? I’ve also been trying to reflect on that, and have thoughts.

Green New Deal, redefined: All future Green New Deal policy, can be tested with new framework, core outcomes & values listed below: 

• Decarbonization: GND policy should drive towards meeting the goal of full decarbonization, and 100% fossil fuel free economy and society. 

• Socialism: Any Green New Deal policy seeks to deliver a death blow to capitalism, a system that hoards wealth, capital, and resources in the hands of the few, at the exploitation of people and the planet. This includes the process of decommodification, the belief that housing, energy, healthcare, food, should be human right, not good to be traded in “free market” 

  Abolition: Abolition of violence institutions and structures, including fossil fuel industry, military, ICE, prisons, etc. All of these institutions seek to serve the ruling class, and allow them to continue in the playbook of control, harm, violence and exploitation in service of growing profits. 

• Decolonization: Giving land and power back to Indigenous peoples, who are the original stewards of this land. (There’s probably more here, but pulling from Red Deal)

• Internationalist: Any Green New Policy seeks to make connections between the climate crisis, and exploitation of countries in the Global South. GND policy passed should push for the United States to pay climate reparations, and open borders for climate refugees, who are often migrating due to US interventionist policy, and our role in the climate crisis.

What’s our theory of change 

So given all of these, what do we do? What shifts and interventions can we make in 2.0, given all the work we’ve done frontloading?

Here are my takes: 

• We slightly shift our theory of change by adding strategic disruption, for we don’t win a Green New Deal if each of these separate gears to move together:

• Continue shifting common sense (selling our politics & getting public to believe in problem, solution, and path to change) 

• Collective power (specifically building working class power)

• Includes mass movement building, expanding beyond professional middle class activist networks  

• Strategic disruption (strikes + mass protest) 

• Winning state & governing power: long road, electing GND champions

• Though we don’t take responsibility for these things, must consider role we play:

• Organizing labor to see GND as necessary (especially teacher & healthcare unions); strategic disruption. Labor was critical in history and during the New Deal Era, in passive massive legislation, and will be critical in the fight to win the Decade of the Green New Deal. 

• Grow People’s Alignment, specifically thinking about the work it will take locally to win GND campaigns (coalitions of community orgs, indigenous, local EJ, labor groups, etc.) 

Sunrise Strategy to Get There 

So, given the theory of change, what’s the best strategy? My take is that we make the choice to do the Green New Deal Communities, and embed GND for Education within that. Here’s why:

• A GND for Communities campaign would allow us to take advantage of the opportunity (and strategic thing we need to do) to bring union organizations into the fight for a Green New Deal, and leverage their power to win. By doing a GND for Communities campaign, and embedded GND for Education Demands within it, it allows us to work with teachers unions, while also making sure that the fight for good education isn’t siloed, but packaged within the fight for broader transformation in cities across the country.  

• We’d have the opportunity to select Priority Locations (based on the power map exercise we do this time, and maybe 70% capacity going towards supporting this in org) and determine where we need to build power and engage in strategic disruption across the country. We should also think more deeply & seriously about a worker constituency within those locations, beyond teacher unions. One example could be a young transit work constituency, that’s work to organize transit unions in support of demands like Universal Public Transit. We should see this is something incredibly new, experimental, but a choice in the right direction towards thinking more deeply about power, and the kind of power we need to build to win. 

• Opportunity, given money coming to local and state governments through federal funding that’s become available through BIF (and maybe BBB), to run campaigns during funding towards Green New Deal pillars 

• With a goal to continuing to shift the common sense on climate and the Green New Deal, the broadest and most appealing campaign will do that; not a Green New Deal for Education 

• If we want a policy that supports WWII style mobilization around climate, we need policy that appeals to the broadest subset of the public. That’s a GND for Communities. 

• We need to win shit locally, and shit that will have material impacts on peoples lives. A GND for Communities will most do that. And build the case that the government should be and can be effective in providing real change for working people. 

• Finally, to win massive climate legislation, we need to continue vying for state power, through the election of GND champions. By supporting our entire movement on GND for Communities campaigns, we can see it as a deep investment in getting towards this goal. But we must do it right. We must see community organizing as a long-term strategy, and set our movement's sights, in their local Green New Deal campaigns, as organizing opportunities towards the 2024, 2026 and 2028 federal elections. And the metric of our success; can we use our organizing locally, as a sort of structure test during federal elections? (e.g., can we mobilize our movement during these critical elections? To elect GND champions, and to set us up to mass federal climate legislation.) 

Conclusion 

First, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I want to wrap by saying that over break, I spent an hour crying my eyes out, terrified that all our efforts, all our organizing, all this work, would be for not. That we’d be unable to stop the capitalist class, unable to stop the fossil fuel industry, from turning society into a hellscape rife with disaster, mass death and devastation. 

And then I got my shit together, and said well dammit. If the ruling class can plan, can be strategic, can build and maintain power, can get what they want, so can I. So can we. So can the working class. And so can like Left. Organize, don't antagonize. And these reflections come from that place. 

In writing this, my hope isn’t that this analysis is right or entirely correct or spot on, but that it sparks a convo between us, as leadership in frontloading, as leadership in Sunrise, to be think about how we can be as strategic as possible, in making choices about how we think we pass massive federal legislation. About what we think our best shot at passing massive federal legislation to avert climate catastrophe is. 

For, the fate of the world, and future generations, could depend on our movement (and movements now, working on climate legislation) getting that right. 

DP