There’s always so much happening in our movement. That’s why we held April’s Movement Leaders x All Hands call on April 5th to come together and learn about all that’s happening. This call was an opportunity to come together as a full movement and staff team to arm ourselves with the relationships, information and energy we need to keep our movement strong and connected. Here’s what we talked about:
National Updates:
- Sunrise 2.0 Launch Updates
- Organizational Updates
- Electoral Updates
National Updates
1. Updates on Launch
We’ve been in the process of reimagining our DNA. We have member input sessions available for hub members to give feedback on the new DNA in real time, but for now let’s go over some of our guiding principles for this process:
- Prepare the organization to powerfully launch 2.0 by a) restructuring our organization so that everyone has a clear role, team, and manager, and b) giving people time for rest so people can keep going for the long haul
- Ratify and launch the new DNA so that hubs/chapters start organizing in the summer and are set up for powerful public campaign launches in January 2023
- Elect 2+ Green New Deal Champions to Congress and defend the Squad.
- Invest in our organizational operations work and team so that we can effectively support and execute on 2.0
2. High-Level Organizational Updates
Organizational Restructure– Due to budget constraints and wanting to get in formation for Sunrise 2.0, we’ve been in the process the last 2 months to restructure the national organization and we’re on the cusp of being complete with that process! In the coming 2 weeks we’ll be totally clear on departments, teams, roles, who is staying on staff and who is transitioning, and we’ll be providing updates around the details really soon – in the form of org charts, a description of teams, and how to navigate/interface with the updated version of the national organization.
Union Contract- Sunrise has an amazing Union, and we’re on the cusp of signing the first Union Contract – a major milestone! We expect this to be wrapped up by late May/early June.
August Break- Last but not least, I want to take you back to the timeline I showed you a little bit ago to discuss our upcoming “August Break” where staff are going to be fully offline for a month. In the past, Sunrise had a bad habit of going 100 miles a minute with too much urgency and not adequate time for rest. As we transition to Sunrise 2.0, we’re looking to embody the culture we’re seeking to create, so we want to give staff a big break so they’re charged up before we head into a busy organizing period in the Fall. This also will help mark the official transition from Sunrise 1.0 to Sunrise 2.0.
3. Electoral Updates
In 2022, Sunrise will elect Jessica Cisneros, Summer Lee, Kina Collins, Nida Alam, Erica Smith, and Greg Casar (and we are looking at our capacity to see if and where we may be able to add some people) in the 2022 Democratic Primaries.In the process, we will develop the organizing leadership of Sunrisers, tell the story of the GND, and demonstrate the power of the movement for the GND both in its ability to win races and to mobilize thousands of young people around exciting candidates from the community, running on our values. Our goal is to send exciting candidates to Congress who will be bold champions for transformative change. Young people are incredibly disillusioned and are only turning out for exciting, GND candidates. We must prove in Nov 2022 and 2024, that running GND champions wins elections, and young people are a vital component to winning seats – everywhere, and especially as climate disasters worsen. We are angry and empty promises, and we know that if we are going to win a Green New Deal in the new era of Sunrise, we need organizers in congress, and we need to elect those organizers by also building organizing power in our places.
