On Wednesday, November 10th, Sunrise held its November Movement x All Hands Call, a monthly rhythm designed to bring together Movement Leaders and Sunrise staff to ground in our current organizing moment, share major updates from Sunrise hubs & the national organization, celebrate movement wins, build relationships and take collective action.
If you weren’t able to make it, here’s a summary of what we talked about:
National Updates
- Good Jobs for All Campaign Updates
- Frontloading / DNA Ratification
- Sunrise Organizational Steering Team
- Money & The Movement
- Movement Democracy Project
Hub Updates
National Updates
1. Good Jobs for All Campaign Updates
- Political context and where we are:
- On Friday 11/5, the House of Representatives passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal (aka the Exxon bill) which will now head to President Biden’s desk. The House has not yet voted on Build Back Better, which actually contains the climate funding we want and that our movement has been fighting for.
- The House did get one step closer to voting on the reconciliation package through a procedural vote (“the rule”). Biden negotiated a public agreement between House Progressives and conservative House Democrats, in which ? conservative Democrats agreed to vote for BBB the week of November 15th, ? once they get final information about the financial impacts of the bill from the Congressional Budget Office.
- The President is now very engaged in getting his agenda over the finish line and is willing to spend significant political capital on it, including heavily pressuring corporate Democrats to push the bill through as it is.
- We don’t know if Congress will stick to the agreed upon timeline of the week of November 15th to vote on BBB because Corporate Dems continue to come up with delay tactics. At best, this will pass by Thanksgiving, at worst it would drag on until the end of the year and pass or die altogether.
- What comes next for our movement:
- In this final push to sign BBB into law, we’re focused on making sure the bill passes with as little changes as possible through the House and Senate.
- Right now, we are not planning for any more major mobilizations like the June 28th action in DC.
- We may have online organizing tools, like phonebanks or tweet tools, for folks in our movement to engage with as we really get this over the finish line.
- From now until the bill passes, we’ll primarily focus on comms and digital work, making it clear why Build Back Better needs to be signed into law. We’ll keep up with rapid response to different developments and also continue to prepare for big moments, like when BBB passes in the house and is finally passed altogether.
2. Frontloading / DNA Ratification
- The frontloading process is fully in content testing mode!
- We’ve run the first Structure/Culture and Story/Strategy sessions with our membership. Sign up for more here.
- And we’ve started partner input sessions
- We’ve run 2 staff input sessions
- We’re prepping for two-day, in-person leaders retreats in January to get deeper feedback from movement leaders. People are being invited to these based on hundreds of conversations the ‘Movement Inventory Process’ had with hubs to identify who are the key leaders. We’re inviting those leaders regardless of how much they agree with what the national direction has been. The goal is to hear real-talk from the people who are most trusted by hub members.
- The next step is DNA edits, which will happen in January and February. We’re getting really great input and data so far that will shape this. We’ll work with the data team and share report-outs of the data and our takeaways in early December and in early February! (We’re waiting for enough data to come in before we share reports though)
- We’re also preparing for ratification. Sunrise 2.0 will only work if Sunrise members are bought in so we’re not going to go ahead unless a strong majority of members approve the DNA. We’re working on creating a process with volunteers to flesh out a proposal on ratification, or how the movement votes to approve the DNA.
- We’re wrapping up DNA creation:
- Culture: We’re mostly finished and are working with a team within the organization of people that have been holding a lot of culture work to flesh out some of the processes, structures, and practices to implement the draft principles.
- Story: Also mostly finished, we are working with some folks on our Comms team to figure out how to adapt our visual strategy.
- Strategy: Will be finished with all DNA by December 1st, and has been working on our national campaign and our organizing approach.
- Structure: Continuing to work through mid-December. Developing the ratification process and making proposals around movement-wide decision-making. Getting feedback on hub structure proposals by visiting hubs of different sizes and focuses.
3. Sunrise Organizational Steering Team
The steering team met Oct 18th-22nd to assess the state of the organization, set shared priorities, and make decisions about how to best move forward with our shared work.
We came into this retreat knowing that the organization is in a critical moment, facing major opportunities and major challenges. The retreat took place while Joe Manchin was gutting the infrastructure bill before our eyes, and while members of our movement began to hunger strike in response. Amidst the escalation of the campaign, we were tasked with facing the significant challenges within the organization, and with making decisions that sought to balance our long-term survival as an organization, our plans for 2022, and the immediate needs of our campaign work.
PRIORITIES – OCT 2021 – JAN 2022
These priorities will be our north star for the next 4 months.
In rank order of importance:
- Catch up on operational and financial backlog and create new operational systems
- Design and build senior leadership structure and begin organizational restructure
- Introduce a new DNA to staff and base
- Prepare for and initiate plan for 2022 midterms
- Pass federal climate priorities and make sense of the current political conditions
- Lay the groundwork for cultural transformation, esp around JEAO, in 2022
4. Money & The Movement
Key Links/Resources:
- Overview of Sunrise’s Finances – Overview of budget, finances and fundraising.
- Sunrise Fundraising Principles – The Principles that guide all our national fundraising work.
- Movement Resources Dashboard – A listing of all Financial, Resource & Support Offerings for the Movement! Your one stop shop!
- Hub Materials Project Form – Apply for $3000 to support your Hub’s Strategy!
Explainer & Application here! - Hub Finance System Guide and Application – The HFS is how hubs access money that’s available to them, and fundraise on their own. It sets hubs up with an ActBlue page, and gets them their own truelink debit card.
Principle 6 Program – The Principle 6 Program just launched Round 4 and celebrated it’s 1 year anniversary! The P6 Program supports ~150 primarily poor/working class volunteers with a stipend of $800 per month. Please share this info with your hub and apply next round if you qualify!
5. Movement Democracy Project
Over the past month, the Organizing Team with the Movement Democracy Project has been hard at work, developing an infrastructure for volunteers to join the project & strategizing on the best ways to empower volunteers to take action to achieve movement democracy. Here are a few updates:
- ?NAME CHANGE ALERT?
- You might have previously known our team as either the National-Hub Relationship Team or the Volunteer Hub Council Design Project. Embarrassing as it may be, we’ve changed our name again (and we promise, this is the last time). We are now the Movement Democracy Project and you can find us on Slack with the channel name: #proj-movement-democracy
- The Organizing Team has a new structure ?
- The Organizing Team is the primary team working on Strategy. They are the ones who meet every week at 7 pm EST/4 pm PST. There are 3 sub-teams that report back to the organizing team: the recruitment team, the trainings & support team, and the structure team. All of them have specific tasks within their purview to help the project specialize its work and accomplish it on a more timely basis.
- Announcing the Hub Council Structure Call Series ???:
- After our first preliminary call last month, the Movement Democracy Project is excited to announce the Hub Council Structure Call Series! These calls will each be sessions for volunteers to provide their input on what they believe movement democracy should look like in Sunrise 2.0. We’ll be doing these calls on a bi-weekly basis, to gather feedback for delegates who will collectively work on implementing and incorporating that feedback in a transparent process once the series concludes in January. Stay tuned for a post in Slack for more information ?
- Take the Movement Democracy Pledge ?:
- Do you believe Sunrise should embrace movement democracy? Do you believe volunteers should lead this movement? Then demonstrate your support by signing the Movement Democracy Pledge! This pledge symbolizes a commitment to joining volunteers in the effort to achieve movement democracy as we empower each other to own our agency and stake in this movement.
