In June of 2017 I helped to launch Sunrise Movement, a movement to stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process. We set out to build an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people. Now, at the end of 2018, we're doing just that.
After a 6 month 'Sunrise Semester' electoral fellowship program, which tallied a total of 254,000 voter contacts in support of Democratic candidates in Michigan, Florida, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania, contributing to several major victories, and getting over 1300 candidates to take the #NoFossilFuelMoney pledge, we brought 200 of our top leaders to Capitol Hill to demand action on climate change at the scale science and justice require.
Flanked by progressive politicians we helped elect, we introduced a proposal for a "Select Committee on a Green New Deal", which one highly respected climate journalist called "perhaps the first time in US history that a Democrat has proposed a plan for addressing climate change that actually scales to the problem and has some chance of influencing the party’s agenda."
Since then, we've seen an explosion of activity and spike for enthusiasm of bold progressive climate action. Over 240 organizations, 45 Congresspeople, 5 Senators and a number of 2020 Presidential contenders have backed our proposal. Oh and we coordinated hundreds of in-district office visits and brought 1,000 people back to DC 3 weeks later. Oh yeah...and recent polling shows that a whopping 81% of registered voters support the Green New Deal, including 64% of registered Republicans.
Our scrappy grassroots movement is going to spend the next two years building the public and political consensus needed to make the Green New Deal a reality, but we can't do it without your support.
Although we're now meeting every day with Congresspeople and making the front page of the New York Times, CNN, Washington Post and more on a regular basis...we're still just a bunch of kids with a plan, who know how to do a lot with a little. Thanks for giving what you can.