By: Aru Shiney-Ajay, Sunrise Movement Executive Director
In early 2025, Sunrise launched a campaign to make polluters pay for the effects of climate disasters. This campaign had the usual strengths: a focused message, easy to villainize targets, and real opportunities for state-level wins. It allowed us to engage the public directly following climate disasters, when attention to the climate crisis is highest.
But taking the campaign from the drawing board to the streets felt like pulling teeth. It was hard to recruit young people, bring local hubs on board, and build organic momentum. Our leadership team felt unmotivated and lethargic. Ignoring the elephant in the room of escalating fascism was getting to all of us.
In response, our leadership team came together over the summer to re-evaluate and reassess the broader landscape. We watched ICE escalate in LA, watched as Trump broke every rule in the book and rapidly consolidated power. He was gutting the EPA, dragging us back into the coal era, joking about running in 2028, and threatening to cancel elections. It became very clear that running a Make Polluters Pay campaign was like bringing a knife to a gunfight (figuratively of course).
Here’s what we realized:
- Local wins cannot outpace an administration fully captured by Big Oil.
From a purely emissions perspective, we were losing. We could get a few polluters to pay for cleanup costs. In some states, like California or New York, state legislation mattered a good amount. But while we were focused on state-level policy, the Trump administration was opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, reversing vehicle emission standards, withdrawing from international climate agreements again, eliminating the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax credits, and staffing the EPA with fossil fuel executives. It was changing the green economy so that there was less incentive to build wind and solar, pausing IRA funded projects, and actively driving up pollution. We were just being outstripped.
- We can’t wait this out until Trump leaves office.
Many of our partner organizations decided to focus on local organizing for three years in order to prepare for what we wanted to win when we won back power. However, this approach depends on stable democratic systems, and the ability to organize freely. Both of which are increasingly unrealistic based on our assessment.
First, Trump may not leave office. He’s openly discussed ignoring term limits. He’s installing loyalists throughout the military and Justice Department. Republican state legislatures are passing laws that would allow them to override election results. Trump has looked at changing ID requirements to require proof of citizenship to vote, and has gerrymandered and mandated Republican states redraw districts. Even if he personally leaves, it’s very likely that he will change the rules of the game to make it basically impossible for a Democratic trifecta to come to power – and because of our levels of polarization, that’s the starting point for climate legislation.
Second, protest is being criminalized. Anti-protest laws passed in 17 states since 2024. Sunrise itself was going to be targeted. Our infrastructure was likely to walk out of the next few years weaker, not stronger.
We need a movement that can force Trump out of office. That won’t be a single issue movement.
- Under a functional democracy, we would already have widespread climate action.
As we started to explore further, it became clear the links between rising fascism and the climate crisis.
Public opinion data currently shows that people support climate action by significant margins. 65% of Americans support regulating CO2 as a pollutant. 72% support transitioning to clean energy. Majorities support Green New Deal-style investments.
In a functional democracy, that should translate to legislation, easily. But our fight for Build Back Better – what later got watered down into the Inflation Reduction Act – taught us that it wasn’t that simple. The broken link — the reality that our government is more bought out by pharmaceutical companies and fossil fuels than it is accountable to everyday people — is exactly how Donald Trump won, promising to be an un-buyable strongman.
And fossil fuel companies recognized that as well. The Biden administration was a clear lesson for fossil fuels: under a democracy, they will lose their business model. So they’ve made a calculated decision to fund authoritarianism, because under authoritarianism, they win. Fossil fuel industry donations to Trump’s 2024 campaign reached record levels. Trump promised oil executives whatever they wanted in exchange for $1 million in campaign donations. Oil executives are staffing his administration at unprecedented rates. This is fossil fueled fascism. If we want to stop the climate crisis, we need a democracy that can’t be bought.
- We need a massive base.
The final reason came down to our base and organizing. At the end of the day, Sunrise has always been by and for young people, and the reality that we saw on the ground was that young people were deeply concerned about rising authoritarianism and didn’t know what to do about it. Running a climate-only campaign under these conditions felt like we were ignoring reality. Our members had an intuitive sense that to stop climate change, we needed to stop authoritarianism first.
The last six months have only confirmed that instinct. Students showed up in record numbers to fight for sanctuary campuses and to stop Donald Trump’s compacts with universities. Our hotel non-cooperation campaigns went viral, and since we’ve broadened our focus, young people have increasingly come to consider Sunrise their political home.
Sunrise’s Strategic Pivot
So we made a decision: Sunrise is pivoting to end authoritarianism and win a democracy capable of addressing the climate crisis.
We’re still a climate movement, but this moment requires the acknowledgment that climate action is impossible under authoritarianism. Winning democracy is a precondition for winning climate policy. The fossil fuel industry is funding fascism because they know they lose in a democracy. Young people are ready to fight for both, because we see them as inseparable.
Our strategy is ambitious, reflecting the scale of the challenge, with three main goals:
- Build the youth base and organizing infrastructure needed to defeat authoritarianism.
- Win structural democracy reforms like proportional representation and public financing that make oil industry capture impossible.
- Use that democracy to pass transformational climate legislation and defend it long-term.
It’s ambitious, but it’s the only path that works.
